Unveiling the Truth: Yellowstone’s Volcano is Calm for Now

For many years, scientists in and neighboring Yellowstone National Park have utilized seismic waves — envision conducting an MRI of the area — to chart the hot semi-solid materials beneath the Earth’s crust.

Currently, a collective of researchers from various states has integrated solar storms and lightning into their diagnostic methods, harnessing the planet’s natural electricity to enhance the visualization of what exists up to 30 miles below its surface.

“The obstacle we encounter in geology is the scarcity of direct observations of what’s genuinely occurring deep below the surface. Boreholes provide just a small glimpse of what’s actually happening, and the most profound borehole reaches only that deep. Hence, we must identify alternative methods to observe the conditions beneath the surface, and now we possess a few,” stated Michael Poland, the scientist overseeing the U.S. Geological Survey Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “And that’s incredibly exciting.”

The research, which was recently published in the renowned journal Nature, contributes to the ongoing speculation regarding when the Yellowstone caldera might erupt again. The newly clarified depiction indicates that a large-scale eruption is likely to be tens or even hundreds of thousands of years away.

Utilizing electricity to solve mysteries

While the Yellowstone area presents numerous phenomena to examine above ground, such as thousands of minor quakes, eruptive geysers, bubbling hot springs, and vibrant pools of colors, studying underground conditions proves to be exceptionally challenging.

A limited amount penetrates the Earth, and even less manages to reach 20 to 30 miles beneath. Scholars have achieved advancements using seismology, but when Oregon State University’s Geophysics Professor Adam Schultz and his team completed mapping the geo-electric framework of the U.S., their focus shifted specifically to the Yellowstone area.

The technique employed is termed magneto-telluric, and like most geophysical methods, it’s intricate.

To clarify, Schultz recalls high school physics lessons where instructors loop a wire coil around a battery and another around a voltmeter. When these coils approach one another, the voltmeter indicates a flow of electricity. This phenomenon is known as electromagnetic induction, which resembles the technique he and his research team employed in Yellowstone.

Ninfa Bennington, a research geophysicist at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory and primary author of the paper, noted that the procedure is analogous to how an electric toothbrush charges. When you touch the charger with your hand, it does not electrocute you, but a coil within your toothbrush creates an electromagnetic field that allows electricity to travel from a coil in the charger.

Visualize magma as your toothbrush and the atmosphere as the charger. Electricity generated by solar storms in the ionosphere, a region of thin gases renowned for occasionally creating breathtaking light displays like the Aurora Borealis, can penetrate deeply into the Earth. The team also capitalized on electricity from lightning, which strikes different locations on Earth approximately every two seconds, producing an electromagnetic signal that gets confined between the ground and the sky.

“Magma is a superb conductor of electricity,” Bennington stated. “As the electromagnetic field circulates around the Earth, the highly conductive materials within the Earth generate a secondary current.”

Next, the researchers tracked the electric signals that conductive substances like magma send back to the Earth’s exterior.

What they could visualize from the study revealed that beneath the geysers, bison, elk, and wolves lies not a massive pocket of magma poised to explode but numerous individual pockets of semi-solid material relatively separated from one another.

Poland compares this structure to setting concrete.

“Even if the concrete is not entirely solid, you can still walk on it. It won’t flow,” because

it’s truly constrained. This specific research bolsters the seismic work asserting, ‘yes, there’s a substantial amount of heated rock down there, but it’s primarily solid,” Poland stated.

Therefore, it’s not something poised to erupt.

The research also identified more distinctly a reservoir of melt in the northeastern section of the caldera that is linked to a deeper magma source, which Bennington referred to as a “heat engine.” Although that reservoir could, at some distant point in the future, erupt, at present “there’s too minimal a proportion of magma to cause an eruption,” she mentioned.

Furthermore, because the more western part of the caldera is no longer linked to a thermal source, it will, over geological time, start to cool.

A stable system

For the researchers examining Yellowstone, and for anyone digesting this information, the conclusion is evident: The Yellowstone caldera is unlikely to undergo a significant explosion in our lifetimes, our offspring’s, or perhaps humanity’s.

We understand that the caldera has undergone three remarkable eruptions in its past, 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago, and approximately 631,000 years ago, transforming the region’s topography. What everyone is eager to discover is when it will occur again. And while the last eruption seems like an extensive time ago, Poland indicated that the system is not genuinely “prepared to erupt again” as many enjoy telling one another around campfires and in bars.

Setting aside postponed global catastrophe, what excites Poland the most, who has examined the system for many years, is that it provides researchers with an additional avenue to grasp what’s occurring beneath the surface. When this study is combined with others, scientists gain a progressively rich, more vivid perspective below the Earth’s crust.

And Schultz reassures individuals that all those thrilling geysers, bubbling hot springs, and steaming pools will not diminish, certainly not anytime soon.

“This is still not the most stable, monotonous piece of land in the world,” he remarked. “And that’s what makes it fascinating.”