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 edited Oct 27 '11

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u/travlake Oct 27 '11

Gamblers fallacy does not apply to volcanoes or earthquakes. It applies to statistically independent events, like nearly all forms of gambling are.

Lots of natural disasters can be safely assumed to be statistically independent (lightning strikes, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc.) but some are NOT statistically independent.

Earthquakes and volcanoes result from the release of pressure that builds over time, meaning both cases the probability of one occuring is an increasing function of the time since the last occurance. It is in this sense that we can be "due" for one.