OLD FAITHFUL COULD GO BOOM

Here’s another potential cataclysm to worry about: A new study has found that supervolcanoes like the one beneath Yellowstone National Park can blow without warning or an external trigger like an earthquake, wiping out millions of people. Supervolcanoes are giant pools of lava deep in the earth that can sit dormant for tens of thousands of years. When they do erupt, the blast is devastating, throwing out so much lava, rock, and ash that they can bury surrounding land for hundreds of miles, darken the skies, and cause as much havoc as a giant meteor strike. To understand what causes these mysterious giants to erupt, researchers filled a diamond-and--platinum capsule with synthetic magma and simulated supervolcanoes’ internal heat and pressure conditions. When enough magma filled the capsule, the transition from solid to liquid magma was found to create enough pressure to punch through more than six miles of the earth’s crust. “The effect is comparable to holding a football under water,” Wim Malfait of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich tells BBC​.com. “When you release it, the air-filled ball is forced upwards by the denser water around it.” There are about 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth; it’s estimated that Yellowstone’s could erupt with 2,000 times the force that Mount St. Helensdid in 1980 and cover several states with lava and ash.