Scientists have analyzed tiny quartz crystals to determine the amount of lead time humanity might have before an enormous volcanic eruption, and their conclusion is that there may only be one year of warning. The researchers focused on the kinds of giant volcanic eruptions that haven’t happened for a very, very long time, like a super eruption in New Zealand that occurred 26,500 years ago. “[W]e have shown that the onset of the process of decompression, which releases the gas bubbles that power the eruption, starts less than a year before eruption,” Guilherme Gualda, an associate professor at Vanderbilt University and first author of the new study, said in a statement. Gualda and another scientist used quartz crystals from the site of a super volcanic eruption in California that occurred 760,000 years ago, analyzing them to determine how long it took rims on the crystals to grow, a factor that is indicative of the lead time before a super volcanic eruption. ...
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