On January 15, 2022, the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai suffered a violent explosive eruption that exceeded hundreds of times the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
It destroyed a small volcanic island and covered the tiny island kingdom of Tonga of about 100,000 people in a layer of toxic ash, poisoning drinking water, destroying agricultural crops and completely wiping out two villages.
It killed at least three people and used the drowning of two women who were bathing on the coast of Peru, due to the tsunami it caused, to find an eruption as powerful as the one in Tonga, we have to go back 139 years to the eruption of the krakatoa in indonesia in 1883, however, these two events in krakatoa and tonga are small compared to the eruptions of super volcanoes.
They have happened in the past and they will happen in the future, the question is when it will happen; A statement was published on August 3 by researchers at the University of Bristol and the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Center who have discovered through their work that super-eruptions build up slowly over millions of years and occur when magma pressure breaks the crust and move quickly to the surface breaking down the pre-existing rock.
Although I've quickly said the breakthrough of rupture can take a few decades, although compared to the process of accumulation of magma of millions of years it is practically an instant in geological time.
The researchers came to this conclusion by studying crystals that form in volcanic rocks, different crystals indicate different positions created at different temperatures and at different depths.
Being able to have a time frame of several tens of years is very important since research can help identify possible super volcanoes and analyze what state they are in. Humans are far from being able to avoid a volcanic eruption, even a normal one. but in the worst case scenario, a potential threat could be identified and we would have a margin to evacuate the area and prepare the planet, since these events are catastrophic, capable of destroying thousands of square kilometers and altering the climate and environmental conditions of the planet during years.
The good news is that such eruptions are very rare and Bristol scientists estimate that they occur on average every 20 thousand years, the bad news is that statistically we may not have that long, the last super eruption was at Lake Toba on the island of Sumatra Indonesia 75,000 years ago, exposed 2,800 cubic kilometers of material.
It is believed that it caused a planetary catastrophe, causing an ice age and the extinction of a large part of the humans who lived at that time.
Another minor super eruption devastated Europe that of the super volcano of the Campos Floreros in Italy was 40 thousand years ago, it expelled 200 cubic kilometers of material and these are just some of those that have occurred in the last 100,000 years, we cannot avoid an eruption , but if we can take measures to be safe for it, it is necessary to investigate more about volcanoes and learn more about what happens inside the earth.
Thank you for visiting my blog. If you like posts about
#science,
#planet,
#politics,
#rights #crypto,
#traveling and discovering secrets and beauties of the
#universe, feel free to Follow me as these are the topics I write about the most. Have a wonderful day and stay on this great platform :) :)
! The truth will set us free and science is the one that is closest to the truth!
