Does anyone think an eruption of the Yellowstone caldera could virtually wipe out life on earth?
403604
it would probably cause widespread earthquakes and tsunamis, and it is possible that dust from the explosion ejected into the upper atmosphere could cause reduction in daylight . The physical effects could kill millions of people and destroy cities and towns. There could be extinctions of vulnerable plant and animal species. However in the long term, plant and animal life would recover, there would likely be a 'evolution explosion' as plants and animals move quickly to recolonise devastated areas.\n\n'Civilisation' as such would not be set back, as no knowledge would be lost, it would not be comparable to living in 1806, electricity, automobiles and so on, would not have to be discovered or reinvented, however human priorities would be altered in the short term with survival, food and shelter being most important
214320
I don't think the world..., as in earth will never end unless it gets sucked into a black hole..., as for life..., we have a good billion years yet before our sun get too hot then it won't be able to sustain life... As for the species homo sapiens..., we haven't reached our peak yet in the bell curve..., and when that happens..., our population will drop..., big time..., would it be enough to eliminate our species???, fair chance because we are very dependent on technology to survive...\n\nSo what year..., my guess would be in 10 years..., 2016... and I predict by a super virus that can jump from host to host in a blink of an eye...\n\nbut who knows...
633927
If the Tooth Fairy waved her magic wand and ...\nAre you serious?\nDividing the Earth in two parts without damaging the surface would require ... magic.\n(Of course Arthur C. Clarke did once point out that any sufficiently advanced technology would appear as magic but we're talking an asteroid strike, not super-technology.)\nIf a body large enough to blast the Earth apart struck, there would be nothing presently on the surface that would survive in recognisable form.\nI suppose it's imaginable that two bodies mutually orbiting a common center of gravity, might accrete from the resulting debris. The oceans would have been vaporised. Some water would recondense and wind up on our hypothetical twin Mini-Earths but I imagine on the whole they'd be pretty dry. Bacteria living in deep crustal rocks blown clear of the remains of the planet would probably  survive and as this debris was gravitationally 'swept up' over time by the newly formed pair of mini-Earths life would be re-seeded and we'd be back at 'Square One'.
566779
Depends on what criteria you set, but the Deccan Traps in India 60- to 65Ma ago was very large. It was classed as a supervolcano much like the one in Yellowstone park at the moment. \nAlthough some people claim that the formation of Yellowstones caldera around 2 million years ago was the largest volcanic eruption ever.
700224
Forces brewing deep beneath Yellowstone National Park could be making one of the largest volcanoes on Earth even bigger, a new study reveals. \n\nIn the past decade, part of the volcano has risen nearly five inches, most likely due to a backup of flowing molten rock miles below the planet's crust.\n\nWhile the rise may not be noticeable to the casual hiker, the activity may have cracked the crust in the park's famous Norris Geyser Basin (NGB), leading to the formation of new fumaroles—holes that vent smoke and gas—and the reawakening of some of the area's geysers, including Steamboat, the largest geyser in the world.\n\nYellowstone last erupted about 640,000 years ago, spewing 240 cubic miles of material. Despite the newly discovered activity, researchers don't expect it to erupt any time soon. Eventually, however, it could explode again as a super-volcano that would destroy life for hundreds of miles around and coat the entire country in ash.\n\nRadar observations from the European Space Agency's ERS-2 satellite reveal that the jellybean-shaped Yellowstone caldera—a giant depression caused by past volcanic explosions—began to rise in 1995. \n\nAlthough the caldera floor started to sink in late 1997, part of the north rim, called the north rim uplift anomaly (NUA) continued rising until 2003.\n\nMolten rock called magma rises from the Earth's core under Sour Creek dome, a major feature in the eastern section of the caldera. When the magma reaches the mantle layer, six to 12 miles below the surface, it spreads like a pancake before branching off into several tunnels.\n\nMagma flow is controlled by natural valves—one at Sour Creek dome that lets magma enter the system, and others that allow it to flow out. The outflow valve below the north rim uplift anomaly, however, can only pass so much magma at once. \n\n"Magma's always coming up in Sour Creek dome and going through the system," USGS research geophysicist Charles Wicks told LiveScience. "But maybe there are pulses when more comes up. That may be what causes the surface to rise."\n\nThe pulses might be more than the outflow valve can handle—like trying to squeeze all the toothpaste out of the tube at once. As the molten material pushes out on the surrounding rock, the ground around the valve expands and cracks. \n\nThis could explain why the uplift anomaly has risen and the Norris Geyser Basin has become more active, Wicks said. Another explanation is that nearby geothermic changes and seismic activity altered the shape of the valve, perhaps narrowing it. However, previous studies have indicated that no such alterations have occurred, and that changes in flow rate more likely cause these deformations.\n\nThe five-inch increase at the uplift anomaly probably wasn't noticed by many tourists, but the changes in the Norris Geyser Basin were easily spotted by some. After a nine year period of inactivity, Steamboat Geyser erupted in May, 2000, and has erupted five times since. Reaching more than 300 feet in the air, Steamboat produces the highest plumes of any geyser in the world.\n\nSince 1989, Pork Chop geyser was active only as a hot spring, but in the summer of 2003 it reawakened as a geyser. Also that summer, several footpaths near the Norris Geyser Basin were closed because of near-boiling ground temperatures.\n\nAnd a 250-foot line of new fumaroles, holes venting hot smoke and gases, formed near Nymph Lake to the north of the uplift anomaly. \n\n"But when the [uplift anomaly] quit inflating in 2002 and 2003, the thermal unrest died off too," Wicks said. "So we think there's pretty good evidence for tying these events together."\n\nDespite these changes, Wicks doesn't believe that Yellowstone is ready to erupt.\n\n"This is probably an ongoing feature in Yellowstone. We've only been able to study it like this for 10 years, so we're still not sure what's normal and what&
611914
Sun explode. Sun go out. Ceres-sized bolide hit Earth.\n\nNo disease, weather or ecological phenomenon could completely wipe us out. Even we couldn't wipe ourselves out; we are just to numerous and smart.
578503
From having studied volcanicity when I was at university, the only one that springs to mind would be Vesuvius, which erupted in Italy in 79AD. Obviously during this time, populations where not as they are today, but 95% of all human were not wiped out during this eruption. However, all but one in the towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii died during the pyroclastic flow following the eruption. Just out of interest the guy that survived was in jail! How said crime doesnt pay ;-)\n\nUnfortunatly 10,000years ago there was no-one to document the evidence as such, only what we can deduce from the rocks from that time. \n\nHowever, if you remove the 10,000year bit of your question and the human element, there is a possible anwser back 60 to 65Ma. The Deccan Traps in India was a flood basalt which was so huge that it is one of the potential reaons the Dionsaurs died out. The volume lava produced during the eruption (the eruption was not one but many over a period of time) was something in teh region of 1 to 2 million square kilometers. It is widely recognised that the climatic effect of such a supervolcano would lead to a nuclear winter. \n\nHope this helps!
772138
well not speaking of "the rapture"  the earth has been here for billions of years without us through comets floods volcanos.....  we are going to die out long before the earth does
200404
Depends on the size of the eruption, but im thinking property values would fall for sure.
1010195
Long before any recorded human history in Yellowstone, a massive volcanic eruption spewed an immense volume of ash that covered all of the western U.S., much of the Midwest, northern Mexico and some areas of the eastern Pacific Coast. The eruption dwarfed that of Mount St. Helens in 1980 and left a huge caldera 43 miles by 18 miles (70 km by 30 km) sitting over a huge magma chamber (see Geology section and Yellowstone Caldera). Yellowstone has registered three major eruption events in the last 2.2 million years with the last event occurring 640,000 years ago. Its eruptions are the largest known to have occurred on Earth within that timeframe, producing drastic climate change in the aftermath
1028028
i dont think human being will ever extinct the earth...i don't think god created us.. to see us destructed again.. dat dont make no sense..dat someone u pray to.. every scd. someone u say dat loves u... would create the earth.. and just let you die.dat jus dont make sense...its just like..would u suffer to construct a house wit ur own hands.. and then just because..one window is wrong u destruct da whole? i dont think so.. u will fix da window.. and let errthing as it was.. so.the earth is bad now yes.. but not every thing or every person is bad.. and i dont think for dat god will let the huamn being extinct from the earth.
60891
I saw a documentary about the volcano Krakatoa on Sumatra in the 1800's as producing the loudest sound ever made.  Do some follow-up research to verify this.  I don't know how you could reproduce it though, perhaps when it blows again you could have a take recorder running!
862744
Not unless we had left the region.  Even inside the Earth we wouldn't survive because our Earth would be torn apart, some radiation would still reach us and we would have nothing to go back to on the surface (take your pick of the best reason).\n\nBut the one fellow is right, our sun is not massive enough to supernova it will turn into a red giant (which would likely kill us anyway from the increased radiation) and then would slowly collapse, then shed it's layers as a planetary nebula.\n\nEven if it were large enough we would get a warning though, a star swells (to a red supergiant) before it supernovas!
1141290
that would be a sign of the apocolypse and earth would be hit by an astroid and all man (and woman) kind would be exterminated\n\n:-(
195123
no.  you're going to get a variety of responses ranging from the reasonable, like david's to the utterly ridiculous, like a lot of the others already here.\n\nas for the claims that the crater in the yucatan is supposition or "only a theory" (ever heard these words before?) there is a lot of evidence for it:\n\n"Probably the most convincing evidence for a worldwide catastrophe was the discovery of the crater which has since been named Chicxulub Crater. This so-called smoking gun is centered on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and was discovered by Tony Camargo and Glen Pentfield while working as geophysicists for the Mexican oil company PEMEX. What they reported as a circular feature later turned out to be a crater estimated to be 180 kilometers in diameter. Other researchers would later find that the end-Cretaceous extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs had lasted for thousands of years instead of millions of years as had previously been thought. This would be the final piece of evidence that convinced the vast majority of scientists that this extinction resulted from a point event that is most probably an extra-terrestrial impact and not from increased volcanism and climate change (which would spread its main effect over a much longer time period)."\n\nIt seems to be a bit more than a layer of clay in the ground.\n\nwhether this is worthy enough for biblical mention is debatable, but it seems that such a large impact would have had tremendous effects on any living species at the time, including (as creationists claim) humans.  why is there no mention of it either in the bible or other human cultures?  probably because it happened long before any humans were around.  it would have been a very important event, more important than a lot of the mentioned events in the bible.\n\nand if it is mentioned in the bible, please provide a passage.
465261
Barring the very unlikely event of a meteor hitting Earth, no, the world isn't going to end any time soon.\nIf you mean, could our lives change drastically because of global warming soon, well, perhaps.  But Earth itself will continue.
436530
Have you ever heard the expression, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"?  The same idea applies here.\n\nThere are any number of natural disasters that could destroy our way of life (meteor strike, multiple massive volcanic eruptions, a global plague, a nearby supernova), and they are virtually undetectable until immediately before they occur - even if we do detect them, the likelihood of preventing them is only a likelihood, not a certainty.