NASA’s Solution To Save Earth From A Supervolcano

Posted on Monday, 21 August, 2017 by Zheluo Cai

NASA’s Solution To Save Earth From A Supervolcano.

Yellowstone National Park is best known for its Old Faithful geyser and its stunning wildlife. But the national park also sits atop a supervolcano, simmering just under the surface. You can see some of the evidence of its active state in the hydrothermal activity that bubbles up, including Old Faithful, which shoots water every few hours. Between June 12 and June 19, Yellowstone experienced an earthquake swarm of 464 events, the majority of which were magnitude 1 or below. The University of Utah, which monitors seismic activity in Yellowstone, noted that these swarms are common. “This is the highest number of earthquakes at Yellowstone within a single week in the past five years, but is fewer than weekly counts during similar earthquakes swarms in 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2010,” scientists from the university told the Star Valley Independent. Supervolcanos are characterised as volcanic centers that have had eruptions that covered more than 240 cubic miles. The US has two: one at Yellowstone and another at Long Valley in California. Yellowstone has had three major events in the past 2.1 million years, which led to the creation of the calderas, or large volcanic craters. It has been hundreds of thousands of years since a major volcanic eruption. The last one was about 174,000 years ago, and it led to the West Thumb Geyser Basin, which extended the Yellowstone Lake. Credit: Lydia Ramsey for Business Insider Science 25 June 2017.