The Yellowstone Super Volcano More Massive Than Previously Thought

As you all know Yellowstone National Park is actually a gigantic super volcano. The volcano is the whole reason the place formed because without the hot molten rock the water wouldn’t be able to form into steam. What started the debate between the two different ways to measure underground volcano’s either by seismic waves or by electrical conductivity was that some scientists thought it was bigger some thought it was the same as before. When it comes to electrical conductivity scanning “It’s a totally new and different way of looking at the volcanic roots of Yellowstone”, says geophysicist Robert Smith of the University of Utah.

            Scientists have now been able to see much more of the “roots of Yellowstone” and now conclude that there earlier calculations were wrong, turns out that the super volcano is 20 % larger than they once thought to be. The volcano is said to spread over Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho so it’s over 400 miles long. The electrical conductivity scan can only see down about 200 miles underground so they don’t actually know if that’s where it ends or not. So before the electrical conductivity scan was done scientists believed that the volcano was 25 miles by 37 miles wide.  But now they have found out that the plume is about 500 miles long by 400 miles wide and they can’t even see the bottom of it. You can find all of this information at http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110411/sc_livescience/yellowstonesupervolcanobiggerthanthought            Yellowstone National Park is one of the greatest wonders of the world but it’s also a very big sleeping giant. Now that there is a new way to see into the volcano scientists believe that they are now able to better understand them and predict when an event may occur. So let’s all just keep our fingers crossed that it doesn’t happen in any of our lifetimes.