Yellowstone: Mary Bay Hydrothermal Explosion Studied

(What is so important about an explosion in an extinct volcano? Well, this is not a volcanic explosion but a sudden development of steam in subterranean superheated water by release pressure over the water pocket. Like a giant pressure cooker explosion. Very interesting and unusual.)

http://www.missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_0a53c210-0d64-11df-9fe5-001cc4c03286.html

Researchers theorize giant wave created Yellowstone crater complex in blast

By BRETT FRENCH Billings Gazette

BILLINGS - Wild things happen in Yellowstone National Park all the time - geysers shoot water hundreds of feet into the air and mud pots gurgle with steaming hot sludge.

Despite such wonders, it's a bit hard to imagine a tsunami-like wave rushing across Yellowstone Lake. Yet that's one theory of how the largest hydrothermal explosion crater complex documented in the park, likely the largest in the world, was created at Mary Bay. The complex at the northeastern end of Yellowstone Lake is 1.7 miles long and 1.4 miles wide.

The tsunami theory is discussed in a recently published paper on Yellowstone National Park's hydrothermal processes and large explosions, a special comprehensive paper for the Geological Society of America.

---

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.
-- Carl Sagan



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2010 08:26PM by Frank Furter.