There's a volcano
beneath Yellowstone National Park.
But it's not your average volcano.
It's hundreds of meters deep,
larger than the state of Rhode Island
and capable of eruptions thousands of times more violent
than anything we've ever witnessed.
This is a supervolcano.
It's one of three in the U.S.
and it's considered to be the greatest volcano threat
in the country.
If Yellowstone's volcano erupted,
it would be catastrophic.
The eruption would shoot a tower of ash into the air,
taller than Mount Everest,
covering nearby cities in over a meter of ash
and creating giant clouds
that would block the sun for decades.
Ultimately, global temperatures would drop,
plants would die, and agriculture would fail.
In fact, the UN estimates that the entire world
would run out of food in just over two months.
Now, Yellowstone has a history of eruptions like this.
It's erupted three times in the past 2.1 million years.
That's roughly once every 600,000 years.
And the last time it erupted?
Oh, around 600,000 years ago.
But despite what these sensational headlines
might have you think,
Yellowstone is not going to erupt tomorrow
or even 1,000 years from now.
In fact, scientists estimate
that another supereruption might not happen
for another few million years or so.
Or with some scientific ingenuity,
we could make it so that Yellowstone never erupted again.
That was the idea behind a thought experiment
that several scientists at NASA JPL put together in 2015.
The idea?
Cool the volcano down.
After all, heat is what often causes volcanic eruptions
in the first place.
It rises from Earth's core
and builds up within the volcanic chamber
until one day the pressure is so great
it explodes.
And Yellowstone is no different.
Each year, it produces enough heat
to power six industrial power plants.
About 60 to 70% of that heat
escapes through hot springs and geysers, like Old Faithful.
But the rest stays underground,
inside the supervolcano's magma chambers.
And it's here that the scientists staged the attack.
In the scenario, they propose to drill a series of wells
around the perimeter of the supervolcano.
The wells would be some of the deepest in the world,
reaching up to 10 km below the surface.
They'd pump cold water down into the wells,
which over time, would cool a ring of rock
around the magma chamber.
Sort of like how coolant in your car
carries heat away from its engine.
And bonus, the water's heated to around 340 degrees Celsius
as it moves through the chamber.
So the plan is to loop it back through the wells
and use it to drive an electric generator,
which could power the surrounding area
for tens of thousands of years,
essentially transforming Yellowstone
into a giant geothermal power station.
And ultimately, paying for itself in the end.
The scientists concluded that yes,
in theory, this could work.
But would we ever actually try it?
Probably not.
For one thing, you'd have to extract 20 gigawatts of energy
to cool the volcano down to a safe temperature,
which would take an estimated 16,000 years
from start to finish.
Not to mention, the plan would cost $3.46 billion.
That's about 20% of NASA's annual budget.
Even worse, cooling the rock could create fractures
near the magma chamber,
which might trigger a supereruption,
the very thing we're trying to avoid in the first place.
But lucky for us, the volcano is still sleeping.
And probably will be for a while.