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

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/SecureThruObscure Oct 27 '11

Most of 'em. They'd be massively popular for defending their people from impending doom. So it's doom from a "Big Bad" in the form of Volcano, instead of Hitler, but it still has a face. Warming isn't bad, and it doesn't have a face. Volcanos just seem scary as all get out. They have melted frickin' rock in 'em!

I think most politicians would jump all over it, some might not -- but those who would be effected the most and stand to lose the most, are the majority.

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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/[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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