Is Our Planet Overdue for an Explosion of a Super Volcano?

And there’s one lurking just underneath Yellowstone National Park.

Transcript

00:00Volcanoes are some of the most powerful and destructive forces planet Earth is capable of.

00:09But while smaller volcanoes explode or seep lava onto the surface pretty much all the time,

00:13supervolcanoes are another story. And now a research team in Indonesia studying the

00:18terrifying geological events says everything we know about supervolcano eruption patterns

00:22could be wrong. It was once thought that after a super eruption, these mega destroyers would go

00:27dormant for ages. But after looking at minerals feldspar and zircon, which act as geological

00:32time capsules, they now believe that supervolcanoes likely remain active and can even continue spewing

00:37lava for thousands of years after they blow. In the case of the Toba supervolcano, it continued

00:42for around 5,000 to 13,000 years. According to the researchers, these types of events only happen

00:48about once every 17,000 years, meaning the superblast has not only a massive effect on the

00:53surrounding area and the world at large, but it does so for millennia. The researchers say

00:57learning more about supervolcanoes like the one underneath Yellowstone is our best defense

01:02against the next inevitable eruption.