"Mitchell Jones" <mjones@21cenlogic.com> wrote in message
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In article <tNVXd.112165$tl3.47688@attbi_s02>,
"George" <george@wtfiswrongwithyou.com> wrote:

"Mitchell Jones" <mjones@21cenlogic.com> wrote in message
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In article <KDkXd.106968$4q6.35205@attbi_s01>,
"George" <george@wtfiswrongwithyou.com> wrote:

"Ralph Nesbitt" <ralph-nesbitt@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
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"George" <george@wtfiswrongwithyou.com> wrote in message
news:B3jXd.106001$tl3.73377@attbi_s02...

"Ralph Nesbitt" <ralph-nesbitt@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
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"Bunn E. Rabbit" <BunnERabbit@verizon.hutch.net> wrote in

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Grab those adult diapers!
--
Bunn E. Rabbit

-----------

Super Volcano Will Challenge Civilization, Geologists Warn
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 08 March 2005
06:30 am ET

The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill

planet and threaten human civilization, British scientists

Tuesday.

And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it.

Several volcanoes around the world are capable of gigantic

unlike anything witnessed in recorded history, based on

evidence of past events, the scientists said. Such eruptions

dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, Pinatubo and

else
going back dozens of millennia.

http://dutchman.nmt.edu/Geop/magma.html is a candidate for a

Volcano

Eruption".
Ralph Nesbitt

According to the study at the link below, "The measured uplift

a

few

millimeters per year in the center of the anomaly. Available

geomorphologic data

indicates that the crustal uplift may have continued in Socorro

similar

rate for the last several tens of thousands of years. " So, it

sound

like it is likely to erupt in the near future.

http://sioviz.ucsd.edu/~fialko/res_socorro.html

Agreed, but this is still one of the largest known magma bodies in

world. There has been significant volcanic activity north of

Ralph Nesbitt

Current activity, as in eruptions? Is it bigger than the magma body
beneath
Kilauea?

***{The magma chamber beneath Kilauea appears to be in a roughly
circular pool with a flat surface about 2 miles beneath the caldera,

a less smooth bottom surface about 3 miles further down. Horizontal
radius is about 6 miles. There is a vertical channel about a mile

rising up from the mantle and connecting roughly at the center of the
magma chamber, with the throat extending on upward to the caldera

the top of the magma body. See

ml for a cut-away diagram, in color no less. See also

ML. The surface area overlying the Kilauea magma chamber would

be about pi(6)^2 = 113 mi^2, as compared to the 5000 mi^2 area

the Socorro magma reservoir. Letting pi r^2 = 5000, we find that r =

miles for the Socorro chamber. If it has the same ratio of depth to
radius as the Kilauea reservoir, it will be 20 miles deep. Volume

be 20(5000) = 100,000 cubic miles of magma, whereas the volume of the
Kilauea reservoir would be 3(113) = 339 cubic miles. Thus the Socorro
reservoir would be roughly 100,000/339 or 295 times as large as the
Kilauea reservoir. --MJ}***

Thanks for the links. I think you've overestimated the size of the
magma body for Socorro.

***{Oops. The Socorro numbers should have been metric: that's km, not
miles. The Kilauea numbers were miles, and the last reading I did before
I wrote up the post was about Kilauea, so I was thinking in terms of
miles when I wrote up that estimate. Volume of the Socorro reservoir
would therefore be 100,000 km^3. A km^3 is {(1000)(39.37)/[(12)(5280)]}
= .24 mi^3, so a better estimate would be 24,000 mi^3 for Socorro.

Also, my estimate was based on the surface area of the Socorro seismic
anomaly, which may be larger than that of the magma body itself. At
http://dutchman.nmt.edu/Geop/magma.html the estimate for the surface
area of the magma body was 3400 km^2. If you want to use that, the
Socorro radius becomes 33 km and the depth becomes 16.5 km, giving a
volume of p r^2h = pi (33^2)(16.5) = 56,100 km^3, or 13,464 mi^3.

Any way you slice it, this sucker is huge!

--Mitchell Jones}***

According to the data at the link I

provided above, the estimated volume of the Socorro magma
body is at least several thousand cubic kilometers. I don't know
how much "several thousand cubic kilometers is, but it appears
to be less than one hundred thousand cubic miles.

***{Yup. "At least" indicates a low end estimate, and would also be
lower than 56,100 km^3. The problem is in the estimate of the vertical
extent of the reservoir. At the dutchman link, above, no estimate of
vertical extent is attempted, so I made what I considered to be a
reasonable guess: that the Socorro reservoir had the same ratio of depth
to radius as the Kilauea reservoir. Other estimates for depth give other
estimates of volume. You have to make the depth very small, however, to
get the volume down to "several thousand cubic kilometers," since
"several" would surely be less than ten. Let's see, using 10,000 km^3
for volume, we obtain pi(33^2)h = 10000, and the depth turns out to be h
= 2.92 km, which is a mere 1.8 miles. That's roughly half the depth of
the Kilauea reservoir, and in my opinion is utterly preposterous. The
guy was being way too conservative when he made that estimate. --MJ}***

Hmmm. Didn't the first article say that the magma body was 19 km deep?

2.94 km in your calculation? If it is 19 km deep, and you use the ratio

kilauea, wouldn't 19 km be the shallow depth, and therefore the deep part

would be deeper than 19 km? At least, that is the way I read it. The

article indicates that the magma body may be on the order of 10^2 - 10^3

thick, and is a sill or sheet-like intrusion:

http://sioviz.ucsd.edu/~fialko/papers/fialkoGRL01b.pdf

Several questions.

What is the lava at Socorro composed of?

***{If it has erupted in the past, there should be some hardened lava
on the surface that could be analyzed. But if it hasn't, which would be
my guess, then nobody knows. --MJ}***

Why is this thing so

big right in the middle of the continent (I understand that it is in
a rift valley, but Jesus H. Christ, it is big for the location it is

***{The Earth sweeps up hundreds of thousands of tons of meteoric
material from space every day, plus unknown numbers of small comets (see
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/). Result: the Earth is constantly
getting bigger, and as it does so, its surface gets flatter.

Sorry to disagree, but the idea that the earth is getting bigger is not
substantiated by any irrefutable evidence. Please don't tell me that you

earth expansion proponent. The amount of space debris that the earth

is miniscule compared to the radius of the earth. This has been proposed

and soundly refuted. And any flattening of the earth is due mostly to

forces.

<snip>

Is it possible that this could be the next flood basalt event (which
is why I asked about the composition)?

***{It could be. The mid-oceanic ridges are mostly basalt that rose up
out of the same sorts of rifts. The Rio Grande rift, however, is not
underwater, and so any basalt that comes out of it will likely spread
over a very large area before it cools down enough to solidify. You
don't want to be there when that happens. :-) --MJ}***

Considering the depth of this magma body, and the relatively slow rate of
surface deformation, I find it unlikely that there will be an eruption any

soon.

"Mitchell Jones" <mjones@21cenlogic.com> wrote in message
news:mjones-AF1252.14022310032005@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net...

In article <tNVXd.112165$tl3.47688@attbi_s02>,
"George" <george@wtfiswrongwithyou.com> wrote:

"Mitchell Jones" <mjones@21cenlogic.com> wrote in message
news:mjones-6D5586.03201710032005@spectator.sj.sys.us.xo.net...

In article <KDkXd.106968$4q6.35205@attbi_s01>,
"George" <george@wtfiswrongwithyou.com> wrote:

"Ralph Nesbitt" <ralph-nesbitt@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:vlkXd.5668$YD4.3931@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...

"George" <george@wtfiswrongwithyou.com> wrote in message
news:B3jXd.106001$tl3.73377@attbi_s02...

"Ralph Nesbitt" <ralph-nesbitt@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:PFiXd.5464$YD4.5286@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...

"Bunn E. Rabbit" <BunnERabbit@verizon.hutch.net> wrote in message
news:eh6r215d807vfodff79751vn4s4theed45@4ax.com...

Grab those adult diapers!
--
Bunn E. Rabbit

-----------

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050308_super_volcano.htm
l


Super Volcano Will Challenge Civilization, Geologists Warn
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 08 March 2005
06:30 am ET

The eruption of a super volcano "sooner or later" will chill the
planet and threaten human civilization, British scientists warned
Tuesday.

And now the bad news: There's not much anyone can do about it.

Several volcanoes around the world are capable of gigantic
eruptions
unlike anything witnessed in recorded history, based on geologic
evidence of past events, the scientists said. Such eruptions
would
dwarf those of Mount St. Helens, Krakatoa, Pinatubo and anything
else
going back dozens of millennia.

http://dutchman.nmt.edu/Geop/magma.html is a candidate for a
"Super

Volcano

Eruption".
Ralph Nesbitt

According to the study at the link below, "The measured uplift rate
is
a

few

millimeters per year in the center of the anomaly. Available

geomorphologic data

indicates that the crustal uplift may have continued in Socorro at a

similar

rate for the last several tens of thousands of years. " So, it
doesn't

sound

like it is likely to erupt in the near future.

http://sioviz.ucsd.edu/~fialko/res_socorro.html

Agreed, but this is still one of the largest known magma bodies in
the
world. There has been significant volcanic activity north of Sorocco
.
Ralph Nesbitt

Current activity, as in eruptions? Is it bigger than the magma body
beneath
Kilauea?

***{The magma chamber beneath Kilauea appears to be in a roughly
circular pool with a flat surface about 2 miles beneath the caldera, and
a less smooth bottom surface about 3 miles further down. Horizontal
radius is about 6 miles. There is a vertical channel about a mile wide
rising up from the mantle and connecting roughly at the center of the
magma chamber, with the throat extending on upward to the caldera from
the top of the magma body. See
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~pmcheng/engineering/research/tilt.ht
ml for a cut-away diagram, in color no less. See also
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/departments/geo/iainsub/studwebpage/boon/magic.HT
ML. The surface area overlying the Kilauea magma chamber would therefore
be about pi(6)^2 = 113 mi^2, as compared to the 5000 mi^2 area overlying
the Socorro magma reservoir. Letting pi r^2 = 5000, we find that r = 40
miles for the Socorro chamber. If it has the same ratio of depth to
radius as the Kilauea reservoir, it will be 20 miles deep. Volume will
be 20(5000) = 100,000 cubic miles of magma, whereas the volume of the
Kilauea reservoir would be 3(113) = 339 cubic miles. Thus the Socorro
reservoir would be roughly 100,000/339 or 295 times as large as the
Kilauea reservoir. --MJ}***

Thanks for the links. I think you've overestimated the size of the
magma body for Socorro.

***{Oops. The Socorro numbers should have been metric: that's km, not
miles. The Kilauea numbers were miles, and the last reading I did before
I wrote up the post was about Kilauea, so I was thinking in terms of
miles when I wrote up that estimate. Volume of the Socorro reservoir
would therefore be 100,000 km^3. A km^3 is {(1000)(39.37)/[(12)(5280)]}
= .24 mi^3, so a better estimate would be 24,000 mi^3 for Socorro.

Also, my estimate was based on the surface area of the Socorro seismic
anomaly, which may be larger than that of the magma body itself. At
http://dutchman.nmt.edu/Geop/magma.html the estimate for the surface