Horrible Today: 3rd Yellowstone Volcano Eruption Recorded Live, threaten million people around world
The Yellowstone National Park in the USA with its geysers and hot springs is a great attraction for tourists. However, especially in times of little news, the media often focusses on the Yellowstone Supervolcano, which last erupted about 630,000 years ago.
Inevitably, then the question of the underlying geological structures will be posed. A recent study by Bernhard Steinberger of the German GeoForschungsZentrum and colleagues in the USA helps to better understand the processes in the Earth's interior. The paper will soon appear in the journal "Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems" published by the American Geophysical Union. It is based on modelling the Earth's mantle.
According to the model, beneath the Yellowstone volcano lies a so-called mantle plume: a chimney-like structure that reaches thousands of kilometres deep to the border of the Earth's core and mantle.
