News Earth

Supervolcanoes evolve superquickly

Huge underground magma chambers appear and erupt within just several hundred years

California’s Long Valley is the remains of a supervolcano that exploded 760,000 years ago. Quartz grains in rocks from the eruption  suggest the magma chamber beneath it was there only briefly.

G. Gualda/Vanderbilt University

By Alexandra Witze

- More than 2 years ago

The biggest eruptions on Earth may happen faster than volcanologists had thought. Giant blobs of magma appear underground and then pour onto the surface within centuries, suggests a new study of a California supereruption.