Yellowstone: Big Volcano Ready to Erupt | How the Earth Was Made (S1, E8) | Full Episode | History

earth a 4.5 billion year old planet still  evolving as continents shift and clash   volcanoes erupt and glaciers grow and  recede the earth's crust is carved in   countless fascinating ways leaving a  trail of geological mysteries behind and one of the greatest is right here  at yellowstone national park in wyoming this is one of the world's most geologically  active places shaken by up to 5 000 earthquakes   every year and with more geysers and hot  springs than in the rest of the world combined   why is yellowstone so active how did it form  and why here in the heart of the rockies scientists studying yellowstone  are uncovering a violent past   carved by water crushed by ancient glaciers and blasted by the biggest volcanic  eruptions ever known on the planet and even today yellowstone is one of  the most dangerous places on earth yellowstone national park is one of the  most amazing places on earth and it's unique   it contains some of america's  most stunning scenery   and wildlife that attracts  three million tourists a year to understand where yellowstone came from and why  it is so active today we need to take a journey   back into the distant past of the north american  continent and deep into the earth's interior   yellowstone sits 8 000 feet up  on a remote mountain plateau   primarily within wyoming but stretching  into parts of idaho and montana the park covers 3468 square miles 63 miles  north to south and 54 miles east to west and it's on top of one of the world's most  unusual and deadliest geological structures   what's unusual about the  park are the wildlife unusual   no is the wide open space unusual no  you've got it all over the western u.s   what's unusual it's a very unusual  geology that created the park   yellowstone was founded as the world's  first national park because of the geology   it's this strange geology that attracts  teams of scientists to the park   their task to piece together the story  of the incredible processes that built   this unique extraordinary landscape by  digging deep into yellowstone's past   the geologic history of yellowstone goes back  to the formation of the north american continent   some of the rocks in yellowstone are 2.8  to 3.2 billion year old rocks some of the   oldest in north america only by traveling  back into the past can we figure out why   in this particular location there are  2 400 miles of rivers more than 300 waterfalls and the world's greatest concentration  of 10 000 hot water springs bubbling mud holes   gas vents and geysers what do these features  reveal about this landscape and how it was formed the investigation begins at yellowstone's  star attraction old faithful   it's a key clue to what's  going on underneath the surface located in the southwest of yellowstone  park the geyser puts on an explosive display   every 90 minutes or so blasting out  thousands of gallons of scalding hot water yellowstone is like no other place on  earth there is so much heat coming out here   it's really a singular phenomenon well after about a 90-minute nap old faithful has  roared back to life it wasn't actually napping it   was recharging the temperature of the water was  increasing the system was pressurizing beneath   old faithful is a rather complex plumbing system  filled with caverns and conduits and constrictions   rainwater saturating the ground around the  geyser slowly fills its underground reservoir hot rocks below ground heat the  water under pressure for around   90 minutes suddenly some water  spurts through a tiny five inch wide   crack in the rocks this causes a drop  in the pressure within the water chamber   in an instant thousands of gallons of water  are turned to steam and blasted up into the air when the pressure builds up enough  steam bubbles start rising to the   surface the system depressurizes  and the full eruption can occur   old faithful shows that rocks  below the surface are very hot scientists find clues to a violent past 34 miles   southeast of the hot springs on the shores  of a circular lake called indian ponds as a field geologist my job is to basically  be a rock detective and so i try to determine   what their origin is and what the history  is of that particular rock there we go   okay now in this particular  case let's look at this   this rock when it started it was just a loose  sand you could just put your fingers through it   the solid boulder is formed from  millions of individual grains of sand microscopic analysis reveals the  grains have been cemented together   by chemicals and pressure deep under the ground but how did the rock get to the surface morgan has chemically dated the rocks  and discovered that 3000 years ago   the boulder was blasted out of the ground by  the hot water explosion of a gigantic geyser   you would see boiling water rock fragments and  fine muddy material being ejected up into the air   as high as three to five thousand feet and then  at some point material would start raining down   from this explosion column now you wouldn't  want to be standing next to one of those indian ponds is the crater  that the guys are left behind but it is dwarfed by the crater morgan  has found at mary bay in yellowstone lake morgan has dated this geyser explosion to 13  000 years ago so here we are in the middle of   yellowstone lake and it says you can see  a beautiful day and it's nice and placid   but on the floor of yellowstone  lake it's anything but quiet   morgan's research proves that geysers were  exploding around the lake and even under   the water between thirteen thousand and  three thousand years ago and their size   suggests that whatever was powering them  was huge but is it still active today a clue comes from underwater vents  at the bottom of the geyser crater   they pump out vast quantities  of hot water and gases to find out what's creating the gases  jake lowenstern and his assistant collect   samples from the hot springs  in the center of the park the funnel they use is designed to collect  up gas bubbles before they reach the surface   so that they're not contaminated by ordinary air  let it sit for five minutes let the oxygen get out   yeah it is a very complex mix of gases and but  we have a lot of tools that we can use to try to   unravel this rather complicated information so  we'll look at all of the gases that are coming   out we can learn about the different kinds of  rocks beneath yellowstone and try to understand   how things might be changing from  from week to week or year to year or   decade to decade analysis of the gases  reveals that they are a mix of carbon dioxide   sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide it is the  same mix that is found coming out of volcanoes but the final clue to what's  actually going on underground   is found on the edge of the same hot springs so these are quartz crystals that we collected  on the side of the pool there this stuff is what   remains it gets tossed up it forms a little berm  around the side of the pool it's all beautiful   little quartz crystals some of them have a  little bit of iron staining and other things   but most most of them are nice shades of yellow  and clear quartz crystals like these can only have   formed as a hot molten rock lava flow slowly  cooled after being erupted onto the surface   from deep underground so the crystals are clear  evidence that under the springs is a volcano yellowstone's hot water features all point to  one conclusion yellowstone must be powered by   the heat of a volcano geysers only erupt if the  rocks are hot enough to turn water into steam   gases from underwater have the same composition  as those from volcanoes quartz in the hot springs   must have come from volcanic lava there is an  immense amount of energy coming out of the ground   that's expressed by the geysers the mud pots the  hot springs and the steam vents where's all that   heat coming from it's coming from the molten  rock associated with the yellowstone volcano   but that leaves a big question unanswered in  this gentle rolling landscape where's the volcano yellowstone's unique volcanic geology is  potentially deadly dangerous it makes it crucial   to monitor what's happening under the ground the  yellowstone volcano is a very very active volcanic   system and so it really requires observation  everything that we do here has a research   component but it also has a volcano monitoring  component and you know if if if activity picks   up here we're going to want to know something  about the plumbing system beneath us here   to try and predict when yellowstone's  hidden volcano will erupt in the future   scientists study its geological past part of our task is to look at the landscape  and read the geologic story and there's   so many clues and so much evidence here to  look at that it's a fascinating place to work scientists began investigating yellowstone even  before it became the world's first national park   in 1872 but observations of this  astonishing land began long before that   dating ancient arrowheads shows that native  americans first lived here 11 000 years ago their legends of yellowstone's  angry spirits who made the ground   tremble were passed on to early  explorers such as lewis and clark later reports from trappers explorers and mountain  men like john coulter and jim bridger told   of geysers that fired 70 feet into the air and  spring so hot that meat was readily cooked in them but these were thought to be tall tales  until the 1860s when geologists investigated   and found that the lava flows and hot  vents were signs of volcanic activity but something clearly wasn't right nobody  could actually find the yellowstone volcano   we say that yellowstone is one of the world's most  active volcanoes people come out here visitors   other scientists and they say what do you mean  i i don't see a smoking volcano i don't see a   big steep volcanic crater all the things that  one normally thinks of for an active volcano   so without obvious signs of a volcano  scientists hunted for other clues they would find them in the sweeping forests  of lodgepole pines these are the only plants   that thrive on the poor soil that comes from  a particular type of lava called rhyolite and yellowstone's constant  plagues of mosquitoes also   reveal the presence of that same rhyolite lava the rhyolites are are not very permeable and  so in it creates these little ponds of water   that never go away and those are wonderful  breeding grounds for mosquitoes there are a   lot of mosquitoes if you can't see them  flying around my head so the pine trees   and the insects both indicate that there's a lot  of rhyolite in yellowstone and that's important   because rhyolite lava creates  incredibly violent volcanic eruptions it's much more like a bread dough it's  about a thousand to a million times   thicker or more viscous we put a bunch of gas  in it we can have a very explosive eruption   but if rhyolite lava is that explosive  how big a bang did it produce to find that out scientists  looked not inside yellowstone park   but in a far away river valley at meadowcreek  wyoming cutting down through the land over   millions of years the river has exposed an  unusual thin layer of black rock in the cliff face a nearby road cutting lets investigators  examine the mysterious dark rock if you look at the sample in detail up close  you can see that here's a pumice fragment these   these red fragments here are our little rock  fragments and if we were to make a thin section   of this rock and look at it under the microscope  you would in fact see compressed uh glass shards   the black layer that geologists call  obsidian is actually a type of glass   it's crucial evidence that the rocks  and soil here came out of a volcano because obsidian is forged when boiling hot  ash and gas rapidly cool under great pressure and that's just what happens when hot  volcanic clouds roll out across the landscape the obsidian forms in the very bottom layers  cooled from below and crushed by the weight of   hot debris on top the ash layer that crushed the  obsidian at meadow creek is still visible today   its base is characterized by this very thick  dense obsidian as as the flow came to rest   and was compacted and then above this dense  glass layer is it grades upwards into a tan   sort of region and continues up for about an  additional 30 feet and then up on top of that   as it's exposed today modern soil has  formed and we can see growing up there   various sorts of vegetation trees  and grasses and things of that sort studying the mineral composition of the ash  proved that it came from an ancient volcanic blast   in yellowstone park and there's only one way that  so much ash could have been blasted so very far   away from its source the eruption must have been  larger far larger than anything ever seen by man   so big scientists now label it as a super eruption we're looking at this deposit  from a super eruption and yet   we're over 50 miles from the  source of the of the eruption the geologists have recreated what must have  happened here on the day that yellowstone exploded   incandescent avalanches of ash raced out  of the park in all directions so this is   traveling at very high velocity easily over  100 miles per hour across the land surface   and obliterating everything in its path  it was extremely hot when it arrived here   and perhaps as hot as 1500 degrees fahrenheit to  it twice a pizza oven i mean it's just very hot   so what would it have been like to be standing  on this spot hundreds of thousands of years ago   on the day when the yellowstone  ash cloud roared over the horizon   the impact of this would would be absolutely  unimaginable it would be i think you would be   disarticulated burned and unrecognizable and  it would be very difficult to find any of you all of the evidence about the size of the   super eruption helped solve the  mystery of the missing volcano   scientists realized that the super eruption was  so enormous that it must have blown the volcano to pieces swarms of mosquitoes show that  explosive rhyolite lava underlies parts   of the park obsidian glass 60 miles away reveals  that ash flows spread for miles around yellowstone   and thick layers of debris confirmed how  gigantic an explosion this must have been the problem now is the explosive legacy  that the super volcano left behind   because a deadly danger still lurks  here hidden deep under the ground for nearly a century after yellowstone national   park was established nobody  realized one astonishing fact that the park is located inside one of  the biggest volcano craters on earth   it wasn't until the late 1960s that american  geophysicist robert christiansen realized   that rock formations he had been studying for  several years all around the edges of the park   in fact formed a giant circular ridge he compared his findings on the ground with  a series of nasa pictures taken between 1966   and 1970 confirming that the ring was  the rim of a giant crater 45 miles across parts of the crater rim are still clearly visible  today but the other edge is almost out of sight   finding the crater coincided with  another scientific discovery in a   totally different part of the country in california scientists identified a strange thin  layer of ash buried underneath the modern day soil   the ash matched material from the yellowstone  crater dating the soil layers proved that the   ash arrived 640 000 years ago scientists at last  had a date for the yellowstone super eruption ash was later found all over the western  u.s confirming the huge size of the eruption   at least 80 times the size of the 1883  explosion that destroyed the island of krakatoa   and 2500 times bigger than the  1980 eruption of mount saint helens the almost unimaginable size of the yellowstone   blast means that scientists  now call it a super volcano but that creates another mystery  in this peaceful landscape   where is the steaming hot crater that  the volcano must have left behind   today when you're looking out across the landscape  you see rolling hills and and trees so obviously   there's not a big hole left in the ground from  the eruption of the of the yellowstone volcano   so something else has happened one of the  first processes was in filling with all sorts   of volcanic lava flows and if you look just  down from the landscape toward those trees   you'll see one of the oldest lava flows that  happened after the 640 thousand year eruption   over hundreds of thousands of years this flow has  weathered into soil and been covered with trees but elsewhere in the park are a  different type of lava deposit   still bear a vegetation because this lava was  still erupting up until about 100 000 years ago the later lava was far less explosive  and more runny and cooled slowly   it smoothed the harsh volcanic landscape  into yellowstone's softer countryside that made yellowstone at first more tranquil but there's evidence here that the  land was soon buried once again   this time by freezing snow and ice the ice  that polish the rocks has a story to tell it offers crucial evidence about volcanic  forces still shaping the park to this day   its tail unfolds through the tiniest of clues   scratches on the rocks reveal  which way the ice was moving they show the glaciers always slid the same way   outwards and downwards from an  ice cap at the heart of the park the only conclusion is that  something pushed up yellowstone park   so much higher than the surrounding  hills that glaciers formed on the top   but what force could possibly be powerful enough  to have raised yellowstone's peaks up into the air the first clue to help answer that question  comes from yellowstone's numerous earthquakes   when the ground deforms it creaks and groans  like a stradivarius violin and the creeks and   groans are essentially earthquakes the quakes  are recorded by seismometers all over the park the earthquake monitoring is a critical  part of the picture because it's basically   it's the stethoscope that we have to really  see and sense the heartbeat of the system smith is investigating a  puzzling geological mystery   yellowstone has up to 5 000 earthquakes a year   even though it's in the stable heart  of the north american continent   scientists needed to know what was happening  underground to shake the park so much   to find out they plotted the precise locations  and depths of earthquakes under the ground so why are there so many quakes the answer had to wait until the mid-1980s   whenever more powerful computers first  let scientists see into the earth   seismic waves spreading out from earthquakes  travel rapidly through cold rock but slow down   when the rocks are hot the varying wave speeds  can be translated by computers into color 3d   images revealing exactly where hot rock lies  under the ground seismic waves propagate   through the earth just like x-rays go through a  body so we use the same physics to reconstruct   the structure of the geolo of the earth beneath  us the seismic waves have outlined the park's   underground structures revealing a graphic  history of what's happened under yellowstone they reveal this gigantic reservoir of  molten rock which created yellowstone's   crater when lava erupted out and the ground  above collapsed into the space left behind and the seismic waves still slow down under  yellowstone today showing that the magma   chamber still lurks under the park it's more than  30 miles long 25 miles wide and 10 miles in depth   but its size alters from year to year as  it fills or empties with semi-liquid rock   at an incredible 1500 degrees fahrenheit this  is the hidden beating heart of yellowstone park   the way it moves deforms the ground above  explaining the fault lines and the earthquakes   they produce and its heat ultimately powers all  of yellowstone's hot water pools and geysers subterranean yellowstone is giving up its  secrets seismographs record thousands of   earthquakes in the park and the evidence of  earthquake waves reveals a massive magma chamber   miles under yellowstone's surface but the  yellowstone investigation is far from finished   because there's evidence of another even  more monstrous sized structure under the park by the beginning of the 21st century scientists   investigating how yellowstone was made  had images of what lay under the park   but there was a problem technology only  allowed a view of a few miles below the surface   then as more and more data was fed into more and  more powerful computers there was a breakthrough in april 2006 geologists published  new diagrams of hot structures   far deeper under the park and computers painted  more detailed pictures the results were startling   investigators saw for the first time the  sleeping monster that lies below yellowstone park snaking down hundreds of miles into the earth   far deeper than the relatively shallow  magma chamber is a colossal volcanic pipe nobody's certain how deep it goes but they  can picture it down to 400 miles or more   twice the distance between washington and new york smith makes an educated guess about  what the underground plume is like our   best estimates now as we start doing the  physics and the dynamics of these things   it's like a conduit of melted rock like a chimney   that chimney called a hot spot pumped up  enough heat to melt the rocks of the crust   and fill the overlying magma chamber which then  erupted to blast out yellowstone's vast crater understanding how the crater formed was  an important moment for the investigation because there was evidence that similar  eruptions had happened before many times before throughout the 1960s various teams of geologists  studied the snake river plain to the southwest   of yellowstone park and found traces of ancient  volcanic craters the crater rims had long been   eroded but their outlines were confirmed by  aerial pictures over the following decade they ran in a straight line along the plane  heading for the heart of yellowstone park   on average each crater was a couple of  million years older than its neighbor   investigators realized that these are the  remnants of earlier supervolcano explosions   an unbroken chain stretching  far back into geological history   it seemed clear that time after time the  hot spot had blasted out a super eruption   and then moved on the hot spot appeared  to have traveled hundreds of miles but that posed yet another riddle how could a hot  spot anchored to the core of the planet be moving an important clue had been found in 1985  by american volcanologist william scott he realized that plotting the  location of thirty thousand   earthquakes around yellowstone  produced an amazing pattern the quakes traced out a giant v  v-shape on the surface of the earth the v-shape wrapped around the hot spot's location   it seemed at first to confirm  that the hot spot was still moving   rippling up the land around it with fault  lines and tens of thousands of earthquakes but the real answer lay with  the theory of plate tectonics   it showed that it's the american  continent not the hot spot that's moving and the chain of craters on snake river  plain is there because for millions of years   the moving american continent has continually  pushed new land over the stationary hotspot   but as the north american plate moved across this  source of heat it pops through the lid and creates   the hot spot track that's the sink of a plane  yellowstone is just the active component today   the repeated hotspot explosions on land have  made yellowstone unique other hot spots have   been identified around the world like the one  that has created the island chain of hawaii   but yellowstone is the only place where a hot  spot has erupted in the middle of a continent each of the earlier explosions blew the original  mountains to pieces then the land smoothed over   with later flows of more runny lava that was  released from deep under the earth's crust   multiple strands of evidence combined to  reveal yellowstone's slumbering monster   the gigantic hot spot plume lying under the park  earthquake maps show the hot spot's location   seismic waves reveal the depth of the plume and earlier craters prove regular  super eruptions over millions of years   all of which leads to the most frightening  question of all when will yellowstone erupt again measuring the amount and geographical  spread of ash fall from yellowstone   super eruptions produced some terrifying figures 640 000 years ago the eruption  poured out around 240 cubic miles   of material enough to bury the whole of  new york state tens of feet deep in ash   if it happens again thousands will die  and vast areas of the united states will   be buried in volcanic debris but  when will yellowstone erupt again one clue to when that next eruption will happen  comes from investigating the eruptions of the past the hotspot punches out a super  eruption on average every 600 000 years and the last one was 640 000 years ago but geologists expect that there will be  warning signs before yellowstone explodes again   volcanic eruptions are usually preceded  by an increasing number of earthquakes the quakes are a sign that underground  volcanic chambers are filling with molten   rock and expanding to stretch  and deform the land up above yellowstone park usually experiences an  average of 12 tiny earthquake tremors every day   most are too weak to be felt by tourists and  register only on the most sensitive seismometers   but in early 2009 more than four  times as many quakes started striking   every day over one 10-day period there  were more than 500 quakes some of them up   to magnitude 3.9 powerful enough to frighten  the visitors and put the scientists on alert   there's a second indicator of  increasing volcanic activity if more molten rock does inflate the  underground chamber the ground above will rise and that too seems to be happening right now unusual evidence to prove it comes from an  unlikely source the waters of yellowstone lake around 100 years ago small steamships carried  tourists on sightseeing trips across the lake   but one of the ships caught fire and sank  forever below the surface of the lake but now yellowstone's astonishing geological  forces have resurrected the ship's remains   from their watery grave here we have  a boat which burnt down to water level   and so this tells us something  about the deformation of yellowstone   and basically what's happened is that the floor of  the lake has risen bringing the boat out of water   the reappearance of the wreck shows  that land under and around the lake   is rising because of the  expansion of the magma chamber   even more alarmingly the rate at which it's rising  seems to be increasing in geological terms a huge   area of yellowstone park is positively soaring  up into the air faster than it's ever done before the biggest uplift of all has been recorded  just a few miles from the shore of the lake   there's a gps system here a much more  sophisticated version of the one in your car it measures not only its surface position but also  its exact altitude to within fractions of an inch there's a small radio antenna about the  size of your thumb that sits on top of this   steel rod and it's anchored in two to about three   or four feet so if the ground moves up  and down the antenna moves up and down the gps and the land on which  it's anchored are moving upwards   we're above the magna chamber and beginning  in late 2006 this whole area of ground   started to rise at the order of two to three  inches per year and as of today this whole   system right here has risen about that much and  it's still moving today and so we're measuring   and keeping close track of the deformation of  the uplift that we're seeing at this station   but does the uplift mean that yellowstone's  super volcano is threatening to erupt   once again the question of what lies in  yellowstone's geologic future is fascinating and   i and all of my colleagues would love  to know the answer to that question   the scientists keep a careful  watch on the volcano's activity the idea of science is to understand the process   and so we have a responsibility to see how  this system is deforming and how it's working   and we have to be aware there's still a  possibility of volcanic eruptions or earthquakes   after all that's what made this system and there's  no reason to think that vulcanism has stopped the yellowstone investigation has shown  that the park's sleeping super volcano   is still alive and dangerous old faithful's  underground plumbing reveals volcanic heat   obsidian glass tells of a massive eruption  seismographs record thousands of earthquakes   while the earthquake waves reveal  terrifying underground chambers   and the reappearance of a sunken  boat shows that the land is rising and yet the ultimate yellowstone  geological question remains to be answered   when will the super volcano erupt once again   we know there's enough magma left we know there's  enough heat we know that there will be future   eruptions in yellowstone but we don't know if  there will ever be another catastrophic eruption so the investigation is left with a deadly serious  warning on the time scale that geologists work to   a coming super eruption in yellowstone may  well be right around the corner that corner   could be ten thousand or a hundred thousand  years in the future or it could be tomorrow   a new and devastating chapter in the  ever-changing story of how the earth was made you

Channel: HISTORY

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Id: THrCVC_XXZA

Length: 44min 52sec (2692 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 20 2021