yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Supervolcanoes 101 | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

(Dramatic music)

[Narrator] Supervolcanoes are the most violent and complex class of volcanoes. But despite their destructive capabilities, they can also make way for life renewed. Around 20 supervolcanoes are scattered across the planet. They're usually characterized as large depressions in the ground, called calderas, located above multiple openings in the Earth's crust.

In terms of eruptions, supervolcanoes explode at a magnitude of eight, the highest and most violent classification on the Volcanic Explosivity Index. Supervolcanoes undergo a life cycle of three major stages: a surge of trapped magma, a supereruption, and a resurgence. The first stage of a supervolcano's life cycle involves a pocket of magma trapped under the Earth's crust. Called a hotspot, this magma reservoir is fed by a pipeline deep into Earth's molten interior. It grows and builds pressure underground, eventually causing the crust above to be pushed upward.

The supervolcano Campi Flegrei on the west coast of Italy has pushed the ground up several times over the past few decades. At one point, within a matter of only two years, enough magma accumulated to cause the ground to swell up to six and a half feet. The next stage of a supervolcano's life cycle is a supereruption. At this point, the buildup of pressure in a magma reservoir hits a critical mass and then explodes, sending over 1,000 cubic kilometers of tephra, or ash and rocky material, into the sky. The most recent supereruption occurred in New Zealand approximately 26,000 years ago.

The supervolcano Taupo ejected about 1,100 cubic kilometers of tephra into the air, enough material to constitute nearly half a million Great Pyramids of Giza. After a supereruption, a supervolcano undergoes a stage called resurgence. Having dispelled its contents, a supervolcano's magma reservoir collapses and forms a caldera. The Yellowstone Caldera in the United States is currently in resurgence, after a supereruption occurred about 640,000 years ago.

In the time since, freshwater collected in the caldera to form a lake, plants and wildlife returned to reclaim the space, and some of the world's largest geothermal features emerged. Supervolcanoes have created unparalleled natural beauty, all in the wake of some of the world's most cataclysmic events.

More Articles

View All
Warren Buffett, Brian Moynihan Speak at Georgetown
(bell rings) [Announcer] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage Lindsay Bruinsma, an MBA candidate at the McDonough School of Business, John J. DeGioia, President of Georgetown University, Brian T. Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, and Warren …
Is It Okay to Touch Mars?
[Music] Hey, Vauce! Michael here. No rocks from Mars have ever been brought back to Earth, and no human has ever touched anything on Mars. But that’s about to change. National Geographic has asked me, and Jake, and Kevin to talk about Mars because they ha…
Evolutionarily Stable Strategies ft. Richard Dawkins
What are evolutionarily stable strategies? In many cases, it is kind of clear what is the best thing for an individual to do, the best thing it can do to increase its survival with deduction. But there are times when what is the best thing to do depends …
11 MORE Video Game WTFs !!
Vsauce, you’re probably checking out my clip-on flip-up shades and thinking to yourself, “WTF?” which is exactly what we’re talking about today. Vsauce has covered video game WTFS twice already, but we’ve only barely scratched the surface. So, without fur…
The Future of Artificial Intelligence | StarTalk
I think for a lot of people, the word robot conjures up a humanoid robot. I think that’s a little bit different. I try to disavow people of that, because human body—why does nothing—why? Right, we can do that stuff. We’re not some model of anything, right…
How optimizing my sleep is making me limitless
You’ve heard your whole life that you should get eight hours of sleep every single night. It’s advice so common that even your grandma has probably told you that at least three times. But that advice has always annoyed me somewhat because it’s like, yeah,…