Earth's Most Destructive SuperVolcanoes 4K

they are eruption so fast so earth-shattering they have changed the history of our plant climate collapse toxic to more mass extinction [Music] worse than the killer asteroid or nuclear war they are Earth's most destructive super volcanoes [Music] North America the time was 640,000 years ago long before humans arrived on the continent [Music] amid the Rockies one of nature's great mountain building projects vast columns of smoke began to rise high into the atmosphere and soon a smoky haze wrapped the globe a thick blanket of ash spread over the western United States geologists have traced this event to a depression in the land known as a caldera in the heart of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming today we venture to Yellowstone to admire its spectacles of steam and boiling mud all around thermal energy is underfoot like a pressure cooker gathering steam the heat escapes in an array of smoldering coal games steam vents and Hot Springs like the famous Grand Prismatic here superheated water rises up from deep below ground then cools and sinks back down in a constant cycle geysers are powered by boiling water that moves up through constricted channels in the rocks when enough pressure builds steam and water escape in jets that can blast high into the air [Music] along the Yellowstone River heat welling up from below softened the underlying rocks to such an extent that water released by rapid melting at the end of the last ice age was able to carve out one of the most spectacular river canyons in the world [Music] visitors to Yellowstone may never suspect they are atop one of the world's largest active volcanoes the last time it blew it sent an estimated 1,000 cubic kilometers of dirt rocks ash dust and soot into the atmosphere it's difficult to grasp the sheer scale of that eruption compare it to recent experience in 1980 mount st. Helens blasted out just 2.79 cubic kilometers of ash less than three tenths of a percent of what Yellowstone ejected in 1991 Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines released 10 cubic kilometers of material along with 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide a volcano twice that size blew up on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa in 1883 it unleashed the equivalent force of 10,000 Hiroshima bombs and tsunamis that killed 36,000 people the same year the Norwegian artist Edvard Monk painted the screen with a sunset likely inspired by the effects of smoke from Krakatoa clouds like blood and tongues of fire arrows hung above the blue black fewer din the city this is anak Krakatau or a child of Krakatoa an island that has risen in the years since it is a modest but unruly cone that may be building again toward another big one sometime in the future [Music] the modern standard was set by the eruption of Tambora eight times larger than Krakatoa in 1850 in its aftermath 1816 became known as the year without a summer crops failed and livestock died in much of the northern hemisphere resulting in the worst famine of the 19th century the public has long been aware of the hazards of an erupting volcano explosions lava and debris flows like the ones dramatized in the movie Dante's Peak the record of recent volcanoes from Tambora to Pinatubo has added an additional global hazard in these images captured by astronauts aboard the space shuttle you can see the sulfurous haze that covered the earth in Pinatubo wake it blocked enough sunlight to send global temperatures down by about a half a degree Celsius Mount Pinatubo erupted at a time when scientists had begun to use high-powered computers to model the response of Earth's climate to large-scale disruptions based on their success modeling the circulation of particles from Pinatubo one group sought to explore the consequences of another type of eruption Limited nuclear war they focused on India and Pakistan two countries that were engaged in a nuclear arms race the experiment assumed 100 Hiroshima sized bars the intense heat of cities burning up sent over 5 million tons of smoke rising into the stratosphere with no rain at that altitude to bring them down soot particles lingered for years they absorbed far more solar radiation than the brighter sulfuric acid particles emitted by volcanoes as a result according to the study global temperatures dropped by one point two degrees Celsius equivalent to the year without a summer after Tambora that shortened the next growing season by 10 to 30 days resulting in widespread crop failures finally in two to three years the smoke began to clear and the climate steadily recovered but those impacts are dwarfed by what would happen in the wake of a supervolcano take the last major Yellowstone eruption 640,000 years ago scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Germany used an ensemble of computer models to study its impact on Earth's climate their virtual eruption sends up a giant cloud of ash and dust that's taken by high altitude prevailing winds in a month's time the cloud has spread over much of the northern hemisphere the simulation tracks the bitter consequences solar radiation Earth's surface falls off in an uneven pattern the darkest point occurs around 18 months after the eruption with the mid latitudes of North America and Europe experiencing a steep drop in sunlight air temperatures fall to hitting their lowest point at 18 months in some places they fall by an average of 10 degrees Celsius that leads to the rapid growth of sea ice in the Arctic more sea ice means that the earth reflects even more solar energy back into space with cooler surface temperatures rainfall levels decline and oceans and land areas retain more carbon dioxide [Music] these factors all lead to a drop in biological productivity with food supplies lasting just weeks or days and some regions human populations would be subject to serious losses from their steep initial drop average global temperatures recover gradually approaching pre eruption levels only after two decades as powerful as the yellowstone eruption was it still does not approach the greatest super volcanoes in history this is toba a large mountain lake on the Indonesian island of Sumatra it's the crater left behind by a super eruption 74 thousand years ago what made Toba super is the sheer scale of the eruption over 14 terrible days towba blasted 2800 cubic kilometers of material into the air that's almost three times Yellowstone it's grim aftermath was a global Cataclysm including a global cold spell and persistent drought one theory holds that Toba brought the human species perilously close to extinction what causes a catastrophe on this scale the answer takes us back to the birth of our son around five billion years ago it began in a swirl of debris likely drawn together by shock waves from a stellar explosion amid the chaos of the early solar system gravity drew clumps of rock and dust and gas together a fiery young planet for molten at first millions of years past Earth's surface gradually cooled but it's interior remained hot add to that heat generated deep within the planet by the radioactive decay of uranium thorium and potassium to this day heat energy is rising steadily from Earth's interior a vivid reminder of the fires that burn inside it the heat makes its way to the surface through a vast middle region called the mantle it punches through where Earth's crust is thinnest in the middle of oceans that causes massive plates that line the surface of the planet to push apart often flooding the ocean floor with lava these oceanic plates collide with thicker continental plates that drives them down into the earth along with volcanism secret ingredients water some rocks when mixed with water melts more readily they form a reservoir of magma deep below ground as more magma enters the reservoir the pressure increases that forces magma up to the surface and a volcano erupts a supervolcano like Toba or Yellowstone begins with a much larger reservoir of magma a recent study showed that the larger it gets the more buoyant the magma becomes amid the solid crustal rocks that surround it over time this buoyant reservoir pushes up on the terrain above it the rock above the magma begins to break channels or dikes formed to release the rising magma the land collapses onto the magma helping to propel it up and out the volcano does not so much erupt as it explodes the thermal features that dot Yellowstone are small in scale yet they too are fueled by an immense dome of magma deep underground by tracking the pattern of seismic waves from small earthquakes scientists have been able to follow it down to its source a kilometer below surface water enters layers of heated rocks then shoots back to the surface in hot springs and geysers deeper still 10 kilometers down they've located the upper reaches of an immense reservoir of magma it measures over a hundred kilometers wide and four hundred kilometers deep scientists now believe it's partly the result of the Pacific Ocean plate diving below North America and partly the product of a hot spot it's similar to a deep plume of magma that fuels Hawaii's volcanoes over the last 16 million years as the continent of North America has moved inch by inch over the Yellowstone hotspot the volcano has reawakened time and again the next of the last time it ejected 5,000 cubic kilometers of material into the atmosphere almost twice as much as Toba towba is known to have erupted at least three times in the last 1 million years there are signs that it's gearing up for another some parts of the caldera including a large island in the middle called samosir have risen due to a refilling of the magma chamber Indonesian scientists recently reported they have detected its presence starting at a depth of 20 to 100 kilometers down the volcano is not active now but it's in one of the most geologically active regions in the world including the nearby Sumatran Fault and the Sumatran subduction zone this region is known for major earthquakes and a string of volcanoes including Krakatoa and Tambora if or when Toba does erupt again it still won't hold a candle to Earth's greatest eruptions rolled back the geological clock to a time around 65 million years ago a giant asteroid slammed into the earth it wreaked havoc on the climate and may have led to the extinction of the dinosaurs the impact coincided with another type of catastrophe that was a time when today's continents were taking shape the Himalayan mountains were beginning to rise and India had not yet crashed into Asia in Central India one of the largest volcanic structures on earth made its presence felt from the so called Deccan Traps the earth literally spilled its guts over a period lasting perhaps thirty thousand years five hundred thousand cubic kilometers of lava flooded onto the Indian landscape the Deccan Traps eruption was about five hundred times larger than the last Yellowstone eruption an even larger more destructive event occurred around 235 million years ago in what's now Russia back then all of Earth's landmasses were joined together in a supercontinent known as Pangaea in a period known as the Permian amphibians and early reptiles flourished insects were everywhere fern plants dominant for eons were beginning to give way to conifers and ponds in the oceans amid vibrant coral reefs invertebrates and fish inhabited the open water then in the geological blink of an eye it was over for a period lasting up to ten million years countless small eruptions generated several thousand times more lava than Yellowstone spreading over an area the size of Western Europe what it brought was not volcanic winter but rather hell on earth the atmosphere became choked with carbon dioxide and methane gas temperatures around the world soared the earth belch deadly toxins including high levels of mercury the oceans turned a ceding their waters depleted of oxygen by the time it was over up to 70% of all species on land and 90% of marine species had disappeared ecosystems around the planet collapsed in what scientists call the great dying and that was not even the largest volcanic eruption in Earth's history for now that honor goes to an undersea eruption that began 125 million years ago creating a plateau 30 kilometers thick called ontong Java it released about 100 million cubic kilometers of magma scientists believe large eruptions like ontong Java or Siberian traps occur where broad regions of magma called large igneous provinces push toward the surface [Music] the earth is popped with dozens of them they are spread out across all the continents and oceans [Music] thankfully these regions have erupted only very rarely in Earth's history super-eruptions on the scale of Yellowstone and Tobin linked to the movement of Custer plates are more frequent perhaps every hundred thousand years or so because so little is known about what triggers them there's no telling when we'll where the next one will occur are we do scientists at Yellowstone are watching for early science earthquakes rising Heath the restless turrets of our planets under pressure someday somewhere the planet will once again vent its rage when it does we can be sure that it will change our world forever [Music]

Channel: SpaceRip

Views: 294,175

Rating: 4.7775502 out of 5

Keywords: volcano, volcanoes, plate tectonics, earth, space, universe, eruption, geology, continents, nuclear war, lava, mt. st. helens, krakatoa, permian, extinction

Id: LVtNvJPU1wY

Length: 28min 4sec (1684 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2019