Technology:

Super-Eruptions May Only Take Hundreds of Years to Form (Earth Times)

This three-dimensional perspective 

view of  Long Valley, California 

Credit: NASA/JPL

Huge volcanic super-eruptions with the power to destroy civilisations take just hundreds of years to form, geologists believe. So-called 'super-eruptions', more than 100-times as large as the Mount Saint Helens incident, can spew gas, ash and rock over whole continents and cause the world to endure volcanic winters that can last decades.

It is thought that one Indonesian super eruption 74,000 years ago was so large it almost destroyed the whole human race. The cause of super eruptions is believed to be a massive magma pool that is created a few miles under the earth's surface.

Previously, it was thought that this process takes 100,000-200,000 years until it is ready to erupt.

But researchers at Nashville's Vanderbilt University suggest a study published in the Public Library of Science ONE journal that in it might only take a few hundred years until it erupts.

Read More......