[Rockhounds] NASA study proposes way to prevent Yellowstone super volcano from destroying United States

[pmodreski at aol.com]

It's certainly an interesting thought.  But whether this cooling by adding cold water to the hydrothermal water around the periphery could really ever come anywhere near working in practicality... it sounds pretty dicey.


I think there was an error in the units given in this article, by the way.  It says,


"It’s been calculated to contain about 250 billion cubic kilometres of molten rock."



That figure in the "billions" sounded much too large.  A cube volume containing 250 billion cubic kilometers would be 6300 km on a side, or almost 4000 miles; that's like the size of all North America, down to the earth's core.  I haven't tried looking at the original article, but the number quoted must be off by quite a few orders of magnitude.



An actually, I worked on a project related to this, while I was at Sandia National Laboratories in the late 1970s.  Their "Magma Energy Research Project" was to explore the possible feasibility of producing power from hot fluid injected into a magma chamber.  We did some experiments, a lot of theoretical modelling, and some on-site studies in molten lava at Kilauea Volcano.  There are a lot of difficult engineering and geological challenges to really do this!


Pete



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From: Kreigh Tomaszewski <kreigh at gmail.com>
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Sent: Wed, Aug 23, 2017 10:16 pm
Subject: [Rockhounds] NASA study proposes way to prevent Yellowstone super volcano from destroying United States

NASA believes the Yellowstone super volcano is a greater threat to life onEarth than any asteroid. So it’s come up with a plan to stop it erupting.http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/nasa-study-proposes-way-to-prevent-yellowstone-super-volcano-from-destroying-united-states/news-story/68fb6ff011365c7d935141cfd72961f4_______________________________________________Rockhounds mailing listSubscription Services:  http://rockhounds.drizzle.com/mailman/listinfo/rockhounds_rockhounds.drizzle.comList Usage Policy: http://Tomaszewski.net/Kreigh/Rockhounds/Rockhounds.shtml