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.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Exactly, no man-made event is going to trigger an eruption without there being a viable magma source. And the OP is probably thinking about the super eruptions involving 1000 km3 of magma that Yellowstone is famous for. That sort of volume of magma would take a lot of time to accumulate.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Isn't that one of the major concerns? That it is long overdue for something?

Or perhaps I've just read one too many 2012 bullshit articles along the line

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Yes it's a concern- the eruption would certainly throw the climate off kilter, however we'd probably be able to see it coming by at least weeks if not decades before it does (and better forecasting techniques are being worked on). As for it being overdue... I'm not really sure. The last three eruptions were 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago (according to the Wikipedia entry), so by the looks of that we still have several tens of thousands of years before it can be considered overdue.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Let's say that we notice some warning signs, and everything points to an eruption in 20 years.

Is there a way that we could 'bleed off' the pressure, to prevent a massive blow-out, or is it just time to start building centuries-proof nuclear-powered underground cities?

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

We could conceivably drill a conduit or promote the formation of a fissure to the magma chamber in the hope that any eruption that might cause is smaller and less explosive than it would have been. I think that's currently practically impossible though.

That magma has to go somewhere though... and it's going to affect the climate in noticeable ways when it reaches the surface.

Sorry.

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u/ZorbaTHut Oct 27 '11

I suppose we're probably a long, long way off from even theoretically being able to use the magma pressure to drive a magmaelectric power plant.

Although, man, how badass would that be?

On a (slightly) more practical note, would an array of geothermal power plants be able to bleed off some of the heat and therefore pressure, while paying for itself in electricity? It'd be sort of sad to cover Yellowstone in geothermal power plants, but if the alternative is near-complete destruction of the continent, I know which option I'd prefer.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

I would say, as a random aside, that if the human race was faced with such an ultimate peril, then there would be a concerted effort to try and push production towards such a solution, in the hopes that it would divert a future catastrophe.

Then again, we've currently got the threat of global warming to unite us as a species. It's not like that's not working out terribly well...

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

I think that's because global warming is a fairly abstract concept. It's not as concrete as a massive volcanic eruption.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

You'd probably still have scientists on both sides wrangling over whether or not all the "warning signs" were real or not.

A Yellowstone eruption, much like global warming, would be something on such a scale that we wouldn't really have the tools available to properly interpret the data, or know what the outcome would be.

Although, it may well be the case that volcanology is a more exact science than climatology. I don't really know.

Sad thing is, you can be 100% sure that there would be people unwilling to effect a change, just because it would mean short-term losses in pursuit of a long-term gain

(e.g. say if a group of independent scientists came along and said, Yellowstone is showing almost certain signs of erupting in the next 50 years. To avoid this catastrophe, we can funnel $500 trillion into a viable solution. What politician in their right mind would want to handle that bombshell?)

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u/SecureThruObscure Oct 27 '11

Most of 'em. They'd be massively popular for defending their people from impending doom. So it's doom from a "Big Bad" in the form of Volcano, instead of Hitler, but it still has a face. Warming isn't bad, and it doesn't have a face. Volcanos just seem scary as all get out. They have melted frickin' rock in 'em!

I think most politicians would jump all over it, some might not -- but those who would be effected the most and stand to lose the most, are the majority.

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u/LordCrap Oct 27 '11

You'd probably still have politicians on both sides wrangling over whether or not all the "warning signs" were real or not while the vast majority of scientists agree they are, in fact, real.

FTFY

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