3 ms·

Wait, surely it's not entirely random? I thought we were talking about a process like earthquakes, where the actual event is unpredictable but the underlying ca

• knownothing 9y ago
  The key point is: > Caldera collapse volcanic eruptions the size of Yellowstone occurr at random intervals Which I take to mean that there isn't enough data about exceptional events like this to reliably predict their timing.
• njarboe 9y ago
  The Yellowstone hotspot has produced dozens of super volcano eruptions over the last 16 million years or so. The time between them has been between 500,000 and a 1.5 million years or so. This hotspot is the most periodic on Earth and there is really no where else like it currently. Many caldera eruption locations have one or two eruptions and that's it. Like the Valle Grande in northern New Mexico. So, in the Yellowstone case, it is reasonable to assume another one will happen and that the magma is "building up". And that it is more likely to happen soon, if it has not happened in a long while. On the other hand, I don't think we yet understand the mechanisms behind caldera eruptions well enough to say what will happen with much certainty. It is possible Yellowstone won't erupt again. Earthquakes are much more predictable. There are hundreds of faults all over the Earth that each have a long history that can be determined by digging trenches across faults. Most are semi-periodic with repetition going back dozens of earthquakes.