The end of the world in HD

[PWV]

.... it seems so chipper with a Pink Floyd soundtrack:

[PWV]

Just watched this thing again in full-screen HD - if you look closely, you can see the only thing that survives the asteroid's impact...right behind the charred Big Ben Tower... was a P-bass!   

[Barklessdog]

The economy & political view will matter if yellowstone blows -

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/34350315.html

Yellowstone National Park was jostled by a host of small earthquakes for a third straight day Monday, and scientists watched closely to see whether the more than 250 tremors were a sign of something bigger to come.

Swarms of small earthquakes happen frequently in Yellowstone, located in Wyoming in the western U.S., but it's very unusual for so many earthquakes to happen over several days, said Robert Smith, a professor of geophysics at the University of Utah.

"They're certainly not normal," Smith said. "We haven't had earthquakes in this energy or extent in many years."

Smith directs the Yellowstone Seismic Network, which operates seismic stations around the park. He said the quakes have ranged in strength from barely detectable to one of magnitude 3.8 that happened Saturday. A magnitude 4 quake is capable of producing moderate damage.

"This is an active volcanic and tectonic area, and these are the kinds of things we have to pay attention to," Smith said. "We might be seeing something precursory.

"Could it develop into a bigger fault or something related to hydrothermal activity? We don't know. That's what we're there to do, to monitor it for public safety."

(Related: "Yellowstone Is Rising on Swollen 'Supervolcano'" [November 8, 2007].)

Yellowstone park is one large super volcano welling up. If it blows, civilization will change drastically. Say goodbye if it does.

[Barklessdog]

Grand Prismatic Spring is one of Yellowstone National Park's many hot springs and geysers fueled by underground thermal energy. A new study has found that Yellowstone is rising faster than has ever been measured before, due to an influx of magma several miles beneath the surface.


Much of the park sits in a caldera, or crater, some 40 miles (70 kilometers) across, which formed when the cone of the massive volcano collapsed in a titanic eruption 640,000 years ago.

The supervolcano has produced three similarly large blasts in the past two million years, with 30 smaller eruptions since the caldera formed.

The volcano's most recent flare-up was 70,000 years ago, and volcanic heat continues to fuel the park's famous geysers and hot springs.

[Darrol]

if it is going to erupt, hopefully it is a small one just to vent some built up energy.

[Barklessdog]

Thats the problem with Caldera or super volcanos is that the are like a huge boil over a large area deep under ground and can't really vent due to their depth & size, so when the blow it's extreme.

http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=164



Consider the last one. 74,000 years ago a supervolcano erupted...in Sumatra. It would have been the loudest noise ever heard by man. It would have blasted vast clouds of ash across the world. The resultant caldera formed Lake Toba, 100 kilometres long, 60 kilometres wide...We're talking about 3,000 cubic kilometres of material coming out of that volcano. That's about 10,000 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption which people think of as a large eruption...It was, in short, colossal. Scientists are only now beginning to understand the effects of so much ash on the planet's climate..."*

Chemical analysis of 35 centimeters of ash located in the floor of the Indian Ocean approximately 2,500 kilometers from the Toba volcano tells us that "this eruption was rich in sulphur, [which] would have released a tremendous amount of sulphur dioxide and other gases into the stratosphere which would have turned into sulphuric acid aerosols and affected the climate of the Earth for years...The fine ash and sulphur dioxide blasted into the stratosphere reflects solar radiation back into space and stops sunlight reaching the planet. This has a cooling effect on the Earth...[T]he temperature change after Toba in degrees Celsius would have been about a 5 degree global temperature drop, very significant, very severe global cooling...causing Europe's summers to freeze and triggering a volcanic winter. Five degrees globally would translate into 15 degrees or so of summer cooling in the temperate to high latitudes. The effects on agriculture, on the growth of plants, on life in the oceans would be catastrophic."

In fact, human geneticists have learned through the study of accumulation of mutations in mitochondrial DNA that the human species was almost wiped out approximately 70,000-80,000 years ago. Probably only five or ten thousand people worldwide managed to survive.

[Dave W]

If the big bang happens, I'll just try to hitch a ride on a passing Vogon Contructor Fleet ship.

[Lightyear]

The economy & political view will matter if yellowstone blows -

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/34350315.html
Yellowstone park is one large super volcano welling up. If it blows, civilization will change drastically. Say goodbye if it does.

Geeezus John!  I knew that a National Monument would be the end of the world - can someone please pass the Koolaid?

[Dave W]

This story makes it sound like there's not much to worry about.

[Chris P.]

I sold my Orange AD200B two days ago and yesterday I ordered a Hiwatt Custom 200. I already have a Hiwatt Bass 100. I'm gonna use 'm both and I guess that's wat experts mean with the end of the world. I will be loud.