Secular Café: Speedy super-eruptions of super-volcanoes

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Speedy super-eruptions of super-volcanoes May 31st 2012, 08:38 So, what lurks beneath? Quote: The largest volcanoes on our planet may take as little as a few hundred years to form and erupt. These "supervolcanoes" were thought to exist for as much as 200,000 years before releasing their vast underground pools of molten rock. Researchers reporting in Plos One have sampled the rock at the supervolcano site of Long Valley in California. Their findings suggest that the magma pool beneath it erupted within as little as hundreds of years of forming. Quote: "Our study [of crystal formation] suggests that when these exceptionally large magma pools form they are ephemeral and cannot exist very long without erupting," said Dr Gualda. "The fact that the process of magma body formation occurs in historical time, instead of geological time, completely changes the nature of the problem." At present, geologists do not believe that any of Earth's known giant magma pools are in imminent danger of eruption, .... Phew! Quote: .... but the results suggest future work to better understand how the pools develop, and aim ultimately to predict devastating super-eruptions.

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