In just 48 hours, there have been more than 100 consecutive earthquakes in the United States, mainly concentrated in the Oregon Coast of the United States, and at least 9 earthquakes with magnitude 5 or above occurred! And on Dec. 11, six states in the central U.S. were hit by at least 30 tornadoes overnight, leaving behind hundreds of kilometers of "destruction belts" that killed at least a hundred people. Earthquakes and tornadoes make people wonder if something big is going to happen, and experts say the worst outcome has yet to happen! What is the worst outcome, reminiscent of the Yellowstone volcano in the United States, is it about to erupt?
Yellowstone National Park spans three states in the United States, with a total area of about 9,000 square kilometers, beautiful scenery and peculiar landforms, and before the 1950s, people did not know the origin of these beautiful scenery. In 1959, after seeing the photos of Yellowstone, American scientists discovered that it was a giant crater in itself!
According to their exploration, historically, there have been three major eruptions here, namely about 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and 640,000 years ago, the first time spewed out 2500 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash, the second time sprayed 280 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash, the third time sprayed 1000 cubic kilometers of volcanic ash, the huge power of the eruption in the creation of canyons, waterfalls and other wonders at the same time, but also blew up the volcano's mountains and craters. This is also the reason why people did not discover that it was a volcano early on. It doesn't have a mountain mass like other volcanoes, and standing next to a volcano group, it feels like an endless plain, whereas in fact, the supervolcano magma reservoir is just below your feet, and a third of Yellowstone Is a craters left by eruptions. Based on the amount of previous eruptions, scientists have rated it as a supervolcano, so it is called the Yellowstone Supervolcano Group. It is hard to imagine the serious consequences of an eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano.
Once the supervolcano erupts, it will erupt 50 times as much as the 1883 Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, which killed more than 36,000 people. Imagine how devastating a TNT bomb the size of a large city and 13 kilometers high could be when they explode buried underground. After the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it will produce a large amount of magma flow, which will cover about 60 kilometers of land with magma, and the dust and dust at the time of the eruption will cover at least 75% of North America. After the eruption of the volcano, first in the radius of 160 kilometers within the area, at least 70,000 people will be killed immediately, followed by a radius of 160 kilometers - 320 kilometers, will be 4cm thick, 45 degrees Celsius volcanic ash immediately covered, basically the chance of escape is very small, and finally in the other area, the chance of escape increases, you need to run in the opposite direction to quickly escape.
Volcanic eruptions
The eruption of Yellowstone would not only cause unbearable harm within the United States, but also other parts of the planet. In less than half a month, the erupted dust will scatter into the earth's atmosphere, and these huge amounts of dust will block the connection between the earth and the sun, so that the temperature plummets by more than ten degrees, the dust does not disperse, the earth will enter a frozen state for up to two or three years, which will undoubtedly cause a devastating blow to the earth's ecosystem, leading to a global disaster, may be like 65 million years ago led to the extinction of three-quarters of the species, there is no doubt that this will be the biggest difficulty facing human survival, Human civilization will also be tested to the greatest extent, and billions of people will face serious existential challenges.
So, are the frequent earthquakes mentioned at the beginning and the tornadoes raging really a precursor to the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano?
Scientists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano group is very likely to erupt again in the future, and the death caused by this eruption will exceed the sum of previous eruptions!
Lava flows
From the location of the Yellowstone Volcano, the formation below Yellowstone Park is very thin, only about 8 kilometers on average, below which is the frequently active magma, and there are many cracks in these crusts, and the volcano happens to be located in the Pacific Ring Seismic Belt, once the weak crust can not withstand these pressures, the magma hidden below will erupt, and the Yellowstone Volcano will become the "source of disaster". The point is that magma has already begun to overflow in the core area of Yellowstone, and as the pressure inside the earth's crust increases, some fountain columns are also sprayed higher and higher. In 2007, the park staff mistakenly entered the lava, and none of the three survived.
The volcanoes in Yellowstone Continue to radiate
In terms of time, Yellowstone Volcano has been 640,000 years since its last eruption, and in theory, Yellowstone Volcano has indeed entered a new eruption period, and in the past hundred years, its underground activity has indeed become more frequent. Under the observation of scientists, since 2004, the ground above the vent has gradually uplifted at a rate of upselling 7cm per year, and in recent years, although the rate of uplift has decreased, it is also about 10 inches higher than before, which is caused by the continuous activity of the magma at the bottom of the ground, and the magma room is still 10 kilometers from the ground, and once it is active to 2 kilometers to 3 kilometers from the ground, it may cause great concern.
But obviously, there will be no such trouble in the short term, although Yellowstone Volcano has been active frequently, but as a supervolcano, the scale of each eruption is huge, which also means that it needs to accumulate a lot of energy to carry out the next stage of the eruption, which at present seems to be insufficient for the volcano to erupt.
Yellowstone National Park
Although human beings can not accurately predict the specific time of volcanic eruption by current means, but there is no need to be pessimistic, I believe that scientists will continue to monitor supervolcanoes, according to the situation of underground magmatic activities, so that human beings can have enough time to prepare for work, and hope that when the volcano erupts, humans already have the ability to immigrate to other planets.
Resources
Xiaozhuang. Supervolcanoes in Yellowstone[J]. Grand View garden of science,2012(20):48.]
[2] Han Poly. How far is yellowstone volcano from eruption? [J]. Global Human Geography,2012(03):20-25.]
Wen Qingfeng. Underground magma uplift in Yellowstone Park[J]. Grand View garden of science, 2011(12):34-35.
[4] R.L. Christiansen, Fan Sikun. Evolution of magma in Huangshi and its significance for understanding large-scale eruptive volcanoes[J]. Geology and Geochemistry, 1986(07):20-28.