Once he will wake up, and life on planet Earth will end. Stories about the American supervolcans, thousands of cubic kilometers of lava and global cooling are scary for more than a year. “Around the World” found out that it is worth fear not only an explosion in the United States
Pulled the oil into the fire and the reluctance of most scientists to publicly refute the possibility of an early eruption. And there is an explanation: in 2009, several Italian geophysicists ended up on the bench and received six years of prison, after literally a few hours before the earthquake in the city of L’Akuil, who claimed the lives of 300 people, publicly declared a lack of danger.
This caused a violent reaction in the scientific community, and now cautious researchers avoid public statements. That is why now it is not easy to find out what is actually a Yellowstone volcano, what is now happening in the bowels under it and is it possible to have an early eruption.
View from a bird’s flight to a large prismatic hot source in Yellowst1. It seems painted, but these are its natural colors
Volcanoes in the line
Geyser: water in the underground chamber is heated to a boil temperature and thrown out
Like the volcanoes of the Hawaiian islands, Yellowsty is located at the so -called hot point, the output of a giant pluma – a pillar of hot mantle flow, going from a depth of about 700 km. Closer to the surface of the earth, part of the plum melts into magma, forming a magmatic chamber at a depth of 8–16 km.
For millions of years, the North American plate has shifted relative to the plum to the west, and he “burned” new volcanoes over and over again, causing another eruption. During the latter, about 630,000 years ago, about a thousand cubic kilometers of lava erupted from the bowels of the Earth, about half of the territory of the current United States fell asleep as ash as ash.
Traces of the most ancient eruption, which occurred about 17 million years ago, were found on the border of Nevada and Oregon near McDermitta, 700 km from Yellowstone, the continental stove has shifted so much. The last three superizes formed a modern Calder – a giant failure with an area of about 4000 km2.
The most powerful occurred about 2 million years ago. Another, 1.3 million years ago, it was approximately twice as much as the latter, that is, the power of the superizes gradually decreased. In total, in a 700-kilometer Yellowstone chain of ancient volcanoes, traces of 15 calder up to 17 million years old were found.
On the territory of Yellouston Park there are a lot of volcanic gases to the surface
Goodbye, planes
The next superization in Yellowstone, according to experts, will lead to gloomy consequences. A huge cloud of volcanic ash will obscure the sun, like a thundercloud or moon with a sunny eclipse, but unlike the latter for a long time.
The cloud will spread throughout the planet, the temperature will drop for several months or even years, a volcanic winter similar to nuclear. Sulfur gas and ashes will spill with acid rains, tremendous damage will be caused to agriculture. Ashes from the supervolcano for a long time will stop air traffic on the planet’s scale, it will be possible to forget about the quick delivery of goods and people – we will return to the 19th century.
Since many overpopulated countries do not have strategic food supplies, it is worth expecting a significant reduction in the world’s population. All this will happen only if a cataclysm of the same scale is repeated as with the last superizes.
Yellowstone explodes about once every 600,000 years, and theoretically “time has come”. But the eruptions do not so much according to the schedule, but for objective reasons, and now they need to take a closer look at them.
Volcanologists on guard
Scientists from the Yellouston Volcanological Observatory, the Geological Service of the United States and various American universities are not lowered from a potential culprit of a potential catastrophe. Satellite technologies allow you to monitor the surface movements with millimeter accuracy.
Shiri -lane seismic devices make it possible to fix the long -term quasi -pieridic vibrations of the soil that is imperishable by man. Using the methods of seismic tomography, you can build a layer -by -layer map of the distribution speeds of seismic waves up to depths of hundreds of kilometers.
Geochemists determine the chemical composition of gases and liquids in cracks and holes in the crater. From time to time, some deviations from the usual order of things arise, and each time it causes scientists anxiety. Firstly, in the period from 2005 to 2008, an abnormally fast rise of the surface of Calders, which was about 8 cm per year, was observed-it was already alarm, but the rise slowed down and stopped by 2010. Secondly, at the end of 2008, a series of rapidly next to each other small earthquakes was registered.
A similar “swarm” was repeated in early 2010, then the “moist” activity resumed since mid -2014 and lasted a few months with impulses. Finally, Alexander Uitz, in 2013, in 2013, in 2013, in the article, in the article on the basis of the data of seismic tomography, it was shown that the volume of the magmatic chamber of the supervulcan is 4000 km3 – the number exceeded the previous estimates by 2.5 times the previous estimates.
This information excited the imagination of journalists – it would, because the eruption can theoretically be four more than 630,000 years ago! But the fact is that not only the volume of the magmatic chamber matters.
Bizons live in the park, here is a pleasant climate
After all, only 6–8% of this mass is in a liquid state, and this, fortunately, is not enough to start eruption. The probability of giant eruption is estimated by scientists as extremely low, only 0,00014%. But even if it occurs, you should not wait in this case of the universal disaster. After all, the layer of the resulting ash already at a distance of 3,000 km will be less than a millimeter, so say that the ash will cover half the American, incorrectly.
The strong effect of volcanic winter will not happen either. The fact is that the Yellowstone volcano does not belong to the so -called stratovulkans who throw ashes and gases into the upper atmosphere, as was the case with the eruptions of Krakatau in Indonesia or the Philippine volcano Pinatubo in 1991. So, the ashes will remain in the lower layers of the atmosphere and will settle on the surface of the earth for two to three months. True, large problems with agriculture will not be able to avoid, and not only in the USA, but partly in other countries.
However, there are volcanoes on Earth and more terrible – this is Etna and Vesuvius in Italy, Merapy and Papandans in Java (Indonesia), Klyuchevskaya hill and Koryaksky volcano (Kamchatka), Colhima and Popocatepetl in Mexico. If the evacuation service is well established in the United States, and there are not so many people live nearby, then the mentioned volcanoes are located mainly in densely populated regions, and even in Italy for quick and effective evacuation, you should not count, not to mention Mexico.
As for Indonesian volcanoes, in their environs due to the features of development and mentality of residents, evacuation is almost impossible. In 1006, Merapy erupted and practically destroyed the whole Java kingdom of the Mataram. Now 140 million people live in Java, and the next eruption of Merapy will be comparable in terms of the Second World War – in the very first hours he will kill tens of millions of people, and will die no less in the following months.
Peter Shebalin -Chief Researcher at the Institute of Theory of Forecast of Earthquakes and Mathematical Geophysics RAMT, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
Photo: Spl / Legion – Media (X4), Diomedia (X2)