Kind: captions
Language: en
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Yellowstone National Park contains one
of our country's favorite landmarks but
it's actually a warning signal going off
every
hour now we're
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going wow that's roaring man love that
this is old
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faithful that's what they call geyser
what we're seeing is superheated water
and steam blowing out of the ground it's
been doing this for 100 years plus and
it's a really reliable tourist
attraction because the thing goes off
like
clockwork it's one of the most powerful
geysers in the world capable of shooting
8,500 gallons of superheated water as
high as an 18 story building it's a
constant reminder that lurking beneath
the surface is a ticking Time Bomb you
see although it may not seem like it I'm
actually standing on top of a volcano
and park geologist Hank heasler wants to
show me what it looks like
underground this is a threedimensional
model this is a magma chamber a mass of
semi- Molen Rock reaching almost 1500° F
it's the powerhouse of a
volcano that's uh one of the larger
chambers that have been mapped in the
world wow but can we agree that we'd
like to keep it down there I don't think
we have a
choice it's going to do what it wants to
do together with a second recently
discovered magma chamber there's enough
partially molten rock under Yellowstone
to fill the Grand Canyon 13 times over
and scientists believe below them lies a
mantle plume a column channeling heat
from the Earth's core melting the Rocks
above and creating the massive magma
Chambers under Yellowstone if this super
volcano ever erupted we'd be in
trouble there's a place in Nebraska
where you can see just how bad things
could get inside this plain steel Barn
is a 12 milliony old animal
Pompeii
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here are the fossilized skeletons of 200
animals mostly rhinos and horses lie
Frozen in the exact position in which
they died the man who discovered this
site is paleontologist Mike
Vorhees we found remains of of more than
50 species of animals 12 million years
ago go our Wildlife was similar in
richness to the east African savanas of
today the gray dust that in TMS these
animals is what killed them ash from a
massive volcanic eruption there was so
much of it that the air was polluted and
animals had to breathe dust for weeks
and weeks and weeks and they ended up
dying by the thousands and the mantle
plume that we think made this super
volcano is still around our continent
has been sliding over this hot spot
which has triggered numerous eruptions
and now it sits beneath Yellowstone so
the plume under our most famous National
Park is a repeat offender that will
strike again it's hard to imagine that
much volcanic ash and yet we know that
this kind of an event has happened
before and almost certainly it will
happen again a super eruption in
Yellowstone would be a really bad day
for North America as a geologist I'd
love to see this thing erupt but as a
North American not so
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much it would rank as the most violent
event since humans first set foot on the
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continent