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Posted on 12/30/2008 3:43:26 PM PST by CE2949BB
A swarm of small earthquakes in Yellowstone National Park is the most intense measured there in years, leaving scientists puzzled.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
I hope it doesn’t blow. Really. One big ash-hole around here is enough. I don’t need the competition.
Not long after the BBC and Discovery Channel teamed up on their Supervolcano docudrama, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois was sufficiently flustered that he wrote Paul Doss, at the time Yellowstone's supervisory geologist, wondering what he should tell his constituents.
Just in case anyone needed more proof that Durbin is a moron. lol
Someone a lot more knowledgable than I about the time periods that the last super-eruptions occurred can probably answer this question...
Do we know what the wind patterns looked like across North America when they occurred? And, if we do, were they the same as they generally are now?
Another question I have is how would the eruption itself effect the weather over the area (and surrounding areas), and would it impact the flow of the jet stream due to the increased heat? How would that affect the fallout of ash and such?
“The zircon and quartz data show the geochemical signature of a waning cycle.”
Oh, goody, so the next one may only be 250 times the size of Mt. St. Helens. I hope neither I nor my grandchildren’s grandchildren are around for that waning blowout.
“the Siberian Trapps...caused by a meteor impact on the opposite side of the planet...”
There is some question as to whether there is something called the Shiva crater off the west coast of India that has left a caldera 400 by 600 kilometers (or miles), that is the same age as the Yucatan crater and the time of the dinosaur extinction. If this is true, then it may be the primary cause of the Trapps. Then again, I always thought it could have been the Yucatan strike. Kind of like a bullet in the brain causing a hemmorage on the opposite side of the skull.
My bad. Of course, I meant the Deccan Trapps, not the Siberian, although I will not be surprised if they do eventually find an exterrestrial cause for the Siberian as well. The Siberian outflow was a lot larger than the very impressive Deccan, but being more than 3 times older it is harder to find a boloid signature. Of course, if something crashed into the Siberian Trapps area, it could have been completely covered up by the magma.
Just had a 3.5
Biggest one in 3 days.
There is some question as to whether there is something called the Shiva crater off the west coast of India that has left a caldera 400 by 600 kilometers
I actually hadn't heard about that potential trigger of the Deccan Traps (the one off the coast of India). The impact I was referring to was the infamous so-called 'dinosaur killer' one in the Yucatan Peninsula. There was speculation by a few experts that it had set off the massive lava flows in India (the Deccan Traps). It's location in the Gulf of Mexico/Caribbean is almost exactly on the opposite site of the planet from the DTs. The basic idea was that the shock waves from the huge impact traveled around the planet in every direction and then met on the opposite side in India.
See Yahoo search results for "Yucatan" + "Deccan":
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22yucatan%22%22deccan%22&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2
Here's some recent data from one the seismographs up there. Anyone care to interpret? :)
I have been looking for a reading on the level of water in Yellowstone lake, but have not been able to find anything.
If there is a change one way or the other it would add an interesting signal to what is happening.
I was wondering about any changes in the lake’s water temp and the gasses being monitored. Haven’t heard anything so far. No news is good news in that respect, I guess :)
I don’t know. When it comes to things like these I would rather know any and all possible information on a potential threat such as this.
I am sure that someone is looking into these avenues, and we will find out sometime soon.
Did volcanic eruptions kill the dinosaurs?
Note in particular the last paragraph. It's unlikely that the Deccan Traps were triggered by the Chicxulub impact; this is the first I've heard of a second impact hypothesis.
Thanks, good article.
Here are some interesting links about the K/T events. The first link refers to work by Sankar Chatterjee at item #10. This link also lists at least 5 potential impactors at the time of the dinosaur extinction:
http://starmon.com/KT_craters.html
Here is another good one from Texas Tech U.
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/vprgs/dinosaurs.php
This site discusses various theories of the Deccan Trapps, including the Shiva Crater aspect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deccan_Traps
By all means Google Shiva Crater, Sankar Chatterjee, and Decan Trapps for more details.
Move?
Mt Pinatubo started with a lot of seismic activity and it didn’t take long for it to let go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Pinatubo
Pinatubo had been dormant for hundreds of years when it reactivated. After the eruption it left a 3 mile wide caldera. Remember all the nasty weather we had for several years thereafter. The 500 year flood of the Mississippi, the major winter storms from the Carolinas to Canada, etc. Imagine what a 30 mile diameter caldera event would do to the climate. Just checked the Yellowstone earthquake activity map again, and there have been more than 20 in the past 24 hours, including one 3.0.
http://www.seis.utah.edu/req2webdir/recenteqs/Maps/Yellowstone.html
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