Ready for more obscured observing?
Rich
for over a year. Nice purple sunsets though.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/15/philippines.volcano.mayon/index.html
Quadibloc
> Remembering back to the 1980's when one of these cruddied up the sky
> for over a year. Nice purple sunsets though.
>
Oh, no, this is terrible news for the people who live there.
But it reminds me of encountering an article about how the plume under
Yellowstone Park was found to be larger than thought. And the last few
eruptions were noted.
Fortunately, it looks like the timing is such that although the next
one is (relatively) imminent, "imminent" means most likely in the year
60,000 A.D..
John Savard
Thad Floryan
Given its prior eruption cycles (from the USGS), the next supervolcano
eruption is overdue and could happen tomorrow or next week -- Christmas
could be "white" not due to snow but due to volcanic ash.
Some fun stuff:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap_YUwdiy8I>
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR1bg_Yf0T4>
<http://store.discovery.com/detail.php?p=84915>
<http://www.aceshowbiz.com/video/download/00010790/>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera>
<http://geology.com/news/2009/the-next-yellowstone-eruption.shtml>
<http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Yellowstone/description_yellowstone.html>
<http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/07/18/wolf.yellowstone.quakes.cnn>
Chris.B
>
> Given its prior eruption cycles (from the USGS), the next supervolcano
> eruption is overdue and could happen tomorrow or next week -- Christmas
> could be "white" not due to snow but due to volcanic ash.
>
Stop complaining! Visibility is down to 50 yards here and it's not
even Christmas yet!
Copenhagen global warming debacle disrupted by heavy snowfall!
God may have had a hand.
In throwing snowballs at Berlus' cronies. ;-)
Quadibloc
> On 12/15/2009 8:36 PM, Quadibloc wrote:
> > Fortunately, it looks like the timing is such that although the next
> > one is (relatively) imminent, "imminent" means most likely in the year
> > 60,000 A.D..
> Given its prior eruption cycles (from the USGS), the next supervolcano
> eruption is overdue and could happen tomorrow or next week -- Christmas
> could be "white" not due to snow but due to volcanic ash.
I was thinking of this recent news story:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091214075225.htm
It gave the dates as 2.05 mya, 1.3 mya, and 642,000 years ago. So the
last two intervals were 750,000 years and 658,000 years. Ah, my mental
arithmetic was off; maybe the year 8,000 A.D..
John Savard
Thad Floryan
Hmmm, seems to be a number of different periods and cycles depending whom
one references. For example, here:
<http://geology.com/usgs/yellowstone-volcano/>
it's stated 2.2 MYA and 640,000 YA for the last supervolcano eruptions
and 70,000 years ago for the Pitchstone event.
Three videos there by the USGS scientist in charge of the volcano observatory
have more information.
At the USGS page here:
<http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Yellowstone/description_yellowstone.html>
the last 3 supervolcano events were 2 million, 1.2 million and 600,000 years
ago, and the last "normal" eruption was 70,000 years ago. Further down the
page they write 2.0, 1.3 and 0.6 million years ago. Obviously some drift. :-)
Regardless of those numbers, there's been a lot of seismic activity in that
area recently with land rising/falling in 10s of cm. That's enough to convince
me to stay at least 750 miles Westward of Yellowstone for the rest of my life.
I'll take California's earthquakes anyday over the hurricanes, typhoons,
tornados and volcanos that plague elsewhere on the planet since with a quake
there's no advance warning (and no anxiety or stress), bada boom the quake
happens for (usually) 10-30 seconds, then back to whatever one was doing before
the quake (unless one was driving on a bridge or in a tunnel during the quake).