This is the cause of the largest volcanic eruption in history

The huge eruption of the Toba volcano in Indonesia triggered a devastating flood of the surrounding area 73,000 years ago. These volcanoes are called super volcanoes, resulting in even global climate change.

Recently, scientists have discovered the cause of the explosion of Toba volcano 73,000 years ago. This eruption is considered to be the largest known in history, it discharged 2,800km of smoke, dust and ash into the surrounding areas, causing huge dust spells throughout Indonesia and India.

How a huge amount of lava can concentrate at the same time to cause the biggest explosion in history, is a question that has caused much debate among scientists for a long time. .

We know that volcanoes erupt when the density and pressure are too high, which is how to release the temperature and pressure in the Earth's heart. However, this mechanism is still a mystery.

A team of Uppsala University researchers and their international colleagues found an answer to this question. The answer is in quartz crystals a few millimeters in size in volcanic ash and rock.

Quartz crystals formed and developed inside lava, its chemical properties changed depending on the temperature of magma before a volcanic eruption. This is like the wood grain of the tree is changed when climate changes.

73,000 years ago, Toba volcano erupted, it discharged 2,800km of smoke, dust and ash into the surrounding areas.

"When the conditions in magma change, the crystals will change and evolve into a corresponding property. The problem is that the quartz crystals, as well as the wood grain, are very small in size. detailed analysis will be quite difficult , " researcher David Budd is working at Uppsala University, said.

While conducting research on quartz crystals at Toba volcano, the researchers found that there was a difference between the nature and weight of the volcanic crystals outside and inside.

The outer crystals are heavier and contain oxygen O18 isotope. As for crystals inside volcanoes, they are lighter and oxygen in them has isotopes 16.

According to the authors, this difference shows that there is something in the magma flow that has caused the quartz crystals to change drastically before the eruption occurred.

So what happened? Researchers believe that when magma melts, they melt in large amounts of nearby rocks in the same ratio.

"The rocks contain a lot of water, when the melted stone will release the amount of water into the magma and evaporate, causing the gas pressure to rise high in the volcanic magma reservoir. When the pressure increases, the upper crust gets broken, leading to thousands of kilometers of magma out , " said study author Frances Deegan.

So in short, the super volcanoes can erupt a huge amount of magma when the rocks in its heart are a rock filled with water. Luckily for us, there are very few volcanoes that erupt.

In addition to Toba volcano, there are also many volcanic eruptions that have happened in the past. La Garita Caldera volcano erupted and discharged 5,000 km of magma blocks 27.8 million years ago.

The Huckleberry Ridge volcano in Yellowstone released 2,500 km of magma about 2.1 million years ago. In Chile there is volcano Atana Ignimbrite 4 million years ago also erupted 2,500 km of magma.

In 1815, the Tambora volcano in Indonesia's Sumbawa Island had the largest eruption in history since its beginning. It is a level 7 eruption on the VEI scale, which estimates that up to 100,000 people die from its dusty remnants, causing global winters because of the atmosphere covered by dust and sunlight. can't pass through.

However, Toba is still a volcano with the most terrible eruption in history, it almost pushed to a global disaster that caused all species on Earth to be brought to the brink of destruction. Hopefully in the future, there will not be another super volcano erupting.