Using technology similar to an Ultrasound or MRI for a human body, The University of Utah geologists have created the large scale mapping of the electrical conductivity of an underground plume that powers the supervolcano activity in Yellowstone National Park. The image suggests that the plume is larger than expected using older imaging models. “The 2009 images showed the plume of hot and molten rock dips downward from Yellowstone at an angle of 60 degrees and extend 150 miles west-northwest to a point at least 410 miles under the Montana-Idaho border - as far as seismic imaging could "see." In the new study, images of the Yellowstone plume's electrical conductivity - generated by molten silicate rocks and hot briny water mixed in partly molten rock - shows the conductive part of the plume dipping more gently, at an angle of perhaps 40 degrees to the west, and extending perhaps 400 miles from east to west. The geoelectric image can "see" only 200 miles deep.” The new image took over 18 hours of supercomputer time to calculate the data collected on the site. The image itself required 2 million pixels to create it.
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| A comparison of the older image (left) and the newer image (right) of Yellowstone's plume. |
The article states that the hot spot that currently erupts in Yellowstone first broke through the crust almost 17 million years ago, and slowly America has drifted over it where it now resides and has for almost 2 million years. Several eruptions from the plume have covered over half of America in ash, 2,500 more times than that of Mt. St. Helens. The last major movement occurred almost 70,000 years ago.
http://www.unews.utah.edu/p/?r=032411-5
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