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Is the Yellowstone Supervolcano About To Blow?
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently, Yellowstone National Park has been having a very unusual number of earthquakes. Many of the most recent tremors have been deeper underground, an ominous sign. Combine that with a rapid rise in elevation over the past three years, and the possibility that earthquake activity from surrounding areas could trigger such an eruption on its own, and you've got the possible warning signs of a supervolcano eruption that would wipe out half to 2/3 of the continental US, plunge global temperatures, and wipe out a very significant chunk of world food sources. Here's a little more info to make your New Year brighter!"
After all, if we are going to have the sun blocked out by a huge cloud of dust, it would be fantastic to have as much heat trapped on earth as possible!
Dec 21, 2012
Suddenly the economy doesn't sound like such a big problem after all.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Why not? All the mathematical models claimed that the US Financial credit market and the Housing Bubble wouldn't burst at the same time- they calculated that was a once in 75 million years event. Given the luck of the United States lately, a 1/600,000 year event going off right now would just be the icing on the cake.
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Well, if it's going to be the apocalypse (and I'm not going to be responsible, much to my chagrin), can you just make sure I get a few weeks' notice? There are... things... I want to do.
Those 'things' are girls and they've already told you they wouldn't have sex with you even if the world were ending.
Oh wait on second thoughts this is slashdot. You do realize that at the end of the world, no one's going to care if you put out a new beta of your new Robocode robot, even if it is unbeatable.
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... when the global cooling occurs, it'll get Al Gore to STFU for once.
After the fact.
I wasn't going to party tonight but this gives me a valid excuse to stop by the liquor store on the way home.
Map showing recent earthquakes is over here http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Maps/US2/43.45.-112.-110.php
How many Library of Congresses is that?
It's more likely to cause global cooling, as TFS and TFA state.
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Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
It would more likely knock out all human life in the USA and burn/melt most of the populated areas of Canada and Mexico. Don't forget it will cause a huge drop in temperature which will cause a mini ice age Doesn't really matter where you are in the world as everyone will most likely starve to death in a couple years anyways. I think it was Mt Toba that went off last time... which dropped the human population down to 10,000 and kicked off a mini ice age 75,000 years ago.
The linked articles do not really raise any cause for concern. The title sure has a ZOMG!!! factor to it, but in reality it's just a bunch of what-ifs. Move along, nothing to see here.
blah blah blah
Seriously Slashdot, you need to work on your reaction time. This was news two days ago.
These earthquake swarms happen frequently in Yellowstone, and this one has already ended. Yellowstone has dropped back to its ordinary low rumble.
But then again, I could be wrong.
History books will refer to late 2008 as The Year God Decided He Really Hated America.
(This is only true if the volcano blows within the next 5 hours, and I have to say - if it's going to blow, it should do it then, just for the humor value.)
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Yes, but only if someone hears it.
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At times like these, I feel it's appropriate to start rocking back and forth singing:
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When you look at it
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true.
You'll see it's all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the right side of life...
"Climate change may actually increase the probability of volcanic and earthquake activity!"
Come on get off the fence, does it or doesn't it.
One
Well, this is true, but what you have to remember is that those "mathematical models" were created by imbeciles who believed that all events in the financial market were independent (i.e no event in the market affects any other event), that the market can grow forever without limit, and -- worse -- still believe that when an event that the models say is a once-in-a-hundred-years event happens three times in six months, it's not an indication of a basic flaw in the model, but rather a rare fluke that means it's now statistically certain it'll NEVER happen again. The global financial sector's "mathematical models" are worthless, and always have been. They built a house of cards using imaginary money as cards, and the question was only one of when the house of cards would collapse.
The financial market and the Yellowstone basin are hardly related. Our models of vulcanism are incompletely understood, and based on what is -- on a geological scale -- a very short period of observation, a mere century and a half or so in the case of Yellowstone. But they are at least based on observation and study, not wishful thinking. Yes, many of the models indicate that there could be another supervolcanic event at Yellowstone "any time now". But on a geological timescale, that "any time now" could be a thousand years away.
This is interesting news, and absolutely bears close monitoring, but I think it's a little premature to run around shouting that the sky is falling. But regardless of the actual risk from Yellowstone, I don't think that the failure of the consensual delusion passed off as mathematical models of the global economy constitutes anything that can be used as evidence for anything except for how stupid a whole lot of ostensibly really smart people can actually be, when they're blinded by greed.
That's just the sort of "bend over and take it up the arse" that has gotten you Americans into the mess you're in right now. You should be out protesting in the streets about this impending supervolcano! If you aren't part of the solution you are part of the problem. Won't someone _please_ think of the children? Maybe next time you'll vote in a government with a firm policy platform on the whole supervolcano issue. If this supervolcano goes off then the terrorists win.
I've got plenty more!
I noticed that too, and the local distribution of the cluster does look somewhat like pre-volcanic activity. But if it were the supervolcano. I'd expect activity along the caldera margins. This looks more like something that would result in a new cone or maybe just some new hot springs under the lake.
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
You elect an imbecile to the most powerful office in the world. Twice.
You spend/borrow your way into a financial crisis.
You alienate and disgust 99% of the rest of the world with (just off the top of my head) Guantanamo, bombings inside Pakistan, extraordinary renditions, the whole Iraq fuckup, Kyoto, etc.
You remove more and more of the basic rights of your own citizens.
Apart from that, please think about the majority of humanity around the world, count your fucking blessings, and shut the fuck up. Try living just one day as an average Somali, Haitian, Zimbabwean, or Burmese.
I believe the point being that if this particular volcano erupts, pretty much everyone will hear it.
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Um no, dude, you don't really get it. If Yellowstone blows, there is no volcano eruption in human history that even remotely comes close. Mt. St. Helens would look like a fart standing next to Chernobyl. Areas 400 miles away would get covered in a foot of ash. There is just nothing like it.
Here is a nice, graphical link for you to look at:
link
The number of deaths could be staggering. That foot of ash, even 400 miles away in Denver, would collapse most roofs, and any with people in them would get severely injured or die. It would be the end of the U.S. as a global superpower, and there would be wars. You are naive.
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So I take it my recent venture into the ice-cream business could have been a mistake?
Hell, I could be so bold as to state some asinine comment on Slashdot and not care about Karma or mod points:
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I'm sure you're posting to Slashdot from an average Somali, Haitian, Zimbabwean, or Burmese household. On a high horse, no doubt.
Fortunately, the Yellowstone volcanic system shows no signs that it is headed toward such an eruption in the near future. In fact, the probability of any such event occurring at Yellowstone within the next few thousand years is exceedingly low.
...
Lava flows and small volcanic eruptions occur only rarely--none in the past 70,000 years. Massive caldera-forming eruptions, though the most potentially devastating of Yellowstone's hazards, are extremely rare--only three have occurred in the past several million years. U.S. Geological Survey, University of Utah, and National Park Service scientists with the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) see no evidence that another such cataclysmic eruption will occur at Yellowstone in the foreseeable future.
(emphasis mine)
As for that "several million years" figure for a devastating explosion of the kind TFA is describing, consider that the United States as a nation is still less than 250 years old. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the idea that "it hasn't happened in a long time so it must be ready to happen now" is just a popular Las Vegas delusion.
Breakfast served all day!
And all this time I thought that if you weren't part of the solution you were part of the precipitate...
Probably not, but Yellowstone is a very geologically active area, and my first thought when I hear about new activity there (which comes and goes all the time) is of hydrothermal effects.
There's a lot of water moving around underground there, lots of faults, and lots of heat to drive it. When water or ground moves it can change the pressure in other areas, which may allow existing fractures or faults to slip and cause earthquakes. (The hydrostatic pressure of water and CO2 in cracks in rocks can reduce the effective confining pressure holding the rocks together, so they slip more easily -- understanding fluid effects is critical to understanding earthquakes.)
It seems like every time there's an earthquake, or change in geyser activity, or some ground inflation, or whatever, the popular press starts barking about gigantic volcanic eruptions. Before you pay attention to them, consider that a volcanic eruption requires molten rock to reach the surface. On its way it will have to push lots of existing rock out of the way, and that rock will have to go someplace, probably up, which we would detect as significant ground inflation. On its way volatiles would be released which we would expect to detect as unusual concentrations of various volcanic gases and changes in water chemistry. Significant changes in the behavior of existing geothermal features would also be expected.
We also hear a lot about Yellowstone's largest eruptions, but most eruptions are small.
Interestingly, it has been calculated that as much as almost 1/3 of a cubic kilometer of basalt is intruded beneath Yellowstone each year, which if I recall correctly is similar to the amount entering the magma system beneath Hawaii. In Yellowstone, however, it's trapped beneath a gummy layer of molten silica rich rock which itself eventually erupts and partially accounts for Yellowstone's famously explosive outbursts. The basalt, for its part, tends to cool and solidify underground, over time forming a long track of high density rock that is easy to see on any topographic map of the western US as a feature we call the Snake River Plain, terminating with the Yellowstone Caldera as the head of the snake.
Our models of vulcanism are incompletely understood
We just need to think more logically.
The three last eruptions were 6000, 700, and 2500 times Mt St Helens 1980 (MSHE), which released 1.67 exajoules (1.673 x 10^18 Joules). According to the esteemed Christopher Thomas 1 Burning Library of Congress (BLoC) is equivalent to 4 petajoules (4 x 10^15 Joules). Converting MSHE to BLoC gives 1 MSHE = 418.25 BLoC. So the last three eruptions were 2509500 BLoC, 292775 BLoC, and 1045625 BLoC, respectively. Since we don't know how big the next eruption will be, let's just assume the mean of the last 3, and that's 1282633.3 BLoCs, or 39% of the total solar energy that strikes the surface of the Earth.
nah, it won't quite be that bad. most predictions expect the immediate danger zone to have a radius of 1000-1600km, with pumice & ash deposit probably covering all of California and most of the Midwest. but rather than being burned, most deaths/injuries will likely be caused by ash inhalation.
luckily, modern humans have the benefit of science and technology.given enough warning, most people within range of the volcanic explosion and subsequent lava/pyroclastic flow (70,000 to 100,000+ individuals by some estimates) can be evacuated beforehand. everyone else will simply have to stay in doors for a couple of days before they too can be evacuated outside of the ash cover area.
the USGS seems pretty confident that the YVO monitoring program will detect any premonitory indicators (such as emissions of magmatic gases) of any such impending disaster. and studies indicate that, if there is a volcanic eruption, it is not likely to be a caldera-forming supervolcanic eruption due to insufficient rhyolitic magma-storage to sustain such an event.
in the event that a caldera-forming eruption takes place, then yes the ash will probably circle the entire globe and lower the temperature in the lower atmosphere for a few years, and that can have a severe impact on the ecology of the planet. but it's certainly survivable. and the chances of such an event actually occurring is still statistically insignificant--contrary to what is often reported, are are not "overdue" for a supervolcanic eruption. (the mean interval between such eruptions is 710,000 years, not 600,000 years.)
if others are interested, you can read the USGS's report on the Preliminary Assessment of Volcanic and Hydrothermal Hazards in Yellowstone National Park and Vicinity (the actual report is in PDF format).
Yep. Major rhyolitic, non-huge-caldera-forming eruptions have a far more statistically significant record than anything you could call "supervolcanic", and are only once every ten thousand years or so on average. Far more common. And most earthquake swarms at Yellowstone have nothing to with upcoming volcanic eruptions.
Sorry to ruin everyone's doomsday fun. ;)
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If I am warmed and cooled at the same time how will I know what to complain about?
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The deaf won't. But there will be people from the govt going around making the "BOOM" asl sign.
We did, and she's spent her entire life trying to live up to the destructive power of her namesake.
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Volcanic "ash" is not burning wood "ash". Volcanic ash is actually pulverized, powdered rock that only superficially resembles wood ash as it falls and collects on the ground. It's not the result of any burning process.
People tend to eat nearly as much ice cream in winter as in summer, when the body tends to crave the fat in response to harsher environmental conditions.
But just to be safe, better add espresso. And liquor. And cigars. And porn.
You could call it "The Little Vice Age"
Kind of makes the California smoking ban useless.
It's more likely to cause global cooling, as TFS and TFA state.
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And the starving. There's always the starving.
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy I don't mind, I think they're crazy
well, if that does happen then there will certainly be major food shortages around the world and severe infrastructure damage (reservoirs becoming silted up, dams breaking, entire towns covered by meters of ash, power lines in other areas snapping from the weight of ash cover, etc.) in the US, but i think science & technology will prevail. my city happens to be within the ash cover area, but i think the city population would still be able to survive.
first off, we would need to get respirators and gas masks, then we would have to secure a water supply. next, we'd need to repair the power lines or build our own little power plant. since no one is going to be driving on the roads, we would have plenty of gasoline to run a large gas turbine capable of powering a small community for a couple of years.
with basic infrastructure restored, we can then focus on securing a food supply. with careful rationing (America is the land of waste and excess after all), existing food supplies that were produced before the disaster would probably last a good year or so. that would be just enough time to establish a local food supply. lack of sunlight and cold weather won't be a problem with a power plant available. it's not too hard to build a greenhouse (or use an existing one) and set up a hydroponic system and grow lamps to produce artificial sunlight & heat.
it will take some hard work, but it's nothing that a little human ingenuity can't overcome. if anything, it'll encourage people to adopt more sustainable lifestyles, foster cooperation and a sense of community, and create a more efficient and egalitarian society in the long run. if Americans want to survive this kind of disaster, they'll have to learn to cooperate with and help one another. rather than depending on agribusiness and corporate farms hundreds of miles away to produce one's food, local communities will have to get together and set up farming co-ops and learn to be more self-sufficient.
if this were India, China, or Africa, then there might be a large death toll. but America has a lot more material wealth and natural resources. we also have a more educated population and the technological and scientific knowledge that brings. our biggest challenge is simply overcoming our culture of selfishness and ignorance. if mass hysteria breaks out or society degenerates into lawless chaos, with everyone fighting over immediate resources, each person blindly pursuing their own selfish interests rather than working together, then we probably won't survive. but chances are most communities will be able to make it through such an ordeal.
personally, i'd travel to the nearest university where there are the highest concentrations of:
additionally, college campuses have large libraries, digital knowledge repositories, advanced research labs, scientific equipment, and many even have greenhouses and seed banks. so you have the human resources, information resources, and material resources to survive the catastrophe. and you'll also be connected to a global academic network.
evacuated to where exactly? and by whom? you saw what happened to katrina do you really think we're any more prepared for anything like this?
Yellowstone will erupt in this dramatic fashion. The Siberian Traps will too. The 1.5km-diameter (or much more) space rock will definitely strike earth in the future. A comet will too. These aren't tinfoil hat ideas - everybody in the related sciences agrees that these events will occur. It's just a matter of time. Maybe it will be a long time, as we think about it usually, or maybe it will be a short one. Each of these events is neither more likely nor less likely to happen on a particular Monday a million years hence than they are on July 4, 2012.
They will happen and when they happen there's a good chance they'll wipe out all human life still on the Earth. Events like these don't have to wipe out mankind. We can choose to not let that happen. Or not.
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It won't "burn/melt most of the populated areas of Canada and Mexico", not even close. The magma/lava discharge will simply stay in and around the area of Yellowstone +/- at most 100 miles (heck, the longest known magma/lava flow in the solar system is only ~160 miles, and that is on Jupiter's moon, Io). The only thing that people outside that area have to worry about is ash and volcanic gasses which will be discharged. Unfortunately, the jet stream will force that eastward across the USA (and around the world, in the event of a major eruption). Get your facts straight. And the people modding the parent up for informative should also get their facts straight...
There is also no direct evidence that the eruption of Mt Toba was the cause of the drop in human population. For all we know there could have been a major epidemic which was highly contagious which would slowly kill someone over the course of a year or more (think something like an AIDs virus which was transmitted simply by close contact, not sexually transmitted). We simply don't know for certain. We are now, however, much more technologically capable of dealing with a mini-ice age if it was triggered by an event like this. While it would be difficult, if we really had to work for something, we would develop filters for removal of the particles of ash and soot in the air, and eventually also devise methods to remove or trap the volcanic gasses.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Interestingly, when St. Helens erupted, the majority of the ash fell in a relatively small agricultural region. I know, I lived right in the middle of that farm country at the time. When it happened, everyone assumed a total loss for the year, since the ground was caked in inches of the ash cement. The region looked like a wasteland, and mobility was very limited.
But the agricultural disaster never happened. The crops bounced back with a vengeance and produced spectacular record yields. Not just for that year, but for several years thereafter. It turns out that the several inches of ash acted as incredible fertilizer and helped the soil retain moisture, and the crops poked their way through the ash after a couple good rains. Most of the US would get that kind of dusting of ash across its agricultural belt, and while there might be some cooling it will likely be offset in part by a massive agricultural rebound that compensates for a significant part of it. We expected the worst when St. Helens erupted, but the reality was far less than that in terms of food production.
personally, i'd travel to the nearest university where there are the highest concentrations of:
progressive civic-minded & altruistic individuals
intellectuals and knowledgeable experts in assorted fields
innovative freethinkers and fresh young minds
Awesome. I'll travel to meet up with some hunter friends of mine who have guns and wilderness survival skills... we'll shoot you and your newly found progressive buddies, eat your vegetables, and have a long pig BBQ!
Nice sounding idea. There's lots of energy down there. If we take it away, then everything down there ought to cool down, and become safe. Easy, no?
Well, not really. What we have here is something like a giant steam engine boiler twenty miles across with the safety valve stuck down. In the days of steam locomotives, if you thought there might be a crack in a boiler, then you filled the whole system with water and pressurized it. That way, if the boiler gave a little, the water would escape and the pressure would rapidly drop. Water is not elastic, so you have little stored energy, and you don't get an explosion. Gas is much more springy so you would get much more bang and flying bits with pressurized gas. Superheated steam is like a really compressed gas with liquid densities, so that is even worse still.
If you have an old-fashioned boiler with rivets, then as the pressure builds up, it will creak and the rivets will give a bit, and the steam will leak, a bit, but the whole system does not fail explosively. However, suppose you went around patching all the tiny leaks, and made the boiler rigid - it then has no way of failing other than by splitting in half. I have a nasty feeling that taking heat energy out of the weak places in the Yellowstone dome - if we could extract heat on that scale - would make it stiffer and more rigid, while the reduction in temperature may cause the gases to come out of solution, which would make the big explosion more likely.
For safety reasons, what we need a series of local eruptions that release pressure and gas like a safety valve or a weeping rivet, but that won't do the environment much good ( though if we recover some of the energy and use it to replace coal-fired power stations, it might not be that bad either ). However, you aren't going to get me to climb onto a 20-mile long steam boiler with a stuck safety valve and drill little holes to relieve the pressure.
We could build geothermal power stations, but the energy they are likely to be able to extract will be so tiny when compared to what's down there that they won't make any difference, unless you are talking of planet-scale engineering. On the plus side, I don't think we risk making things significantly worse either. Right now, and such power stations are in the wrong place for the US power grid.
Nice idea, though. I hope someone, somewhere is seriously looking at ideas like this. However, in the particular case of Yellowstone, we don't know of other volcanoes like this, so we can only look at the past history of this one. Most of the supervolcano theory is pretty young, and I don't think we really know enough about the materials at the pressures and temperatures to be able to dick with it with confidence. We know it doesn't blow up often, so we would be very unlucky if it blew up tomorrow. Right now, the best plan is probably to measure it very carefully, and learn all we can about how volcanoes work in depth. These little earthquakes tend to come in bursts, but we don't really know why.
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