Space Forum / Astronomy / July 2006

If it ever DID go off, you'd be talking an Extinction Level Event. The
last time it happened, mankind dropped to a few thousand
individuals....... and your region is certainly named in this artikle
too ... Maybe the baby is kicking?

Yellowstone Blowing and all the rest is just a Prelude to what's
coming.

Those of you who know what a cherrybomb is know what I'm talking.

It's spherical...and the whole thing blows up because of it's unstable
interior

Super Volcano Will Challenge Civilization, Geologists Warn
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 08 March 2005
06:30 am ET

The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill the planet
and threaten human civilization, British scientists warned Tuesday.

And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it.

Several volcanoes around the world are capable of gigantic eruptions
unlike anything witnessed in recorded history, based on geologic
evidence of past events, the scientists said. Such eruptions would
dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, Pinatubo and anything else
going back dozens of millennia.

"Super-eruptions are up to hundreds of times larger than these," said
Stephen Self of the United Kingdom's (U.K.) Open University.

"An area the size of North America can be devastated, and pronounced
deterioration of global climate would be expected for a few years
following the eruption," Self said. "They could result in the
devastation of world agriculture, severe disruption of food supplies,
and mass starvation. These effects could be sufficiently severe to
threaten the fabric of civilization."

Self and his colleagues at the Geological Society of London presented
their report to the U.K. Government's Natural Hazard Working Group.
What's in Store

The predicted effect a super volcano at Yellowstone. Click to enlarge.

Super Evidence

In the Jemez Mountains, near Santa Fe, New Mexico, sits the Valles
Caldera -- the circular feature at left in this false-color satellite
image (vegetation is red). It's about 15 miles (24 kilometers) wide,
made by two super-eruptions 1.6 and 1.1 million years ago.

The rocky mound below, the result of the older eruption, is 820 feet
(250 meters) thick.

Satellite image: Landsat
Middle photo: S. Self

"Although very rare these events are inevitable, and at some point in
the future humans will be faced with dealing with and surviving a super
eruption," Stephen Sparks of the University of Bristol told LiveScience
in advance of Tuesday's announcement.

Supporting evidence

The warning is not new. Geologists in the United States detailed a
similar scenario in 2001, when they found evidence suggesting volcanic
activity in Yellowstone National Park will eventually lead to a
colossal eruption. Half the United States will be covered in ash up to
3 feet (1 meter) deep, according to a study published in the journal
Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Explosions of this magnitude "happen about every 600,000 years at
Yellowstone," says Chuck Wicks of the U.S. Geological Survey, who has
studied the possibilities in separate work. "And it's been about
620,000 years since the last super explosive eruption there."

Past volcanic catastrophes at Yellowstone and elsewhere remain evident
as giant collapsed basins called calderas.

A super eruption is a scaled up version of a typical volcanic outburst,
Sparks explained. Each is caused by a rising and growing chamber of hot
molten rock known as magma.

"In super eruptions the magma chamber is huge," Sparks said. The
eruption is rapid, occurring in a matter of days. "When the magma
erupts the overlying rocks collapse into the chamber, which has reduced
its pressure due to the eruption. The collapse forms the huge crater."

The eruption pumps dust and chemicals into the atmosphere for years,
screening the Sun and cooling the planet. Earth is plunged into a
perpetual winter, some models predict, causing plant and animal species
disappear forever.

"The whole of a continent might be covered by ash, which might take
many years -- possibly decades -- to erode away and for vegetation to
recover," Sparks said.

Yellowstone may be winding down geologically, experts say. But they
believe it harbors at least one final punch. Globally, there are still
plenty of possibilities for super volcano eruptions, even as Earth
quiets down over the long haul of its 4.5-billion-year existence.

"The Earth is of course losing energy, but at a very slow rate, and the
effects are only really noticeable over billions rather than millions
of years," Sparks said.

Human impact

The odds of a globally destructive volcano explosion in any given
century are extremely low, and no scientist can say when the next one
will occur. But the chances are five to 10 times greater than a
globally destructive asteroid impact, according to the new British
report.

The next super eruption, whenever it occurs, might not be the first one
humans have dealt with.

About 74,000 years ago, in what is now Sumatra, a volcano called Toba
blew with a force estimated at 10,000 times that of Mount St. Helens.
Ash darkened the sky all around the planet. Temperatures plummeted by
up to 21 degrees at higher latitudes, according to research by Michael
Rampino, a biologist and geologist at New York University.

Rampino has estimated three-quarters of the plant species in the
Northern Hemisphere perished.

Stanley Ambrose, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois,
suggested in 1998 that Rampino's work might explain a curious
bottleneck in human evolution: The blueprints of life for all humans --
DNA -- are remarkably similar given that our species branched off from
the rest of the primate family tree a few million years ago.

Ambrose has said early humans were perhaps pushed to the edge of
extinction after the Toba eruption -- around the same time folks got
serious about art and tool making. Perhaps only a few thousand
survived. Humans today would all be descended from these few, and in
terms of the genetic code, not a whole lot would change in 74,000
years.

Sitting ducks

Based on the latest evidence, eruptions the size of the giant
Yellowstone and Toba events occur at least every 100,000 years, Sparks
said, "and it could be as high as every 50,000 years. There are smaller
but nevertheless huge eruptions which would have continental to global
consequences every 5,000 years or so."

Unlike other threats to mankind -- asteroids, nuclear attacks and
global warming to name a few -- there's little to be done about a super
volcano.

"While it may in future be possible to deflect asteroids or somehow
avoid their impact, even science fiction cannot produce a credible
mechanism for averting a super eruption," the new report states. "No
strategies can be envisaged for reducing the power of major volcanic
eruptions."

The Geological Society of London has issued similar warnings going back
to 2000. The scientists this week called for more funding to
investigate further the history of super eruptions and their likely
effects on the planet and on modern society.

"Sooner or later a super eruption will happen on Earth and this issue
also demands serious attention," the report concludes.

Livescience.com
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050308_super_volcano.html

When did I made prediktions that not came out?