Beneath Yellowstone National Park lies a supervolcano, a behemoth far more powerful than your average volcano. It has the ability to expel more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock and ash at once — 2,500 times more material than erupted from Mount St. Helens in 1980, which killed 57 people. That could blanket most of the United States in a thick layer of ash and even plunge the Earth into a volcanic winter.
Yellowstone’s last supereruption occurred 631,000 years ago. And it’s not the planet’s only buried supervolcano. Scientists suspect that a supereruption scars the planet every 100,000 years, causing many to ask when we can next expect such an explosive planet-changing event.
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The early evidence, presented at a recent volcanology conference, shows that Yellowstone’s most recent supereruption was sparked when new magma moved into the system only decades before the eruption. Previous estimates assumed that the geological process that led to the event took millenniums to occur.
Continue reading: A Surprise From the Supervolcano Under Yellowstone
Commentary by The Secular Jurist: Good grief, like we didn’t have anything else to worry about these days!
I hope for your sake it doesn’t blow.
300 million American refugees might be hard to resettle.
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If it blows, John, everyone on this planet will be a refugee. The last time a supervolcano erupted 75,000 years ago, the global human population was probably reduced to just a few thousand. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
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Ugh
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Perhaps the Christians should pray …
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My very Christian neighbors do pray, Nan. They are torn between the real prospect of global catastrophes as manifestations of their Armageddon prophesy, and the obviously frightening consequences of such events. It seems as though they want to say “the Bible was right!” on their deathbeds.
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Like I mentioned in your post yesterday, we humans are specks of nothing and, at any moment, nature can turn us into a distant memory. Thing is, that volcano WILL erupt again at some point. It’s just a matter of when.
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Exactly Jeff, and from its eruptive periodicity in the geologic record, Yellowstone is due to blow again any time now.
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Well FUCK Robert! Why did you go and say this!? I can no longer bend between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye like I could in my 20’s and 30’s… dayum IT to Yellarstoner-n-back! 😛
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I can’t either, Professor – lol!
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Well, we’re pretty pitiful, huh? LOL
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BIG TIME!
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There is also an active earthquake fault under Yellowstone. It is a geologically active area.
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Let’s hope it doesn’t get too active anytime soon!
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