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Supervolcano Drilling Plan Gets Go-Ahead
sciencehabit writes "A project to drill deep into the heart of a 'supervolcano' in southern Italy has finally received the green light, despite claims that the drilling would put the population of Naples at risk of small earthquakes or an explosion. Yesterday, Italian news agency ANSA quoted project coordinator Giuseppe De Natale of Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology as saying that the office of Naples mayor Luigi de Magistris has approved the drilling of a pilot hole 500 meters deep. The project’s organizers originally intended to bore a 4-kilometer-deep well in the area of the caldera late in 2009, but the plan was put on hold by then-mayor Rosa Russo Iervolino after scientists expressed concerns about the risks."
The Italians would like to give you the plot and backdrop for your next movie. Add a giant creature (maybe it's den was in a cavern above the caldera.. or even better it lives in the magma) and there you go, instant movie.
Is this the same country that sued scientists over not predicting natural disasters last year? Who gets sued if / when the Volcano erupts (regardless of the cause- natural or drilling)?
In other news, geologists from Naples saw a wild dog outside their lab. In order to see if it was rabid or not, they decided to poke it with a pointy stick.
At a press conference held in the drilling facility earlier today, a chief engineer responded to questions by leaning into a microphone and stating "Don't worry. Everything will be fine. We have put in place extra safety procedures, and we have everything well under control." Interestingly, as he completed his sentence, a strange whirring sound could be heard coming from a hallway full of steam pipes leading off from the room where the microphone stands had been placed. A junior engineer returned a few minutes later, sighting no sign of damage, but noting that a tall blue crate with a light on top was sitting by access grate number five, and nobody could remember bringing it in by forklift.
If a single borehole into a magma chamber were all it took to trigger an eruption, we wouldn't have supervolcanoes, as they would have all bled out their pressure long ago. You might get a tiny earthquake, or an explosion large enough to collapse the borehole, but the it is very unlikely that anything worse than that would happen. If something that small could cause it, it would have been triggered naturally.
where Italy was~
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That wasn't lava, that was mud. It's still active and it's in Indonesia.
Sidoarjo mud flow
It is expected it to flow for the next 25 to 30 years.
Go not unto/. for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (but have nothing to do with the question)
That sounds like a great way to prevent a volcano from erupting, if you do it just right. Lava spewing out for years and years is far preferable to having an actual eruption. And if you can direct the lava into a nearby ocean, you can create more land, which in a place with a land shortage can be very useful.
Of course, there's the possibility of screwing up and causing an early eruption. That would still probably be better than a natural eruption (it'd be a lesser magnitude, and you might have more control over where the eruption is directed), but people affected won't see it like that and you'll get all the blame for the eruption.
I suspect drilling into this area is about as likely to cause an eruption as sticking a hypodermic needle into your butt is likely to cause you to bleed to death. Unless the magma chamber is extremely shallow it will most likely solidify and plug the borehole long before it hits the surface.
Duck and cover. The thousand degree cloud of gas and ash will pass harmlessly over you.
What could possibly go wrong?
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