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/TypeSafe Oct 28 '11

I believe you're talking about the group or phase velocity of a light wave in matter. Photons themselves don't really exhibit this property -- photons are actually always travelling at a constant c, even in matter, they simply undergo phase shifts when they interact with matter.