NASA plan to save Mankind from Yellowstone supervolcano

Ever put a wet turkey in a deep fryer? What happens if we get the same result ?

a reply to: JoshuaCox

Yes, it is very hard to produce cold, you can mine it from the poles but we are starting to run out because of global warming

I only got one thing to say:

a reply to: silo13

Yea, let NASA fix it, what could possibly go wrong?

Ask the residents of NOLA since the Army Corps of Engineers fixed the levies and the pumps.

Some good points made.

An example -

I learned from an industrial project manager that you can't dump water on a fire in a foundry because it will cause a huge explosion.

I think physics probably works the same for a supervolcano.

originally posted by: JHumm
Ever put a wet turkey in a deep fryer? What happens if we get the same result ?

Dang, EXACTLY what I thought.

originally posted by: silo13
NASA plan to save Mankind from Yellowstone supervolcano

So, what they're essentially saying is, "We're from the government and we're here to help."

Oh, yeah. That works out every time.

wat will they do to Toba /Taupo /campi Flegrei ect ect.....lolll for an fistfull of dollars !

What if they made the drill out of the same materials that make up the heat tiles for the (now defunct) space shuttle.Is the magma hotter than re-entry?

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: SudoNim

But I guess the only saving grace about a potential Yellowstone eruption is that Yellowstone is in America.

What happens in Yellowstone doesn't stay in Yellowstone , Mount St. Helens had an effect on or weather in the UK and that eruption was small beans compared to what Yellowstone would do when it goes.

Yeah... so the only saving grace is the majority of the destruction will be in America.

originally posted by: SudoNim

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: SudoNim

But I guess the only saving grace about a potential Yellowstone eruption is that Yellowstone is in America.

What happens in Yellowstone doesn't stay in Yellowstone , Mount St. Helens had an effect on or weather in the UK and that eruption was small beans compared to what Yellowstone would do when it goes.

Yeah... so the only saving grace is the majority of the destruction will be in America.

America is a great country. The real problem is some of the people who live here.

Weren't they thinking of doing something like that in Italy?

yup

BBC

For some, the site is not so harmless. This is the pilot borehole of the Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project (CFDDP), an ambitious initiative to drill more than three kilometres (10,000ft) into a supervolcano beneath the Gulf of Naples. Campi Flegrei dwarfs Mount Vesuvius, the region’s more famous volcano. It has the power to kill hundreds of thousands of people and even change the planet’s climate.

this was from last year.

a reply to: silo13
This is a tabloid. I call fake news. BUT preemptively tweaking a supervolcano is not teh same thing as tweaking it with certain knowledge it will blow. There's a range of uncertainty between "preemptive" and "certain", we should be very careful how this is portrayed to us.

”This is what we call a Schroedinbug. Things work fine, until you figure out that they shouldn't work, and then they don't work.” - unknown

Being at the mercy of nature is not our strongpoint. We defy, sometimes preemptively. We make it adapt to us.

How about they build a dirt wall around it.. and redirect the ocean to it
Put the whole area as deep underwater as they can.

a reply to: silo13

If you cork up a volcano by cooling the magma chamber, especially a massive natural sub crustal magma plume like the one Yellowstone is formed upon then that is an extremely stupid and dangerous thing to do because the pressure will then just back up until it DOES explode and that explosion will be many magnitudes more severe, the solution is simple but beyond monumental, they need to build large underground tunnel's, heat resistant lining's and new material's which would likely cost trillion's in monetary term's and to bleed off the pressure into side channel's to were area's were the excess magma can be both cooled/disposed off and the gas' bled off and filtered.
Upside a natural heat source and therefore energy source that can not only provide power to the entire US but even perhaps to the entire world for millennia to come.
But the technology's involved would require massive science research and investment's, it can, it could and it should be done this way, excess magma could even be channeled to the coast, it sound's a long way but it is not impossible and there it could be used to form new land, to even be used as a hot building material like a natural concrete but of course that too would require new technology's.

They won't do it though, greed will see the end of our current civilization's and perhaps even our race.


In a normal volcano Magma rises from areas of friction in the crust, often related to tectonic plates were that friction has melted the rock and it find's a way to escape forcing it's way upward through cracks', in these cases the proposed method of cooling the magma chamber could even work.

But in a super volcano like Yellowstone that is not the case, they are a quite different thing to a normal rift volcano, there energy come's from Sub Crustal thermal plume's which rise from far below the crust and are not related to the tectonic plate's at all, Hawaii is another example but smaller than Yellowstone and it has a release mechanism in the form of the Hawaiian volcano's, you can not block a sub crustal thermal plume because it is part of the mechanism of the core of the planet, the planet's thermal circulation system if you like and to do so would be disastrous, to try to cool that plume even deeper down probably even far more disastrous, the only solution is to provide a pressure release valve, make one of our own choosing and harvest the massive amount's of free energy this then present's us with.

To try to cool it will cause an explosion, that explosion WILL probably be an ELE so whomever dreamed this up at NASA need's there head testing and another IQ test because they are frankly incompetent, you can not cool a sub crustal thermal plume without destabilizing the mechanism's of our inner planet and to do so could have extremely dire consequences for the earth itself and the life cycle and food chain created by the natural thermal circulation of the planet.

Yeah, the first link I went to was from Drudge - I didn't even pay attention to the Star. Dang it.

But - that Yellowstone WILL erupt? It does being up interesting food for thought.

How would you 'fix it'???

Better yet - use all that good clean energy?

peace

originally posted by: eManym
It requires energy to create heat. What is the source of the energy that produces the magma? It would be a better idea to eliminate the source or else the proposal will be a waste of tax dollars. Eliminating the source, which I deduce as friction from tectonic plate motion, would not be possible with today's or tomorrow's technology.

The proposal presented is an idiotic idea at best.

The earths core heat is a left over from its forming, plus radioactive decay keeps the heat 'topped up'.

a reply to: silo13

Got to add this, when a supervolcano erupt's it is not always like a normal eruption just larger, it can erupt for thousands of years once it get's started.

The Deccan traps of India are the result of such a string of eruptions from an ancient super volcano, it layered down layers of basalt lava over two kilometers deep in places and over a vast area.

volcano.oregonstate.edu...

They may even be how continent's were first born.

a reply to: silo13

Well that'll kill us all.

Maybe they just figure it's best to get it over with quickly. You know, A Sharp Blade is Merciful, and all that.

originally posted by: yuppa

originally posted by: intrptr


NASA explores space, for one. Two, actually drilling into an active magma chamber is impossible. Even if you did, the hole is too small to effect an eruption, the heat and pressure would melt the drilling apparatus long before it actually penetrated actual magma. All the rock at that depth is plastic, hot, and fluid. Especially above the magma.

If they were somehow able to get near the roof of the chamber at a weak 'spot' (the magma chamber below yellowstone is 7 miles by 50 miles) then insert a nuke and detonate it... who knows.

If ti was possible using liquid nitrogen or inserting some kind of self replicating heat powered reaction to convert the magma into something thicker might help. Introduce heavier elements into it.

Enormous amounts of groundwater sit on top of the magma. Geysers, vents and hot springs bubble at the surface. It has zero effect cooling that much trapped heat.

For an idea see "The Volcano Watchers", 1987 PBS show with Vulcanologists Maurice and Tadya Kraft. See the battle to save the harbor from a lava flow in a little town in Iceland. 08:30 into here: