Super + Volcano - To Be Stopped

Originally posted by esecallum
the technology to stop volcanos is very simple and before i tell you i assert exclusive owenership of this particular idea to stop volcanos exploding.

As others have said, your ideas are interesting but not doable. What you're proposing is the equivalent of draining an olympic sized swimming pool with a soda straw while standing on the edge of the concrete walkway around the pool.

Supervolcanos are vast. You would have to carpet Colorado with boreholes (one every foot or so) -- and it takes months plus a million or more dollars just to drill one 20,000 foot oil well, and there's no guarantee that this will hit any lava pocket or chamber.
www.slate.com...

They're also deep. You'd have to drill down 20+ miles just to get below the Earth's crust. Maximum depth we can go to is about 38000 feet
en.wikipedia.org...

Unless you've got some sort of magic going, the limits of drilling depth (which won't take you to the magma) and the cost of the drilling plus the area of the volcanic spot are working against your solution.

That, and the pipes aren't wide enough for lava. Pahoihoi lava is fairly viscous and it's not going to run through a 16 inch pipe (pipes for oil fields are 16-30 inches in diameter. Many of our readers couldn't squeeze through a 30 inch pipe.)

While it my not have been the best idea..It is still a very important subject that we need to be discusiing..Because eventually it's going to erupt..Seems like we should be trying to find a way to somehow control it or weaken it..Because once she blows life as we know it will most likely not excist...

[edit on 4/21/2007 by gotanybob]

Originally posted by gotanybob
...But considering it took like 24 years to drill 7.5 miles its just not possible today..






[edit on 4/20/2007 by gotanybob]

no it did not take 24 years to drill 7 miles.they never drilled continously.

why would we need to drill that far anyway..??


in any case we dont need too.

look i quote:-

"Each of Yellowstone’s explosive caldera-forming eruptions occurred when large volumes of “rhyolitic” magma accumulated at shallow levels in the Earth’s crust, as little as 3 miles (5 km) below the surface. This highly viscous (thick and sticky) magma, charged with dissolved gas, then moved upward, stressing the crust and generating earthquakes. As the magma neared the surface and pressure decreased, the expanding gas caused violent explosions. Eruptions of rhyolite have been responsible for forming many of the world’s calderas, such as those at Katmai National Park, Alaska, which formed in an eruption in 1912, and at Long Valley, California."


from here:-

pubs.usgs.gov...


see?
no need to drill 24 miles.


we are drilling to relieve the pressure.

why do you people try to derail the issue with stupid questions like transporting molton rock using pipes...?

Why is it such a big deal?

that is not an issue at all.

the molton rock is simply transported to the ADJACENT steam turbine power station as a source of heat and then used to mould for houses or mould for large size bricks...

adjcent means 100 metres,... no! no! lets call it 10 metres
or better still make it zero metres...because magma is vicous and wont move according to you.

is that ok for you?

if you really have a problem with transporting magma then JUST PUT THE BLOODY POWER STATION RIGHT OVER THE HOLE IN the GROUND DIRECTLY.

so as it comes directly from the ground in... gives off the heat/power...is poured into moulds.

PROBLEM SOLVED.

NO MORE TRANSPORTING ISSUES.



and as explained above we DONT NEED to drill 24 miles only about 2 miles at the most or even less.


remember there is NO CLEAR CUT BOUNDRY.

Originally posted by esecallum
why do you people try to derail the issue with stupid questions like transporting molton rock using pipes...?

Excuse me, but you made the suggestion of using pipelines in your opening statement...

..the resulting high pressure molton lave would the be transported using using pipelines..

..if you really have a problem with transporting magma then JUST PUT THE BLOODY POWER STATION RIGHT OVER THE HOLE IN the GROUND DIRECTLY...

If you can't/won't accept anyone else's suggestions or constructive criticism of how to make a workable solution out of the idea that you originally proposed then you're not likely to get very far at all...especially not if you shout in caps and swear at anyone who challenges your idea



Ok...lets try again

the molton rock is simply transported to the ADJACENT steam turbine power station as a source of heat and then used to mould for houses or mould for large size bricks...

1)How would you transport molten rock, viscous or not, at 000's of degrees C?
2)How would you remove the gasses in the molten rock to be able to create a useable building material?

(the reason I ask the second question is that the formation of bubbles in cast materials cause structural weak points that can cause the casting to fail unexpectedly under stress)

What would your solution be?

Originally posted by esecallum
look i quote:-

"Each of Yellowstone’s explosive caldera-forming eruptions occurred when large volumes of “rhyolitic” magma accumulated at shallow levels in the Earth’s crust, as little as 3 miles (5 km) below the surface. This highly viscous (thick and sticky) magma,
see?
we are drilling to relieve the pressure.
why do you people try to derail the issue with stupid questions like transporting molton rock using pipes...?
the molton rock is simply transported to the ADJACENT steam turbine power station as a source of heat and then used to mould for houses or mould for large size bricks...

How else do you intend to transport lava then? Not to mention in that quote you shot yourself in the foot, "highly viscous (thick and sticky)" it won't go anywhere unless it explodes, what you want is basaltic magma, like Hawaii.

adjcent means 100 metres,... no! no! lets call it 10 metres
or better still make it zero metres...because magma is vicous and wont move according to you.

No, it's not just us who says that a viscous liquid won't move, for example, try making syrup flow, now try it with something at or above 1000K.

if you really have a problem with transporting magma then JUST PUT THE *snip* POWER STATION RIGHT OVER THE HOLE IN the GROUND DIRECTLY.

Are we talking Geothermal power plants or relieving pressure here? at the start it was relieving pressure, so what is this about exactly?

so as it comes directly from the ground in... gives off the heat/power...is poured into moulds.
PROBLEM SOLVED.
NO MORE TRANSPORTING ISSUES.

No, only the 2 miles to the surface of transportation.

remember there is NO CLEAR CUT BOUNDRY.

I was just doing a little searching on the net..There isn't much of anything on how to stop or control a volcano..But theres a wealth of info on why you can't lol..I did see something about how bombs were used to force an eruption on 2 different occasions..But those weren't super volcanos...

[edit on 4/21/2007 by gotanybob]

LMAO... there is no way ANYONE will be able to stop a volcano. If nature says that its going to blow... then it will blow.

I never saw roaches trying to stop my foot from stomping them.

LMAO... there is no way ANYONE will be able to stop a volcano. If nature says that its going to blow... then it will blow.

Haha!! Bad choice of words.. Let me clarify..When I said stop I didn't mean stop an eruption..But more along the lines of stopping it from being an extinction type of event..If it were possible to some how lessen the destructiveness of it..Maybe it won't erupt in our lifetime..But eventually someone will have to deal with it..Not just Yellowstone either..How many known super volcano's are there anybody know???

Originally posted by gotanybob
Not just Yellowstone either..How many known super volcano's are there anybody know???

Off the top of my head, Long Valley Caldera in California (not technically a supereruption, 400 cubic kilometres too few). That was 760,000 years ago, and the biggest in that area to date.

Lake Taupo is another, in New Zealand. The lake formed after a supereruption 26,500 years ago, and it has had erupted 28 times in the last 27,000 years, most recently in 181CE with 100 cubic kilometres of ejected material.

And then the Famous Toba Eruption, which nearly killed the Human race.

The Toba eruption was the latest of a series of at least three caldera-forming eruptions which have occurred at the volcano. Earlier calderas were formed around 700,000 and 840,000 years ago.

To give an idea of its magnitude, consider that although the eruption took place in Indonesia, it deposited an ash layer approximately 15 cm (6 in) thick over the entire Indian subcontinent; at one site in central India, the Toba ash layer today is up to 6 m (20 feet) thick and parts of Malaysia were covered with 9 m of ashfall.

Possibly the largest eruption within the last 2 million years.

And If you thought they were bad, I hope we never see anything like La Garita Caldera sized:

The scale of volcanism was far beyond anything known in human history. The resulting deposit, known as the Fish Canyon Tuff, has a volume of approximately 5,000 cubic kilometers. That is more than enough material to fill Lake Erie. For comparison, the May 18, 1980 eruption of Mt. St. Helens was only 1.2 cubic kilometers in volume. The area devastated by the La Garita eruption must have covered a significant portion of what is now Colorado, and ash could have fallen as far as the east coast of North America and the Caribbean. It was one of the largest known eruptions, if not the largest, explosive eruptions to have occurred in Earth's history.

That was about 26-28 million years ago.

Sources:

WIKI

Thanks for that info apex..That last one sounds like a super volcano thats been "Super-Sized" lol..Thats insane..It might just be easier to go find another planet to live on lol..

Originally posted by citizen smith
?

Excuse me, but you made the suggestion of using pipelines in your opening statement...

..the resulting high pressure molton lave would the be transported using using pipelines..

..if you really have a problem with transporting magma then JUST PUT THE BLOODY POWER STATION RIGHT OVER THE HOLE IN the GROUND DIRECTLY...

Ok...lets try again

1)How would you transport molten rock, viscous or not, at 000's of degrees C?
2)How would you remove the gasses in the molten rock to be able to create a useable building material?

(the reason I ask the second question is that the formation of bubbles in cast materials cause structural weak points that can cause the casting to fail unexpectedly under stress)

What would your solution be?




i have already expained that.once the drill has gone down deep enough mixture of molton rock/superheated gasses will flow up through the bore hole like an oil gusher...


dissolved gases come out of molton rock the same way you shake a fizzy drinks bottle and the gas will come out very very quickly from the molton rock due to the high temperature.molton lava rock will not fail suddenly due to bubbles therefore and in any case we are making moulded 1 or 2 story houses.The molton rock material is free and virtually limitless and we can make the walls extra thick.i suggest you try to break a brick made from molton rock 1 foot across.


to the other poster we are trying:-
1st to save america from destruction.
2nd we are solving the energy crises using geothermal energy.
3rd cheap affordable housing from molton rock...

in that order.




[edit on 22-4-2007 by esecallum]

[edit on 22-4-2007 by esecallum]

Originally posted by esecallum
i have already expained that.once the drill has gone down deep enough mixture of molton rock/superheated gasses will flow up through the bore hole like an oil gusher...
dissolved gases come out of molton rock the same way you shake a fizzy drinks bottle and the gas will come out very very quickly from the molton rock due to the high temperature.

Are you trying to describe an eruption, because it sure seems like it .


to the other poster w are trying:-
1st to save america from destruction.
2nd we are solving the energy crises using geothermal energy.
3rd cheap affordable housing from molton rock...


Well, I don't think this would work, and as I and others have said, we can't stop a small eruption, why try to stop Yellowstone? We would have a tiny chance of success.

And why don't you try to get permission to build a Geothermal plant in YNP?

Originally posted by esecallum
..in any case we are making moulded 1 or 2 story houses.

ok..so this leads me to my next question: What materials would you construct the casting shuttering from to contain the molten lava whilst it sets?

Whatever material you use for the formwork would have to able to be heat/corrosion resistant enough to be re-used for it to to be an economical solution

i suggest you try to break a brick made from molton rock 1 foot across

Its not a matter of whether I could exert enough stress on the block to make it break, but that the block would have to be able to withstand many tons of compressive and shear stresses caused by the buildings' own weight, plus th e added loadings from wind/snow/human inhabitants.

The concept as a whole may not work, but casting building blocks for construction could be an angle worth concentrating on.

There's a wealth of architectural/structural engineering sites that you could research on to follow this particular area...here's a site I can recommend as somewhere to start

Originally posted by citizen smith

Originally posted by esecallum
..in any case we are making moulded 1 or 2 story houses.

ok..so this leads me to my next question: What materials would you construct the casting shuttering from to contain the molten lava whilst it sets?

how do you set molton steel when it is cast?

why are you asking stupid questions about established methods and practices.

are you an america hater trying to divert attention to trivia?

your country where ever it is will not escape.

Originally posted by esecallum
how do you set molton steel when it is cast?

molten steel isn't so viscous either, which you can't exactly say about lava. And anyway has anyone ever used solidified lava as a building material before?

are you an america hater trying to divert attention to trivia?
your country where ever it is will not escape.

Why would any of us hope for a super eruption in America exactly?

And while any country would not escape the effects, America would be worst affected, the longer term climate effects being the main problem everywhere else.

BTW esecallum, have I made your ignore list? You never seem to quote my posts, I feel left out.

Originally posted by gotanybob
Haha!! Bad choice of words.. Let me clarify..When I said stop I didn't mean stop an eruption..But more along the lines of stopping it from being an extinction type of event..

If it is an extinction type of event... then it is inevitable. It WILL blow and cause an a extinction of a race or species. I'm not shooting down some people's hope (if it were to erupt), but it is simply inevitable. Humans can ONLY speed up the process of an eruption. I've never heard of any country, that stopped/lessened the destructiveness a volcano (forget about Super-).

.Not just Yellowstone either..How many known super volcano's are there anybody know???

To be honest... its the first time I've EVER heard of a super-volcano. I thought Mauna Loa is the largest volcano on earth. Looks like I was mistaken

Originally posted by apex

Originally posted by esecallum
how do you set molton steel when it is cast?

molten steel isn't so viscous either, which you can't exactly say about lava. And anyway has anyone ever used solidified lava as a building material before?

are you an america hater trying to divert attention to trivia?
your country where ever it is will not escape.

Why would any of us hope for a super eruption in America exactly?

And while any country would not escape the effects, America would be worst affected, the longer term climate effects being the main problem everywhere else.

BTW esecallum, have I made your ignore list? You never seem to quote my posts, I feel left out.

i will honour you by quoting you...

viscosity is a function of temperature..

we can move tons of MOLTON steel in steel foundrys but YOU SAY WE CANT move molton lava...

this guy needs to go back to
soldified lava is just bloody rock...
nothing special.

the whole bloody earth is made from molton lava
including pyramids....

and the GROUND UNDER YOUR FEET........ nothing to be frightened off..


now lets move onto PART 2



[edit on 22-4-2007 by esecallum]

[edit on 22-4-2007 by esecallum]

Originally posted by esecallum
how do you set molton steel when it is cast?

Depends on what kind of detail you are casting...but usually it's by sandcasting but these casts can only be used a certain number of times and would be prohibitively expensive in terms of materials and labour to make on a 1-2 storey house-size basis. The technology would have to be adapted due to lava being a completely different material to steel, and doesnt flow as freely as steel does when molten

why are you asking stupid questions about established methods and practices.

I'm asking questions, because as an architecture student, I'm curious as to whether your idea could work as a solution to build low-cost sustainable housing components...and an 'established method and practice' is only so, because no one has yet questioned why we cant come up with an alternative to what is already established.

The only stupid question is the one that doesn't get asked!

are you an america hater trying to divert attention to trivia?...your country where ever it is will not escape

Asking technical questions on how aspects of this volcano idea could work has nothing to do with American politics/culture/society.

Originally posted by esecallum
viscosity is a function of temperature..
we can move tons of MOLTON steel in steel foundrys but YOU SAY WE CANT move molton lava...

So to get it to the temperature at which we can mould it easily, we should heat it up further in order to do this? That would take a lot of energy, particularly in the volume required to reduce the power of a Super-eruption.

soldified lava is just bloody rock...
nothing special.
the whole bloody earth is made from molton lava
including pyramids....

So have you wondered why we no longer build most things out of rock? We can use steel and concrete instead, as rock, while strong, is very heavy, and to go very large requires a lot of it just to support the structure let alone anything you want to hold up.

I think the idea of producing power from the volcano is perfectly good, there are plenty of power stations that will use similar principles to heat water to turn the turbines, and IMO there should be more.

As far as "lancing the boil" to prevent a super volcano, suppose in theory yeah, in practise magma will be anywhere from 800 deg to 1300+ deg C and will have the same mass as SOLID ROCK!

In order to have any effect at all you would have to remove 100's of cubic KILOMETERS of the stuff, just say a cubic meter has a mass of 3 tonnes what would you do with it all, that would be some serious transport, and the stuff don't cool quickly.

Also, and most seriously! this type of volcano is a cauldra, that is to say a massive depression in the earth (think witches cauldron, that’s where the name derives), what happens is that a huge mass of lava gradually gathers under it, raising the ground until the pressure is so great you get the super volcano event, which is lots of eruptions over a wide area, the sudden release causes the collapse of the roof of the chamber that used to contain the molten rock and gasses. So really it’s not only the explosions you have to worry about, it’s the massive IMPLOSIAN too.

In terms of accidents while producing power that would make Chernobyl look like a power station passing wind.

The pressure that will ultimately cause the thing to blow is ultimately the only thing keeping it as stable as it has been throughout human history. You've got more chance of picking the winning numbers to every lottery draw that has ever been drawn and ever will than you have of preventing the eventual event! In fact IMO the only thing we can passably do to affect it could be to cause it to occur sooner.

At least its being monitored, that should minimise any loss of life.

Peace