Scientists Say 'Super Volcano' May Be Brewing Beneath Mount St. Helens

Sunday, June 14, 2009



A team of scientists say they have evidence that a "super volcano" may be brewing underneath Mount St. Helens, NewScientist.com reports.

Researchers say indicators suggest Mount St. Helens and other northwest volcanoes are plugged into a huge subterranean pool of magma that could one day burst to the surface in a "super" eruption.

If what they believe is true, the structure beneath the mountain would be comparable in size to the biggest magma chambers ever discovered, such as the one below Yellowstone National Park.

Scientist Graham Hill led a team of researchers that set up magnetotelluric sensors around Mount St Helens. The measurements revealed a column of conductive material that extends downward from the volcano which they found to connect to a much bigger zone of conductive material.

Not all scientists are convinced that Mount St. Helens may be capable of a giant eruption.

Magnetotellurics specialist Gary Egbert of Oregon State University in Corvallis says he's cautious over the idea of that a super volcano sits under Mt. St. Helen.

"It seems likely that there's some partial melt down there," given that it is a volcanic area, he told NewScientist.com. "But part of the conductivity is probably just water."

Supervolcano may be brewing beneath Mount St Helens

IS A supervolcano brewing beneath Mount St Helens? Peering under the volcano has revealed what may be an extraordinarily large zone of semi-molten rock, which would be capable of feeding a giant eruption.

Magma can be detected with a technique called magnetotellurics, which builds up a picture of what lies underground by measuring fluctuations in electric and magnetic fields at the surface. The fields fluctuate in response to electric currents travelling below the surface, induced by lightning storms and other phenomena. The currents are stronger when magma is present, since it is a better conductor than solid rock.

Graham Hill of GNS Science, an earth and nuclear science institute in Wellington, New Zealand, led a team that set up magnetotelluric sensors around Mount St Helens in Washington state, which erupted with force in 1980. The measurements revealed a column of conductive material that extends downward from the volcano. About 15 kilometres below the surface, the relatively narrow column appears to connect to a much bigger zone of conductive material.

The column below Mount St Helens appears to connect to a huge zone of conductive material
This larger zone was first identified in the 1980s by another magnetotelluric survey, and was found to extend all the way to beneath Mount Rainier 70 kilometres to the north-east, and Mount Adams 50 kilometres to the east. It was thought to be a zone of wet sediment, water being a good electrical conductor.

However, since the new measurements show an apparent conduit connecting this conductive zone to Mount St Helens - which was undergoing a minor eruption of semi-molten material at the time the measurements were made - Hill and his colleagues now think the conductive material is more likely to be a semi-molten mixture. Its conductivity is not high enough for it to be pure magma, Hill says, so it is more likely to be a mixture of solid and molten rock.

Gary Egbert of Oregon State University in Corvallis, who is a magnetotellurics specialist but not a member of Hill's team, is cautious about the idea of a nascent supervolcano where Mount St Helens sits. "It seems likely that there's some partial melt down there," given that it is a volcanic area, he says. "But part of the conductivity is probably just water."

If the structure beneath the three volcanoes is indeed a vast bubble of partially molten rock, it would be comparable in size to the biggest magma chambers ever discovered, such as the one below Yellowstone National Park.

Every few hundred thousand years, such chambers can erupt as so-called supervolcanoes - the Yellowstone one did so about 640,000 years ago. These enormous eruptions can spew enough sunlight-blocking ash into the atmosphere to cool the climate by several degrees Celsius.

Could Mount St Helens erupt like this? "A really big, big eruption is possible if it is one of those big systems like Yellowstone," Hill says. "I don't think it will be tomorrow, but I couldn't try to predict when it would happen."

Further measurements probing the structure of the crust beneath the other volcanoes in the area could help determine if the zone connects to them all, Hill says. He presented his team's results on 27 May at the Joint Assembly geophysics meeting in Toronto, Canada.

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The super duper volcano starts at Mount St. Helens and ends at Yellowstone National Park

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Is it just me, or does the whole article have an erotic undertone?

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That eruption could wipe mankind's efforts to limit green house gases for the next 100 years.

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Think of all the cool movies they can make about this.

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That eruption could wipe mankind's efforts to limit green house gases for the next 100 years.

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I wonder how much that'd cost in "carbon credits"?

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I ain't skeerd, them there so called scientists don't know nothing anyway, dumb ass's be sayin that the earth is all over 6000 years sold and shit. How the hell a volcano be eruptin 600,000 years ago when the bible is explicit in sayin the earth aint even that damn old in teh first place. Them stupid retards with their fancy pants "science degrees" and stuff thinking they are so smart and stuff.

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I wonder how much that'd cost in "carbon credits"?

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That eruption could wipe mankind's efforts to limit green house gases for the next 100 years.

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we die, turn page

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I posted this somewhere else the other day. I’ve discovered a new scientific formula that accurately predicts the functioning of the science media… A=D^2 where “A” is the airtime a story or prediction gets and “D” is how big of a disaster the scientist is predicting.

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And so we wait...