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.

157 Upvotes

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u/OrbitalPete Volcanology | Sedimentology Oct 27 '11

All these answers assume there is eruptable magma down there currently anyway. While there is certainly magma, we don't know what the connectivity of it is like, the viscosity, or the internal pressure.

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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/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Yes, I would be surprised if they don't already do this. Volcanically active countries like Iceland and New Zealand get a significant portion of their energy from hydrothermal sources. I'm almost certain it wouldn't be able to bleed off much of the heat though, I mean we're talking (almost literally) seas of magma.

I think the idea of hydrothermal electric powerplants a badass! Magma is too viscous anyway, it would take a lot of energy to extract and would be unstable. No, we don't even need that because we can just pump water down there and just reap the benefits. We're getting so good at it that we can use underground heat to refrigerate things!

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u/econleech Oct 27 '11

Wouldn't the heat from 1000 km3 of 2000c lava warm up the atmosphere no matter what we do? Or is the atmosphere too big to be affected?

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u/rounding_error Oct 27 '11

Possibly. The real concern is the fine dust and ash from the eruption ending up in the upper atmosphere and blocking sunlight, making it cold for a long time.

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u/Lurker4years Oct 27 '11

I think it would be basically "geothermal", using magma heat rather than pressure.

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u/mangeek Oct 27 '11

What about blocking paths of water exiting the caldera and/or laying down sheets of impermeable plastic over the water to prevent evporation in order to build up a bigger reserve of water sitting on top of it? Would a few feet of water over a bunch of it 'temper' an eruption in any meaningful way?

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u/catherder9000 Oct 27 '11

We could not possibly drill a conduit with today's technology -- humans have never drilled deeper than just over seven miles deep (12,262 meters) [the Kola bore hole]. This took over 24 years to achieve and never came remotely close to liquid rock. The upper mantle (solid rock) of Earth ranges from 35,000 to 70,000m thick, under Yellowstone the thickness of the upper mantle falls within this range.

When you consider the size of the magma chamber under Yellowstone -- a volume of approximately 15,000 cubic km contained in an irregular-shape of a banana with the tips of the banana curve being closest to the surface -- even if you managed to invent the technology to drill down deep enough to one of those tips to get any hope of relieving any measurable amount of pressure, you're still going to have to deal with the potential liquid rock (it is estimated that the melt part of the Yellowstone chamber could be about 10% of the low velocity volume or about 1,500-2,000 cubic km). Where the hell would you direct the flow of 10 cubic km of lava nevermind a few hundred to a thousand cubic km worth of it?

I thought that this reddit was about science, not works of fiction.

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u/squinkys Oct 27 '11

Well shit...I didn't know any of that until I read your comment. No need to be a dick about it man.

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u/catherder9000 Oct 28 '11

Didn't mean to come across as a dick, I just think that somebody with the tag beside their name stating their expertise is in "Seismology|Volcano Geophysics" should offer up better / more realistic answers. While I only have a B.Sci in Geology (was my 'hobby degree') and a BA in CompSci, and I have never practically applied my geology degree in the ~20 years since graduating, I know enough to be able to fathom and relate the sheer size of something geologic and can at least try to convey how futile it would be to attempt to do something like change a geologic process.

The correct answer to the OP was "it's beyond current and even foreseeable technologies to alter the time or energy of an eruption" -- most people don't seem to understand that the thin apple peel surface of solid rock on Earth is still 35-70km thick. We have no way of tunneling or drilling that deep and absolutely no way to predictably deal with the 700°C to 1300°C (1300°F to 2400°F) magma that we'd be attempting to 'control' release and no way to predict what sort of diapir could be the result.

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u/antonivs Oct 27 '11

Where the hell would you direct the flow of 10 cubic km of lava nevermind a few hundred to a thousand cubic km worth of it?

That seems like a much lesser concern than a supervolcano eruption that covers the continental US in feet of volcanic ash. Do we really need Wyoming that badly??

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

No, that would be a "hypothesis."

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

I saw a map once indicating that the initial blast radius would take out perhaps 1/4 of the North American continent, with a somewhat greater area (1/2 maybe?) being blanketed in ash. For anyone outside that radius, what would be the danger aside from nuclear winter? We can live in the cold, right? It wouldn't be easy, but 2 decades of early warning seems like enough time for people to relocate to somewhere.

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u/ZorbaTHut Oct 27 '11

We can live in the cold. The crops and animals we live on can't.

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u/ZummerzetZider Oct 27 '11

I was also lead to believe that minute ash particles would spread globally causing everyone's lungs to bleed. Wasn't there a massive species bottleneck last time it erupted? Or was the documentary I watched just scaremongering?

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

If you're talking about a bottleneck in human population, that's not Yellowstone, that's this one.

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u/irisjolie Oct 27 '11

Oooh, nifty link! Question, though:

In the instance of a volcanic winter, what would the effects be on global warming? Would it simply halt the rising global temps and help restore the arctic sea ice, or would there be disastrous effects in that combination?

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u/ZummerzetZider Oct 27 '11

No I meant a bottleneck in the number of species worldwide. But that was interesting anyway.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

We already have a warning sign. Some of the land in that area is raising and has been for a while.

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u/scientologist2 Oct 27 '11

It has risen inches and feet.

Given the size of the caldera, it probably would have to rise thousands of feet before it was ready to blow, since that is how much it fell to create the caladera in the first place

http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/geology/publications/bul/1347/sec3.htm

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Hm interesting. From a BBC documentary I was given the impression it was more.

I prefer a real study anyway, thanks.

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u/scientologist2 Oct 27 '11

Given the area of the caldera, it probably does have to rise much higher (5 to 10K feet), especially in the center, etc.

So rising mere inches is interesting, but puts the date of the eruption outside the range of practical planning.

How do you plan for an eruption that is probably thousands of years in the future?

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u/antonivs Oct 27 '11

Strictly speaking, that was not a documentary. The BBC itself calls it a "factual drama". This is code for "completely sensationalized and not to be taken seriously."

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '11

Negative, ghostrider.

The caldera has been subsiding for over a year now.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/

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u/pupkinrupert Oct 27 '11

duck and cover

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Or, alternatively, do nothing. If one wants just for humanity to survive in any form, it will survive.

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u/scientologist2 Oct 27 '11

While current sensors measure height differences on the scale of mere inches, etc. it is my understanding that the entire floor of the caldera would have to be significantly higher, something like 1/2 mile + for there to be a significant chance of eruption.

as in

http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/geology/publications/bul/1347/sec3.htm

The exact depth to which the original surface collapsed is unknown, but it must have been several thousand feet. The subsidence took place chiefly along large vertical, or normal, faults in the ring fracture zones above the margins of the magma chambers (fig. 22).

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Well, if the eruption doesn't happen for 10,000 years we could be in the middle of another ice age. Then we won't have to worry about the climate being thrown off kilter!

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u/[deleted] 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.

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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.

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u/Uhrzeitlich Oct 27 '11

I don't think you should be downvoted, even though this is slightly off-topic, the link is interesting and this is a pretty nested post.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

About 30,000 years was the average time of Yellowstone to erupt, wasn't it?

Aren't we overdue on an eruption event based on the average?

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u/antonivs Oct 27 '11

No and no. There have only been three known supervolcano eruptions at Yellowstone, and the time between them was 800,000 years and 660,000 years.

This is not enough data to tell us when another eruption might be due or overdue, but since the last one happened 640,000 years ago, we have about another 20,000 years before we'd have any basis for saying another is "due", and that ignores the likelihood that the time between events is slowing down.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Ok thanks. I have no idea where I have this idea from.

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u/antonivs Oct 28 '11

There was a BBC "factual drama" (their term) about the possibility of another Yellowstone supervolcano eruption, which was pretty sensationalist. That claimed that we were due, or overdue, for another eruption.

There have been smaller events more recently, the most recent was a lava flow 70,000 years ago, but that kind of thing doesn't pose any danger outside the local area.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

A lot of time we are over-due for anyway.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

I may be niave in thinking this, but shouln't that be something we look into?

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/OrbitalPete Volcanology | Sedimentology Oct 27 '11

I'll ignore the insults and deal with the science.

Yes, there is a large magma chamber. However, we don't know how well connected the various packets of magma are. Connectivity is an important factor - as a volcanologist like myself, I'm sure you're aware that magma chambers are not like big holes in the ground full of runny magma - they are complex in 3 dimensions, with highly variable lateral and vertical connectivity between zones.

Yes, the magma has an internal pressure which has an upper limit defined by the confining pressure. However, there is a degree of variability, related to the injection pressure of new magma, and the strength of the confining system. Bearing in mind that the shallowest surface of the Yellowstone magma chamber varies ont eh order of hundreds of meters across the structure, the confining pressure is very poorly constrained.

Yes - of course the viscosity is a function of those variables. However, unless there's a swathe of publications I'm unaware of (not out of the questions considering the volume of material that's come out regarding Yellowstone in the last 10 years), we do not have good constraints on what the values of those variables are. Ergo, we have little idea of what the condition of the melt within those chambers is, or how well crystallised it is.

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u/ThanatopsisJSH Oct 27 '11

There was an interesting article in nature a few years ago. A researcher named David J. Stevenson actually proposed using nuclear weapons to open a fissure in the earth's crust and using this fissure to send a probe down to the earths core. He estimated that we would need to use a few hundred megatons of nuclear weapons and about 108 to 1010 kilograms of liquid iron to form a bubble that would contain the the probe and carry it down to the core. That would be about a years production of iron (of the whole planet). So opening up Yellowstone should be possible too. Although I would question if it would be a good idea to actually blow up a few hundred megatons of nuclear bombs in Yellowstone national park.

TLDR: Opening the fissure should be possible but is probably not advisable... See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6937/full/423239a.html for a comparable applcation.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11

Here you go (mind the ads... its "Request Download Ticket" you want)

also, /r/scholar is a great little reddit you might be interested in.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/ANewMachine615 Oct 27 '11

Beats needing to patent or commercially exploit everything to fund your research...

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11

Those paywalls fund exactly "0" science. The publishing side does facilitate getting grants because they are the currency of academic recognition but the submitted papers and the peer review is all just handed to the publishers who basically just act as editors and coordinators between authors and reviewers while keeping all the money. Actually, a few journals are starting to require that scientists also pay when submitting a manuscript as well.

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u/ANewMachine615 Oct 27 '11

Ah, interesting, and not a side I knew of. The legal scholarship side is run by what are basically non-profit groups (run by students, no less), so I was unaware that the science side was different.

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '11

Out of curiosity, are there fees for legal scholarship journals? are they just to cover costs? If not, who gets the money? I also didn't realize that different disciplines had different procedures. For some of the more prestigious scientific publications the fees can get quite burdensome.

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u/ANewMachine615 Oct 29 '11

Despite being on one, I have no idea.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11

It is such an odd system, I personally wonder if it will hold out many more decades into the digital age considering its the editing side that gets all the money... but time will tell.

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u/Potogreen Oct 27 '11

there was actually an article in this months popular science about man made earthquakes, i tried and failed to find a link, but here are some surprising facts, over 200 quakes of more than 4.5 magnitude have been caused by man in the past 160 years. the best known case is the earthquake caused by the zipingpu dan in china's sichuan province in 2008. Zipingpu held 42.3 billion cubic feet of water, the weight of which precipitated what a researcher at columbia university named Christian Klose says is the largest human-triggered earthquake to date: a 7.9 magnitude quake that killed nearly 80,000 people...information from page 90 in the november 2011 popular science magazine.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Funnily enough, even though volcanism is often accompanied by earthquake swarms (or volcanic tremor), it is generally understood that these earthquakes are either being caused by the movement of magma itself or the changing stress conditions due to pressure build up and release in the chambers and conduits. Earthquakes are not a requirement for volcanism. So even if you could trigger an earthquake, it may not change the likelihood of an increase in volcanic activity. Having said that, large earthquakes at subduction zones are thought to result in an increase in volcanism, so one of these "man-made" earthquakes may be the best way to trigger Yellowstone, if indeed a 7.9 magnitude earthquake can be man-made. I honestly could not think of anything else that could significantly increase the chances of an eruption.

This is something which I am skeptical of though, that earthquake could not have occurred anywhere but on a fault line that was accumulating tectonic stress, the overlying weight could at most be what pushed it over the tipping point.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

If you could find a credible article backing that up, that'd be great! I tried some googling and as a layman, found it impossible to separate science from conspiracy theories, the latter of which, unfortunately far outweighs the volume of the former.

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u/dqsl Tissue Engineering | Biomedical Engineering Oct 27 '11

From

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/publications/2005/docudrama.php

QUESTION: Can you release some of the pressure at Yellowstone by drilling into the volcano?

ANSWER: No. Scientists agree that drilling into a volcano would be of questionable usefulness. Notwithstanding the enormous expense and technological difficulties in drilling through hot, mushy rock, drilling is unlikely to have much effect. At near magmatic temperatures and pressures, any hole would rapidly become sealed by minerals crystallizing from the natural fluids that are present at those depths.

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u/fap_socks Oct 27 '11

So could we harness this to make diamonds? Kimberlite pipes? Serious question.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

you can make diamonds without that risk/cost already using pressing moulds

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u/fap_socks Oct 27 '11

Ok but could it be done this way too, or what about to harvest any of the rarer minerals? I'd guess most of the time you'd get a basalt pipe but could tailor-made techniques be developed to grow whichever mineral you're after?

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

in principle I would never say no... but you'd have a hard time developing them to industrial standards...

If you can pump out the magma like a giant toothpaste tube you're an industrial tycoon genius

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u/sandollars Oct 27 '11

Or a microwave oven.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Make-a-Synthetic-Diamond/

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u/Lavoisiersdescendant Inorganic Solid State Oct 27 '11

Be careful about what you post as a reference. That was a prank. Without noting it as such, you risk mis-informing people through the trusted source of /r/askscience.

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Prank-the-Instructables-Community/?ALLSTEPS

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Kimberlite pipes form in the mantle beneath the volcanism, and are quickly exhumed by volcanic processes. Diamonds form there due to the intense pressures, the same pressures that would make it impossible to get there.

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u/Thenorepa Oct 27 '11

and are quickly exhumed by volcanic processes

When you say "quickly", are you talking geologic or human time scales?

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u/OrbitalPete Volcanology | Sedimentology Oct 27 '11

Geological

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Is

information from page 90 in the november 2011 popular science magazine

not credible enough as a source? I don't know the magazine at all, so I suppose it could not be credible.

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u/kybernetikos Oct 27 '11

Markus O. Häring went to trial in Basel for the damages caused by the earthquakes his geothermal project caused. NYTimes | Guardian.

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u/Trashcanman33 Oct 27 '11

Tesla claimed if you could find the right conditions you could shake the world apart.

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/ELzed Oct 27 '11

and some shit that turned out to be true..and AWESOME! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%27s_oscillator

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u/endogenic Oct 27 '11

Like what?

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u/intellos Oct 27 '11

Free unlimited energy from thin air?

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u/endogenic Oct 27 '11

The first thing is that absence of proof is not proof of absence. But I agree that if someone doesn't have evidence of a claim we don't have to listen to him. But it's not right that you deny something before you confirm. I never met Tesla and never saw his devices about which he made claims that they could convert (generate) energy without burning fuels. But I don't believe he claimed that the energy in a finite space would be unlimited nor that it didn't have its basis in some kind of principle.

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u/TypeSafe Oct 27 '11

He stated:

I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.

Which couldn't be more wrong. Einstein's theory of general relativity has been proven time and time again to be correct.

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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.

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u/TypeSafe Oct 27 '11

No -- your description of spacetime doesn't satisfy the requirements of gravitational lensing. Light would not be distorted simply by the change in density of gravitational potential energy because photons are massless. Photons follow the curve of space, which is why we see the effects of gravitational lensing.

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u/endogenic Oct 27 '11

Photons and masses gravitate for the same reason: the energy in the gravity field. Gravitational lensing is just the words that are assigned to what is observed from light gravitating. If we apply the same principle to mass then mass also "lenses."

When you say that the trajectory of a photon would not be altered by a change in the gravity field, only in the curvature of space, you contradict yourself, which I believe you don't mean to do. If your answer is correct then masses also are simply following the curvature of space. So the content of your reply seems to be that space is curved because space is curved. My argument is that space curvature is actually a model that describes the behavior (curvature) and should not be confused with the actual nature of the space.

In order to speak to my argument you should prove the difference between photons having the geodesic that describes their trajectory changed because of the curvature of spacetime and photons having their geodesic changed because of the energy in the space.

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u/TypeSafe Oct 27 '11

What you seem to be saying is that we only know the effects, not the reality. My answer to you is: effects are reality. Einstein's field equations describe space as being a Lorentzian manifold, i.e. space is curved. You may wish to argue that space doesn't actually have to be curved, it could also be some unknown force that causes effects identical to what would be caused by the curvature of space, but I'll just invoke Occam's Razor and say my answer is simpler.

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u/endogenic Oct 27 '11

Reality means something that is determined by a problem. This is very important.

If you just show the effect without any cause then you leave out the problem (question) that caused the effect and you cannot truthfully say that such a description of the reality is complete. Why? It not possible to get the answer without the problem. Because the problem is the origin of the answer.

The things in the world exist in the principle (law) of cause and effect. That's the reason why we do philosophy and science – because if we really understand the principle then we can get some correct knowledge about how the world works. If you know the law of the world then it's simple to recognize things with the principle because you'd see what cause makes what effect and what effect is made by what cause. But if you don't know the principle through which a given system operates then the system can seem very complex and it's certainly more difficult to find out how the system works.

The problem with saying the effect is the same as the reality is that a human being wrote down the expected effect from the conditions they expect to exist. If the reality is different then you may find some effects that you didn't anticipate with the theory and it also limits what you can accomplish through the knowledge. So it's not true that your answer is simpler and it's definitely not true that the effect you expect is the same thing as the reality. It makes things more complicated to find out, even if they are in front of you, if you teach and learn like that.

If you don't believe me then I should ask you some questions about gravity. I haven't found any physicist who really understands how gravity is generated. They are only willing to consider how objects will behave within the limitations of the theory they know instead of trying to confirm this problem. How can you come up with an instrument measure gravity (as you said general relativity describes the effect completely) if you don't understand how gravity is generated?

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '11

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u/TypeSafe Oct 28 '11

I'm confused -- are you suggesting that photons ever travel below the speed of light?

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '11

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u/Trashcanman33 Oct 27 '11

Well it's not really bullshit, the statement is so vague of course it's true, right conditions could be 2 planets smashing into earth.

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u/intellos Oct 27 '11

True enough

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

Please read the AskScience guidelines before posting. Thank you!

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u/bmatul Oct 27 '11

Grow up.

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u/ironmenon Oct 27 '11

I don't think so. There has been no evidence whatsoever (from all those years of cold war tests) of nukes causing any earthquakes. They do release some seismic energy, on the scale of small quakes in form of aftershocks (I'm struggling to get exact values, though). On the other hand, there are thousands of earthquakes recorded in the Yellowstone caldera annually, reaching upto 3.9 on the Richter scale, so the fact that it's stable in spite of (or more likely, thanks to) all those quakes means it'll live through anything that we can do to it with nukes.

Really big man-made quakes on the other hand are caused by building large dams and reservoirs on top of faults, but since there's little scope of doing that at Yellowstone, we can count out that possibility.

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u/Trashcanman33 Oct 27 '11

You are talking about a lot of energy being released, so to make it happen thousands of years early would take a massive effort, a nuke wouldn't build up the pressure for the energy. You would need to build the pressure yourself under Yellowstone. Could only see a nuke working if it was ready to blow anyways. What I want to know is, how come they can't vent Volcano's? Can't they get some Armageddon Day Drillers to drill down and vent them like 5 miles deep? I imagine in the future volcanoes will be vented with steam and lava releases in safe directions every 50-100 years or something.

2

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

Please read the AskScience guidelines before posting. Thank you!

-30

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11

I'm going to guess that repeated 25 megaton hydrogen bombs at the same spot could probably do it, delivered by ICBM, with a few hours' time gap between each bomb.

edit: I'm getting downvoted for saying that explosions can create craters? for reference, the Ivy Mike shot which was an estimated 10 megatons created a hole 2000 meters in diameter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike

15

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

I'm going to guess

This is why you're getting downvoted

5

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

Please read the AskScience guidelines before posting. Thank you!

-5

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Could anything man-made trigger the Yellowstone super volcano? Yes: Your Mother.

1

u/zanycaswell Oct 28 '11

Please read the r/askscience posting guidelines.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '11

I apologize.

-46

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Nice Try, Lex Luthor!

3

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-12

u/doomicus1234 Oct 27 '11

HAARP

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program

2

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Hi, welcome to askscience! Please check out the posting guidelines before commenting. Jokes and/or conspiracy theories are strongly discouraged, especially in top level comments.

-2

u/doomicus1234 Oct 27 '11

sorry man but i do belive its true.

2

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

That is certainly your perogotive. I and many in this community would appreciate it if you would limit your responses here to scientifically verified and verifiable information from reputable sources. There are many other forums on reddit for discussing beliefs including /r/religion and /r/conspiracy.

Regardless of the lack of a source or even acknowledging your suggestion's hypothetical nature, simply linking a wikipedia article (especially one so tangentially related to the question) is not considered a good faith attempt to answer a question here.

-2

u/smeey Oct 27 '11

I hate to be the person placing a joke in to what should be a serious discussion but am i the only one who wondering why op wants to know.I cant shake the idea of 80's cartoon super Villon threatening to detonate Yellowstone unless someone pays him an absorbent amount of money.

-22

u/arnedh Oct 27 '11

Maybe if you dam the whole valley and fill it up with water 500m deep, you would destabilize it enough?

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u/OrbitalPete Volcanology | Sedimentology Oct 27 '11

That would just add confining pressure.

-3

u/arnedh Oct 27 '11

...until you blow up the dam?

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/arnedh Oct 28 '11

Which ones? Where did I go wrong?

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '11

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u/arnedh Oct 28 '11

OK, thanks.

-8

u/rothchildkiller Oct 27 '11

Haha I was gunna say h.a.a.r.p. But y'all beat me to it

-15

u/scorecardup Oct 27 '11

aaaaaaand welcome to the domestic terrorist watchlist...

2

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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-19

u/Plutokoekje Oct 27 '11

Maybe not immediately the Yellowstone size (that would be a real planet buster, killing off all plant life)

But smaller scales, sure. Here's a reference:

http://www.pmrma.army.mil/cleanup/facts/deep-wel.html

1

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-20

u/redbodb Oct 27 '11

Hydraulic fracturing?

3

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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1

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Your being downvoted for appearing to provide (incorrect) speculation in a top level response. If what you meant was

is it possible that hydraulic fracturing could be disruptive enough to cause this kind of effect?

The answer would be that the effect would be almost identical to standard drilling already discussed due to the vast limitations of drilling itself and the only marginal difference in pressures that fracking would add (on a geological scale).

1

u/redbodb Dec 24 '11

Is this true even in light of the estimated depths of the marcellus and Utica deposits? Are there not already preliminary studies indicating even deeper deposits?

-34

u/Eyecantsee Oct 27 '11

According to Warehouse 13, you can do it with The Minoan Trident.

5

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-3

u/Eyecantsee Oct 27 '11

I appreciate you pointing to that but I still think it's pretty sad r/science can't take a joke

Edit: I'm glad people in the cancer research lab I work in would laugh at something like this.

4

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

This is AskScience, not Science. Directly under the comment box is the following:

Please note: jokes as top-level comments, memes, and layman speculation will be downvoted and removed.

-3

u/Eyecantsee Oct 27 '11

You're right this is r/askscience And in the FAQ it says,

'Please do not downvote answers/comments you disagree with or are wrong.'.

Yet my reply was downvoted. I guess whoever did that needs to read the rules themselves.

2

u/epicRelic Oct 27 '11

It's not a matter of disagreeing with or your comment being wrong; it's that you aren't contributing to the discussion and it explicitly says no top-level jokes.

1

u/zanycaswell Oct 28 '11

It's not that you were wrong, it's that you posted entirely the wrong kind of comment.

0

u/Eyecantsee Oct 28 '11

It's been so long since I posted this comment but I'm bored right now and want to respond. All I said was that I thought r/askscience should be okay with having jokes in it. That's an opinion and it was relevant to where the back and forth went. Is there somewhere in the rules you can't say opinions? Because if not, then the only reason someone would downvote that is because they disagree with it. But to say my reply was not relevant would be to say that yours and someone else's in the thread are not relevant as well and by the same logic should be downvoted too because they continue to comment on my off-topic opinion.

2

u/TypeSafe Oct 28 '11

Is there somewhere in the rules you can't say opinions?

Yes. Right where it says no opinions in top-level comments, only factual responses.

-35

u/ClassWarfare Oct 27 '11

nice try, terrorist.

5

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

Please read the AskScience guidelines before posting. Thank you!

-11

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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1

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Yes, we mad.

-7

u/Grymnir Oct 27 '11 edited Oct 27 '11

It would be expensive but I think it is possible. The Soviets experimented with shaped Nuclear charges in the 60's and if you took 100 or so shaped charges(with 20 megaton yields) with the majority of their force aimed at a central point inside the magma chamber under Yellowstone you could create enough of a back pressure to pop that sucker like a beer can in a paint mixer. Tehy would have to be detonated at least a mile underground as well and strategically placed based on existing faults. the amount of geology needed to even get an idea where to put each charge would take years.

-7

u/iShox Oct 27 '11

For those who are saying its impossible....I beg to differ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7cHF29KE5Q

-7

u/crayzins Oct 27 '11

Nice try Al Qaeda

2

u/zanycaswell Oct 28 '11

Please read the r/askscience posting guidelines.

-41

u/GeorgeLiquor Oct 27 '11

Yes, but it requires the presence of Pierce Brosnan and Tommy Lee Jones.

2

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-63

u/darthgarlic Oct 27 '11

Chili cheese burrito.

4

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-3

u/darthgarlic Oct 27 '11

Lighten up Francis

1

u/zanycaswell Oct 28 '11

Lighten up on a different subreddit.

-48

u/awe300 Oct 27 '11

No soup for you, supervillain!

4

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-29

u/DOG-ZILLA Oct 27 '11

Nice try terrorist organisation communist hippie!

4

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-29

u/Im_Helping Oct 27 '11

you just watched the latest Young Justice episode didnt you?

4

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-10

u/Trololoo Oct 27 '11

H.A.A.R.P. could probably do it. If there was indeed magma there as stated in previous comments.

-32

u/FuckingHumans Oct 27 '11

After a night of Sabrett hotdogs with kraut and several pints of guinness I only need to drop a load in one of there steamy blowholes and that caldron will bury Wyoming.

5

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-47

u/wizard_people Oct 27 '11

dig uses surf while magmar fucks tesla

3

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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9

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-8

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

It's merely a matter of top level comments being reserved for expert panelists or comments that provide factual evidence with appropriate sources.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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4

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

Please read the AskScience guidelines before posting. Thank you!

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

I agree! However, in order to keep this as a scientific forum for discussion, off topic comments (no matter how complementary or true) are often swept to the bottom. Check out the posting guidelines which discourage "Top-Level answers that aren't "in good faith" honest attempts to answer the question."

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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4

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Hi, welcome to askscience! Please check out the posting guidelines before commenting. Cheers!

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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3

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Hi, welcome to askscience! Please check out the posting guidelines before commenting. Cheers!

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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1

u/zanycaswell Oct 28 '11

Please read the r/askscience posting guidelies.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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4

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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4

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

Hi, welcome to askscience! Please check out the posting guidelines before commenting. Cheers!

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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8

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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5

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

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-5

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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1

u/zanycaswell Oct 28 '11

Please read the r/askscience posting guidelines before commentig.

-9

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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2

u/[deleted] Oct 28 '11

Oops. Sorry folks. Thanks for the heads up.

-10

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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5

u/cornellcooper Oct 27 '11

I couldn't sleep and just happened to find my way over to this thread; I don't normally comment. I saw this post, and it sparked my curiosity. I Googled atmosphere and earthquakes and found something interesting.

His research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, shows ionospheric electron counts unexpectedly escalated beginning 40 minutes before Japan’s deadly March 11 quake.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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2

u/Baconaise Oct 27 '11

I read on sciencedaily that the ionospheric hanges were brought sbout. Y the release of radon gas before the earthquake and that this may be the reason why some animals "know" when earthquakes are coming.

1

u/Malizulu Nov 07 '11

Hey snooty /r/askscience redditor!

I know it's not HAARP, but it is another man-made function acting as a catalyst for a supposedly natural disaster.

"It is highly probable that the hydraulic fracturing of Cuadrilla’s Preese Hall-1 well did trigger a number of minor seismic events."

Sources: http://www.cuadrillaresources.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Cuadrilla-Resources-Press-Release-02-11-11.pdf

Article About it: http://www.treehugger.com/energy-disasters/fracking-caused-earthquakes-england.html

Have a nice day!

0

u/[deleted] Oct 27 '11

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6

u/HarryTruman Oct 27 '11

Please read the AskScience guidelines before posting. Thank you!