3 ms·
With volcanos, the more viscous the magma, the more energy gets stored before an eruption. Supervolcanos are the most viscous type, hence the massive explosion.
by beerandt 5y ago
With volcanos, the more viscous the magma, the more energy gets stored before an eruption. Supervolcanos are the most viscous type, hence the massive explosion.
Think boiling water vs thick oatmeal vs boiling a pressure cooker until it explodes, but obviously worse.
So "relieve pressure" in this case isn't like a pressure release valve on a water heater.
You'd need to either cool the mass, remove the overburden, or create some sort of massive voids for expansion.
The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in vaporizing the rock and soil and creating a large underground void, for whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept.
- MisterTea 5y ago> The US nuclear test done in Mississippi resulted in vaporizing the rock and soil and creating a large underground void, for whatever that's worth as a sort of proof of concept. Where did the vaporized rock and soil go?
- beerandt 5y ago>Where did the vaporized rock and soil go? "What are you, the rock police? I put'em up on my a**. How's that?"
- jdsully 5y agoI imagine it escaped as a gas.
- caeril 5y agoIt escapes . . . as a gas . . . in an already highly pressurized environment . . . that is already containing a large amount of high-pressure hydrogen sulfide that cannot escape as it is? I'm pressing X to doubt.
- ineedasername 5y agoThat just means you need a second nuke to blow a hole that allows the gas to escape & lave to flow in, and a 3rd nuke to collapse the hole before the lava gets too far. It's all there in my book, "How to nuke your way out of any problem"
- daveac 5y agoYou could just create another bigger void and let the stuff vent into that
- beerandt 5y agoBig "if", but hypothetically, at least gas flows in a way that the pressure could be relieved. The whole reason supervolcanoes are what they are is that the material can't sufficiently flow faster than pressure builds. Converting that material to an escaping gas at scale would be an unbelievably successful technological achievement.
- echelon 5y agoDo rocks and minerals even have a boiling point, or do they thermally decompose?
- iSnow 5y agoConsidering they are mostly anorganic substance, I'd guess you can make them boil - you'd get lava.
- syngrog66 5y agoAlabama
- techdragon 5y agoForced into the surroundings making them more dense than the surrounding rock and soil.
- coenhyde 5y agoYeah I don't see why we can't use nukes. We just need bigger nukes and more of them. How about we drill the largest borehole we can, then drop a chain of nukes down it. ie detonate a nuke every 100m. First few can be Tsar Bomba's.
- ethbr0 5y agoCan I interest you in a pamphlet about careers in Strategic Air Command?
- dmos62 5y agoI like that you felt you needed to point out that a supervolcano explosion would be worse than oatmeal on the wall.
- beerandt 5y agoYea- the more pertinent take is that the magma involved "flows" more like room temp glass than liquid water. It'd be like trying to suck a mix of layers of that boiling oatmeal and playdough through a straw.