রবিবার, ২০ মে, ২০১২

Supervolcano Drilling Plan Gets Go-Ahead

On the other hand, one problem with volcanoes, super or otherwise, is that they do erupt from time to time. The smaller ones are bad enough: look what happened when Mt. St. Helens erupted. Or much worse, Krakatoa in 1883, which was so loud it was reportedly heard 3000 miles away! But a supervolcano is really bad; according to Wikipedia, the Lake Toba eruption ~74000 years ago eradicated 60% of the human population with the volcanic winter it produced. A supervolcano erupting now would be devastating to our modern society, much like an Apophis-sized asteroid striking the earth would.

Instead of sitting around and hoping no eruptions happen, it's probably better we learn about how these geologic processes work, and figure out ways to control them, so we aren't constantly in danger of near-extinction. I'm no geologist, but drilling into volcanoes to relieve the pressure seems like a good idea to prevent impending eruptions. Similarly, instead of sitting around and hoping no big asteroids hit us, it would make a lot more sense to develop space-based capabilities and technology to avoid any asteroid strikes. However, humans are notoriously short-sighted so if such things happen before a giant disaster instead of after, it'd be a miracle. What's bad is that these disasters have happened (both asteroid strikes and supervolcanoes), many times before in history, just not within living peoples' memories.

texas high school football fugazi fugazi indiana jones and the last crusade nba lockout dramamine dramamine

কোন মন্তব্য নেই:

একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন