51–60 of 125 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The heat will be getting out one way or another.
As far as I know, nothing has been releaseed from one of these major calderas at scale in recorded history
My favorite National Park Service quip of all time. At the bottom of the page on Yellowstone's volcano [0] are a few questions and answers, and among them this gem: >> What is Yellowstone National Park doing to stop or prevent an erruption? > Nothing can be done to prevent an eruption. The temperatures, pressures, physical characteristics of partially molten rock, and immensity of the magma chamber are beyond human a…
I think the answer is good, but misses one important point - it is not like there is a thin barrier where there's a sharp pressure gradient, such that you can "pop" the volcano, or allow it to fizz like a shaken coke can with a tiny hole. When you drill down into the volcano, the hole just collapses on itself and plugs itself back up. The closer you get to the caldera, the rock become viscous and hot. Not only does y…
Same with modern day oil holes. They just reinforce the walls of the hole with concrete. Much harder problem is to prevent oil and gas from rushing up through the well, and breaking the rig (it always ignites afterwards). Imagine that with lava.
I think the answer is good, but misses one important point - it is not like there is a thin barrier where there's a sharp pressure gradient, such that you can "pop" the volcano, or allow it to fizz like a shaken coke can with a tiny hole. When you drill down into the volcano, the hole just collapses on itself and plugs itself back up. The closer you get to the caldera, the rock become viscous and hot. Not only does y…
My favorite National Park Service quip of all time. At the bottom of the page on Yellowstone's volcano [0] are a few questions and answers, and among them this gem: >> What is Yellowstone National Park doing to stop or prevent an erruption? > Nothing can be done to prevent an eruption. The temperatures, pressures, physical characteristics of partially molten rock, and immensity of the magma chamber are beyond human a…
This is a very clear distillation of the absolute lack of imagination that is endemic across the National Parks Service. It is this mindset that stagnating progress in the National Parks. 105 years and there have been no major developments in Parks technologies. No waterfalls running in reverse, no water-skiing bison, no Grander Canyon. /s
But RTFA anyway, it's a good read, and a little unsettling how many problems people think could be solved with just a bit of nuclear bombing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Relatedly: apparently it would be a good idea to destroy the Martian moon Phobos before settling the planet. It's a fascinating proposal and makes sense; you can read about it here: https://marspedia.org/Bringing_down_Phobos
If we are going down that rabbit hole, I love the plan to create an artificial Martian magnetosphere by placing a magnetic field generating satellite between mars and the solar winds. Generating an atmosphere on mars is all well and good, but it will just blow away again without some protection. The generator would only require roughly 583.9 exajoules, or roughly the world's total energy consumption in 2020. https://…
Re: the first paragraph's reference to nuking the Deepwater horizon's oil leak, Soviet engineers demonstrated that this was a viable technique back in the 60's. Plenty of wild non-war applications have been proposed for nuclear bombs over the years, but this is the only one I can think of that is actually somewhat of a good idea. Any fallout is minor and contained under 1km+ of bedrock, and the harm prevented is wort…
They tried that in the excellent documentary The Core (2003) but as I recall they didn't all survive.
The makers of the documentary also chose an excellent score to accompany their organic capture of a moving love story along with the antics of a plucky group of misfits that came together in a crisis. It's the sort of thing you can only shake your head at and say, "Only in reality!" because if you saw it in a movie you'd just think "Nah, that could never happen".