Friday, August 18, 2017

NASA's incredible plan to subdue Yellowstone supervolcano

A NASA scientist has spoken out about the true threat of supervolcanoes and the risky methods that could be used to prevent a devastating eruption. Brian Wilcox, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council on Planetary Defense, shared a report on the natural hazard that hadn't been seen outside of the agency until now. He spoke of the true devastation that could come from an eruption, and the 'risky' methods that the agency is considering for preventing one - including approaches that could potentially go array and set off a supervolcano accidentally. One such plan would involve drilling into the bottom of the Yellowstone volcano, using high pressure water to release heat from the magma chamber. Earth has around 20 known supervolcanoes, which are simply unusually large volcanoes that have the potential to produce an eruption with major effects on the global climate and ecosystem. A supervolcanic eruption could be a single short-term event or a long-term massive lava flow lasting up to millions of years. Major eruptions occur every 100,000 years, with the last major known one being in New Zealand 26,500 years ago. Such an eruption today could cause a prolonged nuclear winter and global starvation - the United Nations estimated that food reserves worldwide would only enable humans to survive for 74 days. NASA is weighing methods to prevent a supervolcanic eruption, but the proposed tactics would be difficult to convince politicians of and are extremely risky - some could even wind up accidentally triggering the eruption they are trying to prevent. One of the most dangerous supervolcanoes is beneath Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, where pressure is building in an enormous magma chamber, causing hotspots...more

1 comment:

drjohn said...


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