Peering Inside Yellowstone’s Supervolcano ( mapping shows new magma chamber and it is a biggie !)

The article goes on to say there is no danger of an emanate eruption... I would hope they are correct on that...!

A giant reservoir of magma and hot rock beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano has been found and imaged. The newly found reservoir lies 12-28 miles below the surface, and is four-and-a-half times larger than the shallower, hot melted rock zone that powers current Yellowstone geysers and caused the caldera's last eruption some 70,000 years ago.

The volume of the newly imaged, deeper reservoir is a whopping 11,000 cubic-miles (46,000 cubic kilometers), which is about the volume of Long Island with 9 miles of hot rock piled on it, or 300 Lake Tahoes. The discovery begins to fill in a gray area about how Yellowstone connects to a far deeper plume of heat rising up from the Earth's mantle.

news.discovery.com...

a reply to: 727Sky

Whistling past the graveyard. Yikes.

a reply to: 727Sky

2% melted rock isn't to exciting, but who knows that percentage could rise.

a reply to: 727Sky
i read this myself...
made me a bit uneasy.

The part of the story that puts the doom porn to rest,

The data also reveal that the shallower magma zone is about 9 percent melted rock, and the newly found lower zone is 2 percent melted. Neither is a giant chamber of magma and neither is in any danger of erupting -- contrary to popular misconceptions -- say the researchers.

but that is not exciting.....
The title is misleading, the OP added to it with this part

( mapping shows new magma chamber and it is a biggie !)

when the story actually says this,

Neither is a giant chamber of magma and neither is in any danger of erupting -- contrary to popular misconceptions

Tsk tsk bringer of doom porn, for shame for shame.

a reply to: 727Sky

Well, I just...

I don't even...

I need to move.

Very interesting - here's another article. What I'd like to know is where exactly is the lower magma chamber situated? We know that the plume is moving North-East, so the location should give us an indication of where the next caldera will eventually form.

a reply to: 727Sky

They mentioned this at Watt's too.

Someone in the commentary pointed out how they are always telling us there is zero danger, but at the same time, they've only mapped this magma chamber at Yellowstone how many times recently? At each time, they discover it's bigger than they thought, certainly bigger than what they found before.

Given that they know so little about supervolcanic systems, how do they know it's just that they are finding out more about the chamber and not that the chamber itself has actually changed?

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: 727Sky

They mentioned this at Watt's too.

Someone in the commentary pointed out how they are always telling us there is zero danger, but at the same time, they've only mapped this magma chamber at Yellowstone how many times recently? At each time, they discover it's bigger than they thought, certainly bigger than what they found before.

Given that they know so little about supervolcanic systems, how do they know it's just that they are finding out more about the chamber and not that the chamber itself has actually changed?

They state clearly the lower chamber only has 2% melted rock, so no it is not filled up and ready to blow.

a reply to: TinfoilTP
Talk about nitpicking. Seriously.

Yes, the op is right. It is a biggie.

It alone has a volume 2.5 times that of the Grand Canyon.

Source

I'm pretty sure most people would consider that a "biggie"

Why do volcanoes erupt in the first place? IMO, there needs to be an accumulation of water, which turns into steam. If the steam has no venue of escape, pressure builds up to the point to where the volcano blows its top.

With the Yellowstone caldera, there are numerous areas where the steam is vented at geyser locations. I will agree with the scientist on their zero threat assessment. There won't be an eruption at Yellowstone unless there is an unknown pocket of steam with no venue of escape.

originally posted by: TinfoilTP

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: 727Sky

They mentioned this at Watt's too.

Someone in the commentary pointed out how they are always telling us there is zero danger, but at the same time, they've only mapped this magma chamber at Yellowstone how many times recently? At each time, they discover it's bigger than they thought, certainly bigger than what they found before.

Given that they know so little about supervolcanic systems, how do they know it's just that they are finding out more about the chamber and not that the chamber itself has actually changed?

They state clearly the lower chamber only has 2% melted rock, so no it is not filled up and ready to blow.

That's not what I said.

I said: How do they know there haven't been changes? If they have mapped it recently, why didn't they uncover the full extent in the recent past? If they didn't, did they miss the full extent because they weren't looking or because it wasn't there. If it wasn't there, then there have been significant changes. Any change to a system like that with that potential is worrying. No, explosion isn't imminent so far as we know, but if the magma chamber has been growing and expanding, something we may not know, then are we witnessing the process of a monster preparing itself to blow at some point in our near future?

And if we are, shouldn't we be preparing for that instead of patting ourselves on the back and saying, "Well, at least it's not all melted rock, so explosion isn't imminent." Fact is that we just don't understand these systems very much, so we don't know. We do know less about them than traditional volcanic systems which we still don't know enough about to predict accurately.

a reply to: eManym

Erm, no. Volcanoes erupt when the pressure of magma (including gases) within a fully charged magma chamber pushes upwards and finds a weak spot. Sometimes the plug of solidified lava within the main vent from the last eruption leads to a concentration of pressure that eventually fails catastrophically, leading to a very violent eruption (like Vesuvius in AD79). Sometimes the initial vent gets blocked and everything goes sideways (like Mt St Helens in 1980).

With Yellowstone the geysers don't have anything to do with the relief of pressure. The thing is too damn massive for that. They are instead a sign of what happens when groundwater meets hot rocks in the plumbing. When geyser activity increases to the point where you get geothermal explosions, that's a sign that a supervolcano is waking all the way up. In which case, get on a plane and hop a continent or two.