Monday, October 12, 2009

relating the magma with wave velocities

In an extremely technical article written last year, two scientists, Derek L Schutt from the University of Colorado State and Ken Dueker of the University of Wyoming, looked at the velocity of waves going through the hot rock under Yellowstone. Basically the hotter the rock the slower the waves can travel through it. They found that the rock under Yellowstone is relatively fast compared to most of the other magma found under volcanos. This basically means that the rock under Yellowstone is actually very cool.

Some scientist believe that due to the fact that the rock is cool it will take a lot of time and a major event for the rock to heat up enough to be able to erupt. Obviously were getting into some ones opinion at this point but it does have valid science behind it.

If you would like to read the actual article from Schutt and Dueker you can go here...
http://faculty.gg.uwyo.edu/dueker/PAPERS/dueker%20papers%202008/Schutt_yellowstone_temperature.pdf

you can also find a lot of summaries of the article on the web. These will be easier to read and may give you more information about what the science means. One such article can be found here.
http://www.astrobio.net/pressrelease/2861/lukewarm-supervolcano

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