One of the world's largest supervolcanoes may erupt: US researchers detect movement in the crater
Scientists from the United States studying the Yellowstone volcano have detected movement deep in its crater. This raises fears that the sleeping giant may explode.
One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world is located under Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, capable of causing a devastating eruption with a magnitude of 8. And since it hasn't erupted in about 640,000 years, some experts believe that the volcano may soon remind of itself, DailyMail writes.
By examining the crater of the supervolcano, scientists have found that the magma inside is moving to the northeast and shifting the concentration of activity along with it.
The Yellowstone Caldera is one of the largest craters on Earth, measuring 55 by 72 kilometers, which was formed during a catastrophic volcanic eruption hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Schematic of the Yellowstone caldera.
Source: wikipedia.org
The researchers found that the bulk of the magma is stored in separate underground reservoirs, preventing it from being concentrated enough to erupt.
Although an eruption could occur in the northeastern region due to shifts, the scientists say their findings suggest that the supervolcano will not erupt in our lifetime.
"There are no eruptive regions anywhere in Yellowstone. It has a lot of magma, but the magma is not well connected," reassured Ninfa Bennington, a scientist at the Hawaiian Volcanic Observatory, who, together with her colleagues, performed a large-scale magnetotelluric analysis of the Yellowstone caldera.
A large prismatic spring located atop an underground supervolcano.
Source: Getty
The research technique works by listening to the Earth's natural "signals," such as radio waves and magnetic vibrations, which come from space or from the depths of our planet, experts explain.
These signals change depending on what substances, such as rocks, water, or metals, are underground. This allowed scientists to look into the crater and investigate what is actually happening below the surface.
The scientists used the data to map the magma formations beneath the caldera. The results showed that there are at least seven main areas with high magma content at depths of 4 to 50 kilometers below the surface, showing that these reservoirs "do not explode".
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