Whats going on at yellowstone?

Hey guys. I been watching decoding the past on history channel today.
While we're on the subject, scholars have worked over a century trying to decipher the mayan calendar thing. Seems everything has a cycle here, however imprecise it may be to measure.
Would make sense with the ice age theory and others mentioned here. Apparently, this calendar is 10,000th of a day more accurate than ours. Does not sound like a whole bunch come to think of it. Anyway, very interesting nonetheless. We know yellowstone is on somewhat of a cycle, just wish it wasn't so huge and hard to narrow down! Great speculation all. I enjoy your posts! Especially for some comic relief anyway!

P.S. As much chance of blowing as an asteriod hitting us?
Sounds about right. But someone better start watchin the
asteroid thread!

[edit on 12-1-2009 by dodadoom]

reply to post by JustMike


Thank you for that excellent summary!

reply to post by geogeek
Thanks for the response. I just wanted to make sure I was understanding more-or-less correctly the concept of what you'd written. I have noticed in the past couple of years that there appears to be an uptick in the number of mag 5-plus quakes in the region just north of Antarctica, mostly on deep-ocean ridges. Useful to know that there are possible parallels from Canadian studies.

EDIT to add: I follow what you're saying about decreasing pressure on magma chambers. Make perfect sense. Over the years I've been mainly focused on quakes rather than volcanic activity per se -- though sometimes of course they're intertwined -- but if there is an increase in volcanic activity that could have quite an effect on plate/fault dynamics.

(End of edit, hopefully.)

Now, what would be really interesting would be to see if there are any possible tie-ins with Yellowstone and its magma plume.

Just by the way, something I've been wondering about but can't recall being mentioned in the thread: we know that the "hot spot" which is now located below the Yellowstone region has tracked to that location over several million years as the American Plate has moved over the hot spot's (assumedly) stationary position. Has anyone postulated, then, that as it's been round 0.64 m.y. since the last major eruption there, that by now the plume's relative position may again be in reality further NE of where it's generally assumed to be?

In other words, is it not theoretically possible that if there is another major eruption it might not happen within the present caldera at all, but that a new caldera could be created further to the NE?

Just wondering.

[edit on 12/1/09 by JustMike]

Are people even aware that a third swarm just occurred near the lake? You wouldn't be unless you were monitoring gee at H17A.

Updates start here:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Pitchstone Plateau, Yellowstone; Anyone have an idea? Webi is all over the place..

Originally posted by Curious_Agnostic
Anybody else notice how the seismograph lines have been getting thicker over the past few hours? There's not as many big shakes as there were earlier, but their average thickness is increasing. Is that something to worry about?

It is traffic on the road, not a quake.

reply to post by TrueAmerican
Wow, thanks for the heads up! Star for your post!

A new swarm south of the lake? Now, that's really a spanner in the works! They were trending north...now there's activity in the south...

Hope we don't see activity popping up in other places around the rim. That wouldn't be good at all...

Mike

reply to post by JustMike


I have often wondered that myself, i note there are some earthquakes in that direction occasionally .. be interesting to see is anybody has attempted any seismic tomography over that area (don't think they have, however) ... I believe its seismic tomography studies that have given us the current estimation the size of the Yellowstone Magma chamber (gravity surveys could do it also, probably) ...

It will be a while I expect before it does move (10s-100s K years)... but U can sure see its burn path through Idaho (especially) & Oregon on Google Maps topography setting ...

I saw some speculation based on chemical analysis of eruption products that the Yellowstone hot spot might be nearing its end of life ... its cooling down .. or so the researcher would have us believe ....

yellowstone only lukewarm link ...
www.newscientist.com...



[edit on 12/1/09 by geogeek]

reply to post by TrueAmerican


Look at this screenshot I captured from GEE at that time:

img518.imageshack.us...

Most of the action occurred near YLT.

They don't really look natural earthquakes (their waveforms don't exactly look like sudden "snaps"), and their magnitude is very low. Not really classifiable as an earthquake swarm in my opinion. Even the YLT webicorder shows very faint signals. By looking at their time of occurrence it's likely that it was human activity, maybe due to heavy trucks.

www.isthisthingon.org...

Thats a nice 1...@ 500 Mv too...Clipped?
Seems to match up to this @100Mv...

www.isthisthingon.org...




[edit on 1/12/2009 by Hx3_1963]

reply to post by Hx3_1963


Now that's what a proper earthquake looks like (still a very little one though). It occurred close to LKWY. Other stations near the lake (YLA, YTP, YLT) have the same signal at the same time, but fainter depending on their distance from LKWY. Have a look at them.

[edit on 2009/1/12 by Shirakawa]

reply to post by Hx3_1963


Yup, its clipped ...

reply to post by geogeek

Some scientists think that plate tectonics cools the mantle, and mantle plumes cool the core.

www.geology.wisc.edu...
www.sciencedaily.com...
geology.rockbandit.net...
www.yellowstoneinsider.com...
www.newswise.com...

Edit to add more stuff to read!


[edit on 12-1-2009 by dodadoom]

Originally posted by Shirakawa
Look at this screenshot I captured from GEE at that time:

img518.imageshack.us...

That link is down, not working for me.

Most of the action occurred near YLT.

WRONG. That activity occurred closer to the lake, it's just we can't see it right now because of LKWY being down. YLT is too far away from the actual location to see what really happened in gee. I already posted that link in that other thread. It's the closest we've got.

But I know what I saw in gee. Two of those events were formidable, and had the exact same signature as the rest of the bigger swarm quakes. NOT human. I disagree completely.

We've got an effective black zone right now right at the Lake. Closest you are going to get is H17A.

reply to post by Shirakawa


Now you know this IS US.LKWY now...right? Looks to be be back on at some point...

Hello there,

Been very patient and trying to overcome the urge of putting in some comments, questions and remarks until now. Yep, I succombed.
Having been following this thread from the beginning ( and I must say, it became hard at some times), I take the liberty of asking some questions that cropped up during the past weeks in the hope that somebody can answer them.
I am by no means ready to believe a catastrophy is going to happen in the immediate future over at Yellowstone nor in any place nearby although I cannot rule it out altogether as the 'scientists' cannot either.
The value of this thread lies in the fact that it has given and still gives people some extra websites to look into and leaves it up to one's imagination to dwell on possible future consequences of the quake swarm we have all seen in the past weeks.
My thoughts on these occurrences of the last weeks leads me to the following statements:
- YVO/USGS scientists all work in good faith and only as a consequence of the lacking of adequate modern equipment (which, if you read between their lines, they have expressed more than once), as well as the fact that they do not know more than they tell us that is scientifically defendible (guesses are not very scientific) , they have not been able to tell us more about what is going on, if there is somethijg out of the ordinary going on.
- Although I would like to make sure that no immediate threat is imminent, how would it be possible to detect the so called harmonic waves in a seismogram, if the x-axis is divided into 1 minute segments? If what I found on the internet is true, their amplitude is much smaller than what we can see from the seismograms on the various seismographs (only second intervals would give you an idea of them).
- Shoot, I lost my line of reasoning!

- Yellowstone is a harzardous area, a fact nobody will deny, and the latest occurrences could be indeed the foreboding of something to happen, but it could be in a thousand years from now as well as the next day;
- Animals in the area are indeed a good indicator but only in as far as the inmediate future is concerned.
- Having been staring at their seismograns for the last weeks, I cannot detect anything out of the ordinary (as far as that goes for a highly unstable environment as Yellowstone is, and except for the swarms that occurred as they did ), the fear of a major eruption is more due to the absence of reliable data, the absence of detailed info on the (non)functioning of instruments and the fact that most of us are not geologists.
- the fact that I am commenting in this thread reveals that it is worth being continued as it contains a wealth of information that normally nobody would access, ignorant as they would be about its existence.

In short, keep up the good work, keep on the subject, do not be led astray by some fear mongers, pseudo scientists, and the lot, just continue furnishing valuable info on the present and past rumblings and may Yellowstone continue to be a haven for the people and animals in the area.

-

-

YPP?

If I could see it in Gee (or on a fracking oscilloscope) I'd have a better idea.
Some folks think it is a busted sensor, personally I think its picking up activity from the features in that region. After all they don't put sensors 'right on top' of a feature so we have 'no clue' as to what sort of signals they produce.

For every time someone says it is a truck or wind etc. I want a way to plug the waveforms into Winamp or something so I can listen to them.

Basically I think something in 'range' of the sensor is setting it off. Look I know you nay-sayers keep trying to suggest its nothing, however its just as likely it is something. If it goes offline like Lakeway, we would still be in the same position saying one way or another.

Since no-one here can get up there and physically look, all we can do is make hypothesis or guesses as to what is going on.

Heck if I had a private jet, I'd be doing day trips to YS to look (every few days not daily.)

M.

Originally posted by TrueAmerican
That link is down, not working for me.

Try again: Link
If it still doesn't work try this other one.

WRONG. That activity occurred closer to the lake, it's just we can't see it right now because of LKWY being down. YLT is too far away from the actual location to see what really happened in gee. I already posted that link in that other thread. It's the closest we've got.

Look at my pic and you'll understand why they didn't occur near LKWY.
I had YLA, YLT and YLP opened at the same time on GEE. YLT got the strongest signals, and they weren't formidable at all.

EDIT:
Apparently LKWY worked at that time. Look at its webicorder, those signals you can clearly see on YLT here are almost invisible, and it's not a scale problem.

[edit on 2009/1/12 by Shirakawa]

Originally posted by dodadoom
reply to post by geogeek

 

Some scientists think that plate tectonics cools the mantle, and mantle plumes cool the core.

www.sciencedaily.com...


[edit on 12-1-2009 by dodadoom]

Yeah, no problem here with this article ...

If U like far out (but not impossible) geoscience theories , Google the "natural Uranium nuke reactor" at the earth's core theory ... have fun ...




[edit on 12/1/09 by geogeek]

Recent quakes in YS.

I plugged in the recent quakes for Sat&Sun (sent to me by the USGS quake reporter) into Google Earth and the 'recent' 1-10-09 clump looks like it is spread out along a fault. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues.

M.