Name: 【TED-Ed】The colossal consequences of supervolcanoes - Alex Gendler
Uploaded: 2014-08-14T05:20:23.000Z
Duration: 4 min 51 s
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Europe and North America had just been through

and a slow recovery seemed to be underway,

flooding the rivers and causing crop failures

While odd-colored snow fell in Italy and Hungary,

famine, food riots and disease epidemics ensued.

In what came to be known as "the Year Without a Summer,"

A mood captured in Lord Byron's poem "Darkness":

"I had a dream which was not all a dream.

and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space,

and the icy Earth swung blind and blackening

morn came and went -- and came, and brought no day."

that the real source of their misfortunes

had occurred a year ago thousands of miles away.

characterized by a volume of erupted material,

many times greater than that of ordinary volcanoes.

And while the popular image of volcanic destruction

is molten rock engulfing the surrounding land,

while toxic gases, such as sulfur dioxide,

and drastically cooling the atmosphere below.

along with other effects such as acid rain,

and annihilating the plant life on which other organisms,

But previous eruptions have been even more deadly.

is likely to have triggered the Russian famine,

while more ancient eruptions have been blamed for major world events,

such as the fall of the Chinese Xia Dynasty,

the disappearance of the Minoan civilization,

and even a genetic bottleneck in human evolution

that may have resulted from all but a few thousand human beings

One of the most dangerous types of supervolcano

formed when a volcanic mountain collapses

But though the above-ground volcano is gone,

the underground volcanic activity continues.

building up pressure until a massive and violent explosion

And one of the largest active volcanic calderas

lies right under Yellowstone National Park.

The last time it erupted, 650,000 years ago,

conducting evacuations and diverting lava flows

means that for many people there would be nowhere to run.

Fortunately, the current data shows no evidence

of such an eruption occurring in the next few thousand years.

will remain a powerful and terrifying vision.

Less fictional than we would like to believe.

"The winds were withered in the stagnant air,

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【TED-Ed】The colossal consequences of supervolcanoes - Alex Gendler

massive

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year