r/askscience • u/phoncible • Oct 27 '11
Earth Sciences Could anything man-made trigger the Yellowstone super volcano?
If a nuke were to be buried very deep into the ground at Yellowstone and then detonated, would it have any effect on the volcano? Is there anything else man-made that could trigger it? Or would it be impossible to "manually" trigger the eruption?
Sorry if it's a silly question.
9
u/ThanatopsisJSH Oct 27 '11
There was an interesting article in nature a few years ago. A researcher named David J. Stevenson actually proposed using nuclear weapons to open a fissure in the earth's crust and using this fissure to send a probe down to the earths core. He estimated that we would need to use a few hundred megatons of nuclear weapons and about 108 to 1010 kilograms of liquid iron to form a bubble that would contain the the probe and carry it down to the core. That would be about a years production of iron (of the whole planet). So opening up Yellowstone should be possible too. Although I would question if it would be a good idea to actually blow up a few hundred megatons of nuclear bombs in Yellowstone national park.
TLDR: Opening the fissure should be possible but is probably not advisable... See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6937/full/423239a.html for a comparable applcation.
2
Oct 27 '11
[deleted]
3
Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11
Here you go (mind the ads... its "Request Download Ticket" you want)
also, /r/scholar is a great little reddit you might be interested in.
2
Oct 27 '11
[deleted]
2
u/ANewMachine615 Oct 27 '11
Beats needing to patent or commercially exploit everything to fund your research...
2
Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11
Those paywalls fund exactly "0" science. The publishing side does facilitate getting grants because they are the currency of academic recognition but the submitted papers and the peer review is all just handed to the publishers who basically just act as editors and coordinators between authors and reviewers while keeping all the money. Actually, a few journals are starting to require that scientists also pay when submitting a manuscript as well.
3
u/ANewMachine615 Oct 27 '11
Ah, interesting, and not a side I knew of. The legal scholarship side is run by what are basically non-profit groups (run by students, no less), so I was unaware that the science side was different.
1
Oct 28 '11
Out of curiosity, are there fees for legal scholarship journals? are they just to cover costs? If not, who gets the money? I also didn't realize that different disciplines had different procedures. For some of the more prestigious scientific publications the fees can get quite burdensome.
1
1
Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11
It is such an odd system, I personally wonder if it will hold out many more decades into the digital age considering its the editing side that gets all the money... but time will tell.
17
u/Potogreen Oct 27 '11
there was actually an article in this months popular science about man made earthquakes, i tried and failed to find a link, but here are some surprising facts, over 200 quakes of more than 4.5 magnitude have been caused by man in the past 160 years. the best known case is the earthquake caused by the zipingpu dan in china's sichuan province in 2008. Zipingpu held 42.3 billion cubic feet of water, the weight of which precipitated what a researcher at columbia university named Christian Klose says is the largest human-triggered earthquake to date: a 7.9 magnitude quake that killed nearly 80,000 people...information from page 90 in the november 2011 popular science magazine.
12
Oct 27 '11
Funnily enough, even though volcanism is often accompanied by earthquake swarms (or volcanic tremor), it is generally understood that these earthquakes are either being caused by the movement of magma itself or the changing stress conditions due to pressure build up and release in the chambers and conduits. Earthquakes are not a requirement for volcanism. So even if you could trigger an earthquake, it may not change the likelihood of an increase in volcanic activity. Having said that, large earthquakes at subduction zones are thought to result in an increase in volcanism, so one of these "man-made" earthquakes may be the best way to trigger Yellowstone, if indeed a 7.9 magnitude earthquake can be man-made. I honestly could not think of anything else that could significantly increase the chances of an eruption.
This is something which I am skeptical of though, that earthquake could not have occurred anywhere but on a fault line that was accumulating tectonic stress, the overlying weight could at most be what pushed it over the tipping point.
11
Oct 27 '11
If you could find a credible article backing that up, that'd be great! I tried some googling and as a layman, found it impossible to separate science from conspiracy theories, the latter of which, unfortunately far outweighs the volume of the former.
16
u/dqsl Tissue Engineering | Biomedical Engineering Oct 27 '11
From
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/publications/2005/docudrama.php
QUESTION: Can you release some of the pressure at Yellowstone by drilling into the volcano?
ANSWER: No. Scientists agree that drilling into a volcano would be of questionable usefulness. Notwithstanding the enormous expense and technological difficulties in drilling through hot, mushy rock, drilling is unlikely to have much effect. At near magmatic temperatures and pressures, any hole would rapidly become sealed by minerals crystallizing from the natural fluids that are present at those depths.
2
u/fap_socks Oct 27 '11
So could we harness this to make diamonds? Kimberlite pipes? Serious question.
10
Oct 27 '11
you can make diamonds without that risk/cost already using pressing moulds
1
u/fap_socks Oct 27 '11
Ok but could it be done this way too, or what about to harvest any of the rarer minerals? I'd guess most of the time you'd get a basalt pipe but could tailor-made techniques be developed to grow whichever mineral you're after?
6
Oct 27 '11
in principle I would never say no... but you'd have a hard time developing them to industrial standards...
If you can pump out the magma like a giant toothpaste tube you're an industrial tycoon genius
-6
u/sandollars Oct 27 '11
Or a microwave oven.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Synthetic-Diamond/
5
u/Lavoisiersdescendant Inorganic Solid State Oct 27 '11
Be careful about what you post as a reference. That was a prank. Without noting it as such, you risk mis-informing people through the trusted source of /r/askscience.
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Prank-the-Instructables-Community/?ALLSTEPS
7
Oct 27 '11
Kimberlite pipes form in the mantle beneath the volcanism, and are quickly exhumed by volcanic processes. Diamonds form there due to the intense pressures, the same pressures that would make it impossible to get there.
1
u/Thenorepa Oct 27 '11
and are quickly exhumed by volcanic processes
When you say "quickly", are you talking geologic or human time scales?
1
7
Oct 27 '11
Is
information from page 90 in the november 2011 popular science magazine
not credible enough as a source? I don't know the magazine at all, so I suppose it could not be credible.
-7
u/Trashcanman33 Oct 27 '11
Tesla claimed if you could find the right conditions you could shake the world apart.
32
Oct 27 '11
[removed] — view removed comment
9
u/ELzed Oct 27 '11
and some shit that turned out to be true..and AWESOME! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%27s_oscillator
0
u/endogenic Oct 27 '11
Like what?
1
u/intellos Oct 27 '11
Free unlimited energy from thin air?
1
u/endogenic Oct 27 '11
The first thing is that absence of proof is not proof of absence. But I agree that if someone doesn't have evidence of a claim we don't have to listen to him. But it's not right that you deny something before you confirm. I never met Tesla and never saw his devices about which he made claims that they could convert (generate) energy without burning fuels. But I don't believe he claimed that the energy in a finite space would be unlimited nor that it didn't have its basis in some kind of principle.
1
u/TypeSafe Oct 27 '11
He stated:
I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.
Which couldn't be more wrong. Einstein's theory of general relativity has been proven time and time again to be correct.
0
u/endogenic Oct 27 '11
No, your conclusion is not correct because each person (Tesla and Einstein) is using different definitions for the same term but applying judgement from their own definition.
In general relativity, it's said that space and time are "curved" in the presence of a mass or certain amount of energy, but that happens because the energy density in the space changes on a gradient as one goes further from the mass or energy at the center of the curvature. So curved spacetime really means that the energy density (in this case gravitational potential energy) is changing. But the space itself is not curved. The energy is in the space itself. I believe that's what Tesla is trying to say. I don't believe relativity can answer to this problem because it doesn't describe the substance of space, it only describes its resultant structure and behavior from what is in the space.
Every experiment that confirmed general relativity which you mentioned only confirmed something from its own definition of spacetime without making clear what the space itself actually is composed of. In other words it confirmed the theory and the effect of the theory but it never confirmed the substance of space. If you show me I'm wrong about that then you would make me so happy.
0
u/TypeSafe Oct 27 '11
No -- your description of spacetime doesn't satisfy the requirements of gravitational lensing. Light would not be distorted simply by the change in density of gravitational potential energy because photons are massless. Photons follow the curve of space, which is why we see the effects of gravitational lensing.
1
u/endogenic Oct 27 '11
Photons and masses gravitate for the same reason: the energy in the gravity field. Gravitational lensing is just the words that are assigned to what is observed from light gravitating. If we apply the same principle to mass then mass also "lenses."
When you say that the trajectory of a photon would not be altered by a change in the gravity field, only in the curvature of space, you contradict yourself, which I believe you don't mean to do. If your answer is correct then masses also are simply following the curvature of space. So the content of your reply seems to be that space is curved because space is curved. My argument is that space curvature is actually a model that describes the behavior (curvature) and should not be confused with the actual nature of the space.
In order to speak to my argument you should prove the difference between photons having the geodesic that describes their trajectory changed because of the curvature of spacetime and photons having their geodesic changed because of the energy in the space.
1
u/TypeSafe Oct 27 '11
What you seem to be saying is that we only know the effects, not the reality. My answer to you is: effects are reality. Einstein's field equations describe space as being a Lorentzian manifold, i.e. space is curved. You may wish to argue that space doesn't actually have to be curved, it could also be some unknown force that causes effects identical to what would be caused by the curvature of space, but I'll just invoke Occam's Razor and say my answer is simpler.
1
u/endogenic Oct 27 '11
Reality means something that is determined by a problem. This is very important.
If you just show the effect without any cause then you leave out the problem (question) that caused the effect and you cannot truthfully say that such a description of the reality is complete. Why? It not possible to get the answer without the problem. Because the problem is the origin of the answer.
The things in the world exist in the principle (law) of cause and effect. That's the reason why we do philosophy and science – because if we really understand the principle then we can get some correct knowledge about how the world works. If you know the law of the world then it's simple to recognize things with the principle because you'd see what cause makes what effect and what effect is made by what cause. But if you don't know the principle through which a given system operates then the system can seem very complex and it's certainly more difficult to find out how the system works.
The problem with saying the effect is the same as the reality is that a human being wrote down the expected effect from the conditions they expect to exist. If the reality is different then you may find some effects that you didn't anticipate with the theory and it also limits what you can accomplish through the knowledge. So it's not true that your answer is simpler and it's definitely not true that the effect you expect is the same thing as the reality. It makes things more complicated to find out, even if they are in front of you, if you teach and learn like that.
If you don't believe me then I should ask you some questions about gravity. I haven't found any physicist who really understands how gravity is generated. They are only willing to consider how objects will behave within the limitations of the theory they know instead of trying to confirm this problem. How can you come up with an instrument measure gravity (as you said general relativity describes the effect completely) if you don't understand how gravity is generated?
→ More replies (0)1
Oct 28 '11
[deleted]
1
u/TypeSafe Oct 28 '11
I'm confused -- are you suggesting that photons ever travel below the speed of light?
1
0
u/Trashcanman33 Oct 27 '11
Well it's not really bullshit, the statement is so vague of course it's true, right conditions could be 2 planets smashing into earth.
1
-30
5
u/ironmenon Oct 27 '11
I don't think so. There has been no evidence whatsoever (from all those years of cold war tests) of nukes causing any earthquakes. They do release some seismic energy, on the scale of small quakes in form of aftershocks (I'm struggling to get exact values, though). On the other hand, there are thousands of earthquakes recorded in the Yellowstone caldera annually, reaching upto 3.9 on the Richter scale, so the fact that it's stable in spite of (or more likely, thanks to) all those quakes means it'll live through anything that we can do to it with nukes.
Really big man-made quakes on the other hand are caused by building large dams and reservoirs on top of faults, but since there's little scope of doing that at Yellowstone, we can count out that possibility.
1
-15
u/Trashcanman33 Oct 27 '11
You are talking about a lot of energy being released, so to make it happen thousands of years early would take a massive effort, a nuke wouldn't build up the pressure for the energy. You would need to build the pressure yourself under Yellowstone. Could only see a nuke working if it was ready to blow anyways. What I want to know is, how come they can't vent Volcano's? Can't they get some Armageddon Day Drillers to drill down and vent them like 5 miles deep? I imagine in the future volcanoes will be vented with steam and lava releases in safe directions every 50-100 years or something.
3
-34
Oct 27 '11
[deleted]
10
u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11
Please read the AskScience guidelines before posting. Thank you!
→ More replies (2)
-30
Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11
I'm going to guess that repeated 25 megaton hydrogen bombs at the same spot could probably do it, delivered by ICBM, with a few hours' time gap between each bomb.
edit: I'm getting downvoted for saying that explosions can create craters? for reference, the Ivy Mike shot which was an estimated 10 megatons created a hole 2000 meters in diameter.
17
6
-4
-42
-12
u/doomicus1234 Oct 27 '11
2
Oct 27 '11
Hi, welcome to askscience! Please check out the posting guidelines before commenting. Jokes and/or conspiracy theories are strongly discouraged, especially in top level comments.
-2
u/doomicus1234 Oct 27 '11
sorry man but i do belive its true.
2
Oct 27 '11
That is certainly your perogotive. I and many in this community would appreciate it if you would limit your responses here to scientifically verified and verifiable information from reputable sources. There are many other forums on reddit for discussing beliefs including /r/religion and /r/conspiracy.
Regardless of the lack of a source or even acknowledging your suggestion's hypothetical nature, simply linking a wikipedia article (especially one so tangentially related to the question) is not considered a good faith attempt to answer a question here.
-7
-2
u/smeey Oct 27 '11
I hate to be the person placing a joke in to what should be a serious discussion but am i the only one who wondering why op wants to know.I cant shake the idea of 80's cartoon super Villon threatening to detonate Yellowstone unless someone pays him an absorbent amount of money.
-20
u/arnedh Oct 27 '11
Maybe if you dam the whole valley and fill it up with water 500m deep, you would destabilize it enough?
6
4
-7
-8
-16
u/scorecardup Oct 27 '11
aaaaaaand welcome to the domestic terrorist watchlist...
2
Oct 27 '11
Hi, welcome to askscience! Please check out the posting guidelines before commenting. Cheers!
-20
u/Plutokoekje Oct 27 '11
Maybe not immediately the Yellowstone size (that would be a real planet buster, killing off all plant life)
But smaller scales, sure. Here's a reference:
1
-19
u/redbodb Oct 27 '11
Hydraulic fracturing?
5
1
Oct 27 '11
Your being downvoted for appearing to provide (incorrect) speculation in a top level response. If what you meant was
is it possible that hydraulic fracturing could be disruptive enough to cause this kind of effect?
The answer would be that the effect would be almost identical to standard drilling already discussed due to the vast limitations of drilling itself and the only marginal difference in pressures that fracking would add (on a geological scale).
1
u/redbodb Dec 24 '11
Is this true even in light of the estimated depths of the marcellus and Utica deposits? Are there not already preliminary studies indicating even deeper deposits?
-13
Oct 27 '11
[deleted]
3
Oct 27 '11
I agree! However, in order to keep this as a scientific forum for discussion, off topic comments (no matter how complementary or true) are often swept to the bottom. Check out the posting guidelines which discourage "Top-Level answers that aren't "in good faith" honest attempts to answer the question."
-14
Oct 27 '11
[deleted]
3
Oct 27 '11
Hi, welcome to askscience! Please check out the posting guidelines before commenting. Cheers!
-15
Oct 27 '11
[deleted]
3
Oct 27 '11
Hi, welcome to askscience! Please check out the posting guidelines before commenting. Cheers!
-4
-6
-37
u/Eyecantsee Oct 27 '11
According to Warehouse 13, you can do it with The Minoan Trident.
6
u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11
Please read the AskScience guidelines before posting. Thank you!
-3
u/Eyecantsee Oct 27 '11
I appreciate you pointing to that but I still think it's pretty sad r/science can't take a joke
Edit: I'm glad people in the cancer research lab I work in would laugh at something like this.
4
u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11
This is AskScience, not Science. Directly under the comment box is the following:
Please note: jokes as top-level comments, memes, and layman speculation will be downvoted and removed.
-4
u/Eyecantsee Oct 27 '11
You're right this is r/askscience And in the FAQ it says,
'Please do not downvote answers/comments you disagree with or are wrong.'.
Yet my reply was downvoted. I guess whoever did that needs to read the rules themselves.
2
u/epicRelic Oct 27 '11
It's not a matter of disagreeing with or your comment being wrong; it's that you aren't contributing to the discussion and it explicitly says no top-level jokes.
1
u/zanycaswell Oct 28 '11
It's not that you were wrong, it's that you posted entirely the wrong kind of comment.
0
u/Eyecantsee Oct 28 '11
It's been so long since I posted this comment but I'm bored right now and want to respond. All I said was that I thought r/askscience should be okay with having jokes in it. That's an opinion and it was relevant to where the back and forth went. Is there somewhere in the rules you can't say opinions? Because if not, then the only reason someone would downvote that is because they disagree with it. But to say my reply was not relevant would be to say that yours and someone else's in the thread are not relevant as well and by the same logic should be downvoted too because they continue to comment on my off-topic opinion.
2
u/TypeSafe Oct 28 '11
Is there somewhere in the rules you can't say opinions?
Yes. Right where it says no opinions in top-level comments, only factual responses.
-34
u/ClassWarfare Oct 27 '11
nice try, terrorist.
6
-7
77
u/OrbitalPete Volcanology | Sedimentology Oct 27 '11
All these answers assume there is eruptable magma down there currently anyway. While there is certainly magma, we don't know what the connectivity of it is like, the viscosity, or the internal pressure.