Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
A recent study has discovered that a kind of giant lid made of magma could be blocking the eruption of the supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in the US.
According to research recently published in the journal Nature, a volatile-rich layer, located less than four kilometers from the surface, traps pressure and heat beneath it. This could be preventing the volcano from erupting, which would be devastating to civilization.
"For decades, we have known that there is magma beneath Yellowstone, but the exact depth and structure of its upper limit has been a big unknown.
What we have discovered is that this deposit is not extinct; it has been there for a couple of million years, but it is still dynamic," said Brandon Schmandt, a professor at Rice University and co-author of the study.
The results were achieved thanks to a 23,800 kilo vibroseis truck, generally used for exploration in the oil and gas sector, which generated small earthquakes that sent seismic waves and placed a clear limit at about 3.8 kilometers deep.
The Yellowstone supervolcano had its last eruption 70 thousand years ago, when a rhyolitic lava flow formed the Pitchstone Plateau, in the southwest of the Park. According to the US Geological Survey, its last three extremely large eruptions have occurred at intervals of between 600,000 and 800,000 years. (Text and photo: RT)
