Source: Fox Science News
WASHINGTON — Yellowstone National Park, once the site of a giant volcano, has begun swelling up, possibly because molten rock is accumulating beneath the surface, scientists report.
But, “there is no evidence of an imminent volcanic eruption,” said Robert B. Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.
Many giant volcanic craters around the world go up and down over decades without erupting, he said.
Smith and colleagues report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science that the flow of the ancient Yellowstone crater has been moving upward almost 3 inches per year for the past three years.
That is more than three times faster than ever observed since such measurements began in 1923, the researchers said.
“Our best evidence is that the crustal magma chamber is filling with molten rock,” Smith said in a statement. “But we have no idea how long this process goes on before there either is an eruption or the inflow of molten rock stops and the caldera deflates again.”
It’s not unusual for ancient volcano sites like Yellowstone and Long Valley, Calif., to rise and fall, according to the researchers.
The Yellowstone volcanic field was produced by what the researchers described as a plume of hot and molten rock beginning at least 400 miles beneath Earth’s surface and rising to 30 miles underground, where it widens to about 300 miles across.
Blobs of molten rock sometimes rise to refill the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone.
The volcano at Yellowstone produced massive eruptions 2 million, 1.3 million and 642,000 years ago, all larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
Site of the famed Old Faithful and hundreds of other geysers, Yellowstone sprawls across parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
Comparing Mount St. Helens to a Supervolcano is about like comparing a Bic lighter to a flame thrower.
Omni, you beat me to it. The Yellowstone Caldera is over a huge, huge supervolcano. Mt. St. Helens is just, you know, a volcano.
Anyone else noticing a pattern there in the numbers?
Ooooooh. Countdown.
The timeline on previous eruptions is correct for the dates the radioactive material rose from the magma chamber, turned to lava on the surface and hardened. The formation of the original magma 6 miles deep had formed 30 million years ago when the Yellowstone area was on the equator.
The creation of the front range of the Rockey Mountains pushed by the “buldozer effect” of a 20 mile high ice shell not only built the folded mountains,the Rockies, but created the molten magma chambers under the mountains that would someday rise to the surface.
Delano’s Discovery tells us the heavy materials ,U 238 does not decay into the parent -daughter isotopes while deep in the molten magma of the mantle under the mountains. The rise and cooling on the surface gives a an erroneous early date for the big eruptions.
i am a professor at the university of california and i’ve been studing mt. Yellowstone for 37 years and at least every 600,000 years it has erupted and every time made mt. Saint Helens look like a candle so far the next 600,000 years is about 64 years from now at least most likely less and if it were to erupt it would most likely put send it us the dark ages or make a new ice age look it up. last time it covered the area which is north america 7/9 ths of it in ash and spread around the globe if this were to happen it would be armagadden for humans so we should hope i am wrong… for a discussion in this matter email me at arbjeremy@yahoo.com thank you for reading.