WEBVTT - The Truth About Supervolcanoes 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.080 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.280 --> 0:00:14.640 Forward Thinking. Hey there, welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast 0:00:14.760 --> 0:00:17.160 that looks at the future and says, I don't know 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.080 where I'm I gonna go when the volcano blow. I'm 0:00:20.160 --> 0:00:25.160 Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today, yeah, 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:30.200 today we're gonna talk about Lauren and something terrifying. Super volcanoes. 0:00:31.800 --> 0:00:36.240 A volcano was super volcano? Yeah? Now is a super 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:39.920 volcano bigger than an ultra volcano? Or less? I know? 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:42.839 It has a cape on it and during the day 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.680 it's a mild mannered reporter for a local newspaper. You know, 0:00:46.800 --> 0:00:49.239 people want to know. I feel like we've gotten this 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:53.280 question before. Is a super volcano going to erupt and 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:56.160 into the world or at least wipe out a huge 0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.600 percentage of species on Earth? And I can understand that 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:03.400 fear because I actually this, uh, this idea sort of 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:07.320 entered my mind and infected me with strange fears years 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:10.760 ago back when I read a book. I read a 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:15.440 book called The Road by Cormick McCarthy. What a cheerful 0:01:15.480 --> 0:01:18.080 book that was. It is a very good book, but 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.000 It is not a cheerful book. It's sort of a 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:24.000 I don't want to say too much about it, you know, 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:26.000 go read it if you're interested, But it's a story 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:31.080 of a journey in a very desolate post apocalyptic landscape. Um. 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:34.880 And I was wondering after I read the book, Huh, 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.520 I wonder what it is that the author had in mind, 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:41.560 because he never said what it is that happened that 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:45.520 sort of ruined the earth. Frequently in these post apocalyptic 0:01:46.560 --> 0:01:49.880 media's media's, yes, that is totally the way that you 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.440 pluralize that word. Um. You no one ever tells you 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:55.919 exactly what happened, or if they do, it gets cheesy. 0:01:55.920 --> 0:01:57.920 And I think that's why the rest of them don't sure. 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:01.480 And so the question is wondering here, like was this 0:02:01.720 --> 0:02:05.040 supposed to be like a nuclear war or was it 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:08.280 supposed to be like an asteroid impact, some kind of 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:12.520 a natural, purely earthbound event. Yeah, yeah, I didn't know. 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.640 But it describes a scenario where like all the plant 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.800 life is dead, and it's very cold, and the sky 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:23.560 is always gray and dark, and there's ash everywhere, and 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:26.240 and I wondered until I read somewhere on the internet, 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:28.160 I don't remember where it was now, this was years ago, 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:30.200 but I read a blog post with somebody having a 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.600 theory that said, oh, well, obviously what has happened in 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.040 this scenario is that it was an eruption of the 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:40.280 yellow Stone supervolcano. And that makes a lot of sense 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:43.680 from the as you read the book, if you think 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:47.040 of it in those terms, the conditions that are mentioned 0:02:47.080 --> 0:02:49.959 in the book seemed to go pretty well. Was something 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:53.919 like that. Yeah, I think it's a very good possibility. 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:57.079 I mean, it's also possible that the author didn't actually 0:02:57.120 --> 0:02:59.960 have any one particular thing in mind. But and ultimately 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:02.800 it doesn't really matter, that's not the point of the story. 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:04.640 But it is interesting to think that that could have 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:09.440 been the triggering event. Sure, a caveat. Though it's possible 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.000 that it is the triggering event in this story, it 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:17.040 is extremely unlikely that this will actually happen, certainly within 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:19.440 our lifetime. Yeah, we want to be clear that we're 0:03:19.440 --> 0:03:23.000 going to talk about some stuff that is really scary, 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:27.400 I mean tering you know, and it's it's is legitimately 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:31.040 scary stuff. However, we also want to point out that 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:33.800 there is no reason to believe that there is any 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:39.480 oncoming eruption even within like the century or or several centuries, 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.480 that the likelihood of such an eruption happening in any 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:46.720 any given years one and seven hundred thousand. That was 0:03:46.760 --> 0:03:50.720 one of the figures I saw. So, uh, let's start 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.400 off by saying, we're going to talk about what could 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:57.279 happen with a super volcano eruption, but let's also acknowledge 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:59.760 there's no indication such a thing is going to happen 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.200 in time soon. Yes, and I imagine big friendly letters 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:07.280 on your screen that just say don't pan. Yes, yes said. 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.000 It definitely makes me feel better. And now I want 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:13.320 some something that is almost but not quite exactly unlike tea. 0:04:14.200 --> 0:04:17.200 I mean, raining burning ash and lava everywhere, but don't 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:21.760 panic because it's because yeah, like like you said, it's true. 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:25.080 I think many, um many people who have explored the 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:29.720 possibility of a super volcano eruption, especially specifically the eruption 0:04:29.720 --> 0:04:33.760 of the yellow Stone super volcano in North America, have 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:36.720 sort of pursued it with a kind of like you know, 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:40.720 playing up the drama and like, oh, this this looming danger. 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:44.560 We we do want to say at the beginning, it's 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:48.040 not very likely yeah, it's it's calm yourself down. It's 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:50.800 kind of the similar look at what would happen with 0:04:50.880 --> 0:04:54.000 the doomsday scenario of an enormous asteroid heading towards Earth. 0:04:54.040 --> 0:04:56.320 It's one of those things that you know, it's important 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:59.280 to know what you're up against in the unlikely event 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.679 that had happened, because if you play the long game, 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.200 and we're not talking about your lifetime or the lifetime 0:05:06.279 --> 0:05:09.480 of the next like five generations, I'm talking over the 0:05:09.520 --> 0:05:12.840 span of thousands of years. If you play the long game, 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:18.120 it will happen eventually. But the key word there's eventually. 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:19.960 And the important thing is to say, all right, well, 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:23.400 what can we do with this knowledge? And we will 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:28.680 talk about what some serious science researchers are are planning 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:33.240 for in in case this happens to happen, um, because 0:05:33.240 --> 0:05:35.960 we'll have some warning, y'all. But in the meanwhile, let 0:05:36.040 --> 0:05:39.719 us define what a super volcano is. Right. We're not 0:05:39.720 --> 0:05:41.680 going to get to what to put in your volcano 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:46.159 kit yet. Okay, yeah, what is a super volcano? Okay? Well, 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:48.840 I was curious about this, so I looked it up 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:50.960 and it seems to me that one of the ways 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.720 that scientists measure the magnitude of a volcanic eruption is 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:59.919 the volcanic explosivity index or the v I, which sssive 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:01.960 the index that's so great it sounds to me like 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:04.880 a Tenacious D album. Yeah, the v E I. So 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.599 it's a numerical score for how bad it done blowed 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:12.280 up that makes sense, ranging from zero to eight. And 0:06:12.360 --> 0:06:14.760 it's a sign based on a number of criteria, like 0:06:15.480 --> 0:06:20.400 the volume in cubic kilometers of ejected pyroclastic materials, all 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:22.719 the hot stuff that comes out of the volcano in 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:29.640 cubic kilometers. Yes, yes, dwell, well, but it's some of 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.240 these scores. It's like point zero zero one cubic kilometers. 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:37.520 That's somewhat more comforting. I suppose a right, how high 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.839 the eruption column reaches into the sky. And then also 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:44.480 they're like subjective qualities about the character of the eruption, right, 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:50.680 I think it was brassy or exactly, you know, classy eruption. 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:55.240 Right's right. So it's kind of similar to the Richter scale. Actually, 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:57.640 it's similar to the Richter scale that we use for earthquakes, 0:06:57.720 --> 0:07:00.359 like the Richter scale at the upper level. Also, the 0:07:00.440 --> 0:07:04.400 v e I at least it's the scores are logarithmic, 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.000 meaning that an increase in one number to the next 0:07:08.360 --> 0:07:11.280 is actually an increase in an order of magnitude. So 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:14.640 from one number to the next could be a dramatic 0:07:14.840 --> 0:07:17.800 increase in the actual output of the volcano. Right, So 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:20.320 I'm gonna give you the examples of those upper levels. 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:24.120 So a five on the v I is uh, it 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:28.360 corresponds to one cubic kilometer. That's a little bit less 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:30.960 than a quarter of a cubic mile. Yeah, of of 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:35.000 ejected of what's called ejecta, all this stuff that comes 0:07:35.000 --> 0:07:37.800 out and then settles down on the ground. These words 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:40.720 are great. Yeah. So the so the nineteen eighty eruption 0:07:40.760 --> 0:07:44.040 of Mount St. Helen's was a five, and that that 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.120 was a big eruption. Yeah, that was huge, But it 0:07:47.160 --> 0:07:50.920 was a five. Okay, wait six? Who here was alive? 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:53.720 And that during the nineteen eighty amount St Helen's eruption 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:56.960 just me, okay, let's keep going. It wasn't, but I've 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.440 seen pictures. Yeah, not go on. A six core spunds 0:08:00.480 --> 0:08:06.040 to ten cubic kilometers. That's about two point four cubic miles. Yeah, 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:11.840 A seven corresponds to about a hundred cubic kilometers twenty 0:08:11.920 --> 0:08:14.080 four cubic miles. You can see how the math is 0:08:14.080 --> 0:08:18.600 working out here, and an eight corresponds to a thousand 0:08:18.720 --> 0:08:25.720 cubic kilometers two miles. Okay, So one way of defining 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:29.239 a supervolcano is that it's a volcanic eruption that's greater 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:33.400 than an eight on the v e I eight or 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:36.760 great so, so a thousand cubic kilometers are more, Yeah, 0:08:36.760 --> 0:08:39.600 which translates to about two hundred forty sometimes people say 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:44.000 about two hundred fifty cubic miles of ejecta, all this 0:08:44.280 --> 0:08:47.120 hot stuff that comes up out of the volcano and 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:50.760 then settles down on the Earth. Now, people don't people 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:53.840 don't always use the v I because it has some limitations, 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:57.280 like it can't measure equally across all time scales like 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.480 way back into the past. Um. And it does measure 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.360 the release of volcanic gas, which can actually be one 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:07.719 of the most important effects of volcanic have a very 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:12.040 long lasting climate effect. Yeah. Um, So a less complicated 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.280 metric is just that level that volume of ejecta we 0:09:15.280 --> 0:09:18.040 were talking about, So a volume greater than a thousand 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:22.680 cubic kilometers of stuff. But a thousand cubic kilometers I'm 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:26.160 having trouble picturing in my head. Give me, give me 0:09:26.200 --> 0:09:30.280 a concept here. I tried to come up with a couple. Uh, 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:33.920 it's a lot, so it doesn't really compare much to like, 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:38.160 you know, this mini buckets. It's do you remember the 0:09:38.280 --> 0:09:43.000 comment six? And then a couple of Russian names. It's 0:09:43.080 --> 0:09:45.240 the one that the e s a rosette emission and 0:09:45.880 --> 0:09:49.079 ye okay, so yeah, you remember that comment. And then 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.280 that was a wonderful emotional time seeing that lander set 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:55.520 down on the comet. It was beautiful. But now imagine 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:58.960 because that comment had a volume of twenty one point 0:09:59.120 --> 0:10:06.679 four cubic kilometers, So the smallest possible supervolcano eruption ejects 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:12.040 about forty seven of this commet's worth of pyroclastic material. 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:16.839 So that comment forty seven times burning hot raining down 0:10:17.120 --> 0:10:20.000 on the earth. So we need forties seven probes to 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:27.080 lent is. I think I might have taken the analogy. Yeah, 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:31.600 another comparison, A thousand cubic kilometers is more than the 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:35.440 volume of Lake Titicaka in Peru. If you want to 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:38.320 look up this lake on the internet, look up a picture. 0:10:38.480 --> 0:10:42.240 It's big. A thousand cubic kilometers is also more than 0:10:42.400 --> 0:10:45.760 double the volume of Lake Erie in North America, which 0:10:45.840 --> 0:10:49.880 is four three cubic kilometers. This is, this is huge, 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:54.840 and these really big eruptions get bigger than a thousand 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:57.400 cubic kilometers. But so we should we should put it 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:01.120 in perspective how often these things happen. Large eruptions are 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.920 much less common than small eruptions. Eruptions that register low 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.960 on the v I scale happen all the time. There's 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.080 one happening right now, They're they're always going on. The 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:14.320 middle of the scale gets pretty rare, and the top 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:16.760 of the scale is very rare. In fact, there have 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:22.600 been exactly zero supervolcano eruptions in recorded human history. Uh, 0:11:22.640 --> 0:11:27.120 there have been no supervolcano eruptions in the entire Holocene epoch. 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:32.840 But there have been supervolcano eruptions since humans have existed. 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:35.000 And one example that I thought would be good to 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:39.360 talk about would be the Toba supervolcano eruption about seventy 0:11:39.360 --> 0:11:42.680 four thousand years ago. Yeah, that happened on the island 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:46.600 of Sumatra in present day Indonesia, and it included at 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:51.080 least two thousand, eight hundred cubic kilometers of stuff. That's 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:54.320 about six hundred and seventy two cubic miles. I did 0:11:54.320 --> 0:11:57.199 not do the calculation for how many comets that is, 0:11:57.320 --> 0:12:00.000 but that's a lot of comments. I did a calcula 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:02.120 lation of my own in order to put it into 0:12:02.160 --> 0:12:07.560 something vaguely understandable and yet not helpful at all. Uh. 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:11.440 There are some one point one trillion gallons in a 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:15.200 single cubic mile, so the stuff that came out of 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:22.800 this volcano equalled about seven hundred and forty trillion gallons. Wow. Sure, 0:12:23.040 --> 0:12:26.000 it's a bunch um like, like billions of tons of 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:29.720 hot ash and rock flowing onto the surrounding area, plus 0:12:29.880 --> 0:12:33.160 hundreds of cubic kilometers of of ash and gases spewing 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:36.679 into the atmosphere. Um. It was so violent that the 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:41.559 mountain containing the volcano collapsed, uh, leaving what's now Lake Toba, 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:43.600 which is the largest volcanic lake in the world, with 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:47.080 a surface area of some one thousand, one hundred thirty 0:12:47.160 --> 0:12:49.760 square kilometers or four d forty square miles in a 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:55.160 depth of about five or uh feet. That's just fifty 0:12:55.200 --> 0:12:59.080 square miles less than the area of Los Angeles for comparison, 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:07.480 that's the lake leftover, Yes, that's the crater. Researchers out 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.720 of Oxford University think that the the gases that it 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:14.960 put out circled the entire globe, and that the ash 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:19.800 covered a span from the Arabian Sea to the east UM, 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:23.640 across the entire Indian subcontinent and too into the South 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:27.520 China Sea in the west UM and then uh some 0:13:27.679 --> 0:13:32.400 like three thousand kilometers south into the Indian Ocean. UM. 0:13:32.480 --> 0:13:35.720 And that's just matter that scientists have collected and confirmed 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.280 as being from this eruption so far. So obviously, an 0:13:39.360 --> 0:13:43.120 eruption like that is not just a negative local event, 0:13:43.240 --> 0:13:45.920 Like it's not just that you'd worry about getting caught 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:48.960 in the falling ash and hot rock, which would suck. 0:13:49.120 --> 0:13:50.920 But no, but now this is I mean, unless you 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:54.320 consider a local event a continent um. In that case, 0:13:54.360 --> 0:13:57.240 sure to it's local um. But but no, that this 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:01.520 was this was big and the result of cooling effect 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:06.079 as everything that's spewed out started reflecting sunlight, caused global 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:08.920 weather effects and may have in fact influenced the earth 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:12.400 slip into a particularly cold era of the ice ages. Yeah. 0:14:12.440 --> 0:14:16.360 In fact, I read about a theory that this event 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:20.080 may have had something to do with human genetic history. Yeah, 0:14:20.360 --> 0:14:24.720 combined with climate data, some genetic data that researchers have 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:29.480 been looking into from humans around the time, might indicate 0:14:29.520 --> 0:14:32.400 a huge dip in the number of human people who 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:36.320 were reproducing around the time of Toba's eruption. Uh, Like 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:43.160 this eruption might have nearly driven us to extinction. Wow. Well, 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:47.720 that that's scary and crazy and kind of cool and amazing. 0:14:47.840 --> 0:14:52.200 But it's also like not the only time in history 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:56.800 that volcanic activity would be associated with extinction. Oh, certainly. Well, 0:14:56.840 --> 0:14:58.400 And I also do want to point out that there 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:02.040 were a lot fewer humans like Homo sapiens running around 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:05.240 right seventy four thousand years ago then there are, say today, 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:09.120 we're in a kound of a vulnerable position anyway, yes, uh. 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.280 And in fact, when you talk about volcanic activity being 0:15:12.320 --> 0:15:16.280 associated with mass extinctions, every single mass extinction has been 0:15:16.320 --> 0:15:21.240 correlated with volcanic activity. Not necessarily that the volcanic activity 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:25.440 directly caused the mass extinction but likely contributed to it, 0:15:25.840 --> 0:15:30.040 didn't help. Yeah, Now, when you're talking about major volcanic activity, 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.000 help is not something that would immediately spring to mind. 0:15:33.080 --> 0:15:36.200 You might be crying it, but that's not what's certainly 0:15:36.240 --> 0:15:40.160 not aiding the planet. As far as flaming salamander, you're 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:43.560 probably not excited. So well, first we should say, I mean, 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:47.440 what is a mass extinction. A mass extinction is basically 0:15:47.560 --> 0:15:53.360 a period um when a huge number of species on 0:15:53.520 --> 0:15:57.640 Earth completely die out all around the same time. And 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:00.760 this doesn't actually mean it's a like all at once, 0:16:00.840 --> 0:16:02.720 like they all died on the same day. This can 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:05.840 happen over over many, many years, you know, like thousands 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:08.760 of years or even millions of years on the geologic scale. 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:13.160 But looking back across geological history you can see these 0:16:13.240 --> 0:16:17.240 happening very very suddenly. There's sort of like spikes in 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:21.240 die off on a geologic scale. It's sunden for if 0:16:21.280 --> 0:16:24.040 you were living through it, it would it could be 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:27.600 an entire it could be multiple lifetimes, multiple multiple lifetimes. 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:29.640 So uh. In other words, we're not going to say, 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.240 like the dinosaurs died out on a Thursday. That's not 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:35.120 what we mean. When did Yeah, but not all of 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.960 them all on one Thursday. I would argue that Thursdays 0:16:37.960 --> 0:16:43.240 had not been invented yet, so at any rate, raptors lives, 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:46.600 they might have been very fond of Thursday. They did 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:51.240 not call them thursdays, they called them boy those were 0:16:51.240 --> 0:16:54.720 the days at any rate. So at the end of 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:59.480 the Triassic Period, about half of the species living on Earth, 0:16:59.680 --> 0:17:04.040 both on land and in water, went extinct, and scientists 0:17:04.119 --> 0:17:07.400 found that the cause was likely the massive eruptions that 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.120 had produced enough lava to bury the entire United States 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.720 under three feet of it um. If if you had 0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:16.440 added all all the eject up, that's how much it 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:18.919 would have. You know, you could have covered uh the 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:21.280 Earth with three or the United States rather with three 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:23.560 ft of lava uh. And this happened around the time 0:17:23.600 --> 0:17:26.800 that Pangaea, which is the super continent, was breaking apart. 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:30.159 So this was all due to tectonic forces. And the 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:33.119 eruptions themselves weren't a single event. It wasn't like there 0:17:33.200 --> 0:17:37.040 was one massive supervolcanic eruption after which there was this 0:17:37.160 --> 0:17:40.520 massive amount of lava. It was a series of eruptions 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:46.439 that took course over six hundred thousand years. So again 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:49.880 not one of those you know, singular events. We as 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:54.040 humans often think about things as like a singular event. 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:56.880 For one, it makes it a lot easier to understand 0:17:56.960 --> 0:18:00.520 and talk about and uh and to our lives are 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:05.000 very short compared to geological time scale, but in truth, 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:08.600 it happened over hundreds of thousands of years. However, that 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.359 was the event that would lead to the opportunity for 0:18:13.040 --> 0:18:17.480 dinosaurs to spring into certain niches and and take over 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:19.960 and become the dominant life force for quite some time. 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:25.200 And then the Cretaceous Tertiary boundary, the KT boundary, that's 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:27.680 when we talk about how all the dinosaurs all went extinct. 0:18:28.720 --> 0:18:33.000 So the biggest popular theory for a very long time 0:18:33.080 --> 0:18:35.359 was that an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. There was 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:38.840 an asteroid impact which caused global climate change and that 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:42.240 wiped out the dinosaurs, And that's still very much part 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:46.840 of the prevailing theory. However, there's also a lot of 0:18:46.880 --> 0:18:50.879 support growing support and in a large consensus building for 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:56.360 the idea that volcanic eruptions had already created the situation 0:18:56.400 --> 0:18:59.520 where the asteroid was kind of the finishing blow. So 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:03.080 it was and that the asteroid was solely responsible for 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:07.080 dinosaurs going extinct. It was that conditions were primed for 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:09.600 that to happen because of the volcanic activity that had 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:16.440 already taken place largely in India. So, yes, these these 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:20.919 volcanic eruptions have been correlated with uh with extinctions, but 0:19:20.960 --> 0:19:23.639 correlation and causation are two different things. Obviously, It's a 0:19:23.680 --> 0:19:26.679 lot more complicated than just pointing at a single source 0:19:26.720 --> 0:19:29.520 and saying this is what caused everything to die out. 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:32.679 I think a lot of us maybe I'm speaking for 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.200 everybody else. When I think of volcanoes, I often think 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:38.560 of just the immediate view of you know, the idea 0:19:38.560 --> 0:19:40.520 of lava streaming down the side of the mountain, and 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:43.639 that that, to me, is represents the the immediate danger. 0:19:44.359 --> 0:19:48.160 But as we've discussed, that's just one of the many 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:51.040 things that you have to worry about volcanic eruption. Yeah, 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:53.240 and on a global level, it's it's much more likely 0:19:53.280 --> 0:19:55.640 to I mean the same way that a nuclear blast 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:58.320 will kill a certain number of people in a certain area, 0:19:58.600 --> 0:20:00.880 but the fallout from that us just a lot more 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:04.560 wide reaching, right exactly. Yeah, it's a very good analogy. 0:20:04.720 --> 0:20:09.240 So we wanted to talk specifically about the Yellowstone supervolcano. 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:14.600 This was this was I mean, it'll it'll eventually erupt, 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:18.800 It'll there'll there will eventually be a super eruption. Whether 0:20:18.880 --> 0:20:21.640 that eventually is like any time within the next few 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:25.000 thousand years, who can say, Um, it's not likely, and 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:27.399 if it does happen, we will likely have lots of 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:32.000 warning signs before it happens. But the reason why we 0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:34.720 are we're specifically focusing on this is one we are 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:36.680 based in the United States, so it's one of those 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:39.920 things that, um, is easy for us to focus on. 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:43.480 To the reason why I even suggested we do supervolcanoes 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:46.360 is there was a mini series like kind of made 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:48.920 for TV movie thing that came out in the mid 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:52.560 two thousand's called Supervolcano and it recently got added to 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:56.560 Netflix and I watched it, and its specifically deals with 0:20:56.560 --> 0:21:00.040 the Yellowstone supervolcano. And it's interesting. I mean all, a 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:03.640 lot of the research they did for that is essentially correct, 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:06.160 or at least was correct based upon what was known 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:08.520 in the mid two thousand's, so it's not like they 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:12.280 went crazy with the research. I will say that, Um, 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:14.920 it's a lot like the articles that we've read where 0:21:15.400 --> 0:21:18.119 you get all the horrible things that will happen, and 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.280 then a sentence at the instinct this probably won't happen. 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:23.119 It felt like it was an entire mini series that 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:27.000 was made that way. But at any rate, UM the 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:30.640 super volcano at Yellowstone has had three major eruptions. I mean, 0:21:30.640 --> 0:21:34.000 there's been lots of different smaller eruptions, but three major ones, 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:37.399 two of which meet the super volcano criteria of the 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:40.720 two or two hundred and fifty cubic miles of ojecta. 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:43.120 So the first happened two point one million years ago, 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:46.840 so quite some time ago, the second one point two 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:50.359 million years ago, and the more recent one six hundred 0:21:50.440 --> 0:21:54.720 forty thousand years ago, so not in recent memory certainly. 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:58.439 And that first eruption was about six thousand times the 0:21:58.480 --> 0:22:00.800 size of the Mount St. Helen's eruption that we talked 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:04.360 about earlier UH, and the latest one caused the collapse 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.520 of the eruption area. This is actually fairly common. Where 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:11.960 a a large volcanic eruption, you typically have a a 0:22:12.160 --> 0:22:17.480 chamber beneath the volcanic area that is containing the molten material, 0:22:17.920 --> 0:22:20.720 and when it empties out, often the weight of both 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:25.240 the the UH surface above it and the ejecta causes 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.720 a collapse. So the latest eruption caused the collapse of 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:31.240 of this eruption area, which created a sunken crater called 0:22:31.280 --> 0:22:34.879 a caldera, and it's big. It's fift nd square miles 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:37.560 in area, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island. 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:41.320 You could fit Rhode Island into the volcanic caldera of 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:45.679 the Yellowstone Supervolcano. I don't recommend you do it, because 0:22:46.000 --> 0:22:47.959 everyone in Rhode Island would wonder why you pulled them 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:50.959 off the eastern seaboard. They would be pretty mad. They 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:54.240 would no longer be called an island unless they're an 0:22:54.280 --> 0:22:56.439 island in the caldera. I mean, they're not technically an 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:59.320 island anyway, but you'd have even less recent than at 0:22:59.320 --> 0:23:03.640 any rate. Uh So under this park, under the Yelliston 0:23:03.680 --> 0:23:06.520 Park is the magma chamber. Now we've known about the 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:11.200 initial magma chamber for a really long time, um, and 0:23:11.400 --> 0:23:15.719 it's essentially between three and nine miles beneath the surface. 0:23:15.760 --> 0:23:18.359 It depends upon where you are at any point along 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:22.000 the area where the magma chamber exists. And it's tough 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:24.200 to map these things out, you know, we can't really 0:23:24.200 --> 0:23:28.160 dig down to see them. Um. But if you were 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:31.880 to empty out this chamber, you could fill the one 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:35.159 thousand cubic mile Grand canyon two point five times with 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:38.120 the stuff inside it, so two and a half times 0:23:38.160 --> 0:23:41.280 the amount that you would need to completely seal that 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:45.320 crack uh known as the Grand Canyon. But that's just 0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:50.320 the beginning, because in April two scientists found a second 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:54.000 magma chamber underneath the first one and well, and this 0:23:54.080 --> 0:23:56.600 actually answered a lot of questions because they were wondering 0:23:56.960 --> 0:24:00.720 how was the magma connecting to the chamber, like where. 0:24:00.760 --> 0:24:04.160 Obviously it's coming from somewhere around in the mantle region 0:24:04.280 --> 0:24:07.840 of Earth, and there's some sort of plume that has 0:24:07.880 --> 0:24:11.399 to connect the mantle to that magma chamber, otherwise you 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:13.920 wouldn't have it there, right, But they weren't sure how 0:24:13.960 --> 0:24:15.840