The Super-Volcano Below Yellowstone

Above, a volcano-fueled hot spring. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

As scientists learn more about the super-volcano that lies below Yellowstone National Park, what could happen makes them worried.

The Mercury News reported:

Yellowstone National Park sits squarely over a giant, active volcano. This requires attention. 

Yellowstone has been a national park since 1872, but it was only in the 1960s that scientists realized the scale of the volcano – it’s 44 miles across – and not until the 1980s did they grasp that this thing is fully alive and still threatens to erupt catastrophically. Yellowstone is capable of eruptions thousands of times more violent than the Mount St. Helens eruption of 1980. The northern Rockies would be buried in multiple feet of ash. Ash would rain on almost everyone in the United States. It’d be a bad day. Thus geologists are eager to understand what, exactly, is happening below all those volcano-fueled hot springs and geysers.

Maybe people should see Yellowstone National Park now, while there is still a Yellowstone.

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