A summary of sorts

Well I think that I've given some pretty interesting facts and some websites that might get your attention. I hope you have some general knowledge about Yellowstone.

Even though Supervolcanoes can be devastating to our planet and our society new science is emerging to shed some light on why Yellowstone may not be as dangerous as once thought.

scientist are gaining information about Yellowstone everyday and I hope to keep you posted on this amazing geological location.

BBC talk

Ok, so I got a comment on my last blog that was pretty awesome. It is a back and forth with scientists on the BBC channel and it shows some of the startling facts about super volcanoes. about three quarters of the way down they talk about the bottleneck of our species. check it out, its a good read. It also has some facts about Yellowstone.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/1999/supervolcanoes_script.shtml

Lake Toba

I found an interesting article about the supervolcano Lake Toba. This volcano erupted about 75,000 years ago and some scientists are saying that it may have taken our population down to 1000 to 3000 people, and may be the reason that the human race is not as evolved as it should be for its age. The article may not be that reputable but I'm sure there's more out there. I'll keep looking and may post something about it later.

http://www.medanku.com/lake-toba-north-sumatra/

drilling?

I wanted to take a pause from listing reason's why we don't have to fear Yellowstone quit yet, and explain a suggestion made by people around me that may not know much about geology. It's really kind of humorous to me but I have had people ask me why we can't just drill to the magma chamber and release the pressure. The simple answer to this is that if we drilled it would cost a huge amount of money and wouldn't do any good. At that pressure and heat the rock is almost like a liquid and the whole would just seal immediately after it was drilled. You can look up some facts about this on the internet. One website I found is a Q and A by the usgs and can be found here...

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/2005/docudrama.html

Overdue?

For some reason the media wants to boost ratings by telling people that Yellowstone is overdue for a big eruption. As I explained in past blogs the next time Yellowstone erupts it will most likely be of the smaller types. Here I would like to show you the dates and time in between. Also remember that this assumption that Yellowstone is overdue is based on only three eruptions. I pulled these dates from the science bulletins on the American Museum of Natural History. http://www.amnh.org/sciencebulletins/earth/f/yellowstone.20060601/essays/83_1.php

first eruption
2.1 million years Ago

second eruption
1.3 million years Ago

third eruption
640,000 years Ago

times in between
800,000 years and 660,000 years

So as you can see the times in between are very different and if you want to use these as an estimation of time to the next eruption you can see that its not really overdue since the last eruption was 640,000 years ago and the average time between is 730,000 years.

Types of eruptions at the Yellowstone Volcano

It is not common knowledge that Yellowstone actually has different types of eruptions. These eruption are mostly small compared to a supervolcano. According to the Yellowstone volcano observatory's website the last super eruption was 640,000 years ago. There has been approximately 80 smaller eruptions since then. Although these eruptions are significantly smaller they're still dangerous. The observatory reports that the last eruption was 70,000 years ago. Its also useful to read about the two different types of eruptions, rhyolitic and basaltic.These different magma types produce very different eruptions. If you would like to read these fairly short articles on Yellowstone you can go here.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/about/faq/faqhistory.php

also interesting, this website reports that according to the history of the past eruptions, the next volcanic activity should be another one of these smaller eruptions and not a devastating super eruption.

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