Concerns About Yellowstone Volcanic Eruption

Some scientists are expressing a great concern over the potential that the very large dormant volcano at Yellowstone State Park could be moving toward a major eruption. As thousands of people descended upon the Park to observe the solar eclipse on August 21st, they were greeted with a 3.2 earthquake. This quake followed a 2.5 quake the day before. There have been thousands of earthquake tremors in the park this summer.

All of this is of great concern. This volcano is one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world and is the most dangerous one in the United States. Should we experience a major eruption it would be catastrophic for America and the entire world. It could kill people in 15 states and cover one-third of the U.S. in volcanic ash. This would stop air traffic over the U.S. and in other parts of the world for months. The volcanic ash in the mid-west would be so deep that it would take years for the breadbasket of America to agriculturally recover.

Some scientists have become so concerned that they are making plans in a desperate and costly attempt to cool down this treacherous volcanic hotspot. “NASA [recently] announced that it is working on plans to drill six miles down into the volcanically active region and pump water into the magma at high pressures. The water would return to the surface at 662 degrees Fahrenheit, bringing some of the volcano’s heat with it. The project is massive, estimated to cost $3.46 billion, and admittedly risky.

‘The most important thing with this is to do no harm,’ Wilcox, a researcher NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, told the BBC. ‘If you drill into the top of the magma chamber and try and cool it from there, this would be very risky. This could make the cap over the magma chamber more brittle and prone to fracture. And you might trigger the release of harmful volatile gases in the magma at the top of the chamber which would otherwise not be released.’

But the NASA scientists working on the project are convinced that Yellowstone poses enough of a threat that they are willing to risk setting off an eruption.”