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Unread 04-17-2010   #5
Arthax
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Re: Incredible Footage Of The Volcanic Cloud That's Causing Flight Chaos Around The W

"Yellowstone Caldera is one of the largest and most active calderas in the world. The spectacular geysers, boiling hot springs, and mud pots that have made Yellowstone famous -- and even the strikingly beautiful Grand Canyon of Yellowstone through which the Yellowstone River plunges -- owe their existence to the tremendous volcanic forces that have affected the region during the past 2 million years. Cataclysmic eruptions 2.0, 1.3, and 0.6 million years ago ejected huge volumes of rhyolite magma; each eruption formed a caldera and extensive layers of thick pyroclastic-flow deposits. The youngest caldera is an elliptical depression, nearly 80 kilometers long and 50 kilometers wide, that occupies much of Yellowstone National Park. The caldera is buried by several extensive rhyolite lava flows erupted between 75,000 and 150,000 years ago."

--quoted from: http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/...llowstone.html



As you can see, Livordie, I wouldn't worry too much about Yellowstone. Though the statistics say another eruption could happen, the large spans of time shown above makes the likelihood of another eruption there in the next, say, 50 years or so, very unlikely. Most likely the quakes and such are just cyclical events that we've only recently started paying attention to.

These types of disaster shows we see on the Discovery channel in the last decade or so always try to make the dangers of these things seem greater than they really are. You rarely ever hear them mention the ODDS of these things happening anytime soon. They don't want to focus on the numbers.
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