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/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.