Realistic look at Supervolcano Yellowstone

[KG3]

On ‎9‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 5:53 PM, Just Jim said:

I totally, totally agree we need to study and learn more about it. Absolutely! The more we can learn, the better!!!

I'm just worried about the gung-ho types that want to immediately try anything they can think of, before understanding the consequences of their actions. I mean, what if they started trying to pump out the gazillions of gallons of lava... far fetched as it sounds... and only end up shifting the internal pressure enough to set it off what might have been 2 centuries early?

 

I believe the problem with this type of volcano is the chamber of liquid lava has allot of gasses dissolved into it.  Anything that lowers the pressure on the lava (like pumping it out of the camber) can cause gasses to come out of solution, like opening a bottle of fizzy water that's been shaken, except instead of getting sprayed with fizzy water were talking about cubic kilometers of molten rock.  

[Green Baron]

Actually, hundreds of km³ ...

Funnily enough, i posted up in the thread that the mass extinction that's in course now is no threat to humanity yet.

Well, that was wrong.

I have linked a study over in the random science facts thread that quite conclusively states the contrary.

Dance on a volcano ... (earworm by Genesis :-))

Edited March 24, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

What if just cover the 0xFFFF00stone with sand?
Several kilometers of sand?
Or regolith. Lunar regolith. This would fill the lunar projects with sense.

Upd.
Like this, but bigger and on Moon.

Spoiler

 

Edited March 24, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Green Baron]

Lol ! Then you have several km of sand there.

Until the eruption.

[Zeiss Ikon]

5 hours ago, Green Baron said:

I found this remarkable:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0075-y

The Yellowstone hot spot could be fed by a plume that penetrates the whole mantle, all the way from the core/mantle boundary. To date the resolution of seismic waves is still too coarse for a direct evidence.

One of the earmarks of a hot spot is vulcanism that holds position even as tectonic plates slide past.  Hawaii (the volcano chain runs hundreds of kilometers out to sea in the form of seamounts that have eroded to below wave level -- and even shows a distinct bend, where the drift direction of the East Pacific plate changed by 15 degrees or so some millions of years ago; the chain ends where it subducts beneath the East Asian plate), Kilimanjaro and the Virunga region of Africa (Virunga is on the northern edge of the Congo drainage, west of Kilimanjaro), Yellowstone and the Southern Idaho lava fields (all from the same hot spot, going back 75 million years).  Not all hot spots have supervolcanoes; not all supervolcanos are over hot spots.  There's some reason to believe that all hot spots are fed by deep mantle plumes (potentially rooted in the outer core); not many other features could remain in place over the time scales hot spots demonstrate, nor supply the energy to repeatedly and continuously burn through hundreds of kilometers of continental crust in the thickened areas near a compression feature like the Rockies.

[Green Baron]

30 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

  Hawaii (the volcano chain runs hundreds of kilometers out to sea in the form of seamounts that have eroded to below wave level -- and even shows a distinct bend, where the drift direction of the East Pacific plate changed by 15 degrees or so some millions of years ago; the chain ends where it subducts beneath the East Asian plate),

Exactly. The Emperor Chain actually runs thousands of km until the eroded mounts are subducted under north eastern Asia together with the Pacific plate they rest on. The knee in the chain is contemporary with the collision of India into Asia, which must have changed the global patterns of plate tectonics.

Quote

 ... potentially rooted in the outer core ...

afaik there is no little exchange through the core mantle boundary.

Edit: correction applied :-)

Modeling is suggesting that the deep plumes may have their origin in the D'' discontinuity, a layer in the lowest mantle directly above the boundary.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2005GC001071

 

It has long been debated (and still will continue so for a while) if Yellowstone is fed by a shallow (upper) or deep (lower) mantle plume. The new modeling now gives arguments for the deeper provenience.

:-)

Edited March 24, 2018 by Green Baron

[Zeiss Ikon]

K.  What I get for not reading current literature in a field I'm not active in...

6 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

afaik there is no exchange through the core mantle boundary.

Modeling is suggesting that the deep plumes may have their origin in the D'' discontinuity, a layer in the lowest mantle directly above the boundary.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2005GC001071

My own suspicion is that they'll eventually find that all mantle plumes detectable via hot spots will prove to be deep.  Then again, I'm not a geologist, never mind a geophysicist.  Nor am I likely to live long enough for that argument to be resolved (I'm old enough to remember when "continental drift" was a crackpot hypothesis and the outline fit between Africa and South America was just a coincidence -- wrote a 6th grade paper on "isostasy" and found some of the early suggestions about what became plate tectonics in my research).

I will say that I consider the idea of trying to drill into the Yellowstone magma plume, for any reason, to be a very, very, VERY bad idea.  Sort of like, "we think this might be a WWII anti-ship mine, let's drill some holes in the casing and see" bad.  I think the resources of humanity are likely better spent in establishing colonies off Earth, before either we or the geology we live on can render Earth uninhabitable (even on a geologically temporary basis).

[Green Baron]

Side subject geoscience :-)

But never practiced. Am only keeping myself informed through reading. Which may put me a little behind in the latest developments.

Afaik the Hawai'ian hotspot is a shallow one, maybe even slightly mobile (but not a wifi hotspot as my search engine tries to make me believe). But i am not sure about this .... not every hotspot has a deep plume under it.

24 minutes ago, Zeiss Ikon said:

I will say that I consider the idea of trying to drill into the Yellowstone magma plume, for any reason, to be a very, very, VERY bad idea.  Sort of like, "we think this might be a WWII anti-ship mine, let's drill some holes in the casing and see" bad.  I think the resources of humanity are likely better spent in establishing colonies off Earth, before either we or the geology we live on can render Earth uninhabitable (even on a geologically temporary basis).

Absolutely. USGS has a program to map the hydrology around it bacause water + magma = expansion + lower melting temperature = cracks = more water = more expansion = more melting = outgasing = well ... i think we all have a picture :-)

Edited March 24, 2018 by Green Baron

[kerbiloid]

Or as it is being popped up by trivial CO₂ and H₂O gases, there is a way to run Sabatier reaction inside, turning them into methane?
Fischer and Tropsh will happen themselves, converting the methane into heavy hydrocarbons.
So, instead of volcano there will fountain an oilcano.