Science

Why Mount Rainier Is The US Volcano Keeping Scientists Up At Night

Published

4 months ago

2024-06-24

Mount Rainier, Washington’s snowcapped peak that stands 4.3 kilometers (2.7 miles) above sea level, has not had a significant volcanic eruption in the last 1,000 years. More than Hawaii’s exploding lava fields or Yellowstone’s vast supervolcano, Mount Rainier has many US volcanologists concerned.

“Mount Rainier keeps me awake at night because it poses a significant threat to the nearby villages. “Tacoma and South Seattle are built on 100-foot-thick (30.5-meter) ancient mudflows from Mount Rainier eruptions,” said Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist and ambassador for the Union of Concerned Scientists, on an episode of CNN’s “Violent Earth With Liv Schreiber.”

Volcano | CNN Image

Why Mount Rainier Is The US Volcano Keeping Scientists Up At Night

The sleeping giant’s deadly potential does not stem from flaming lava flows, which, in the case of an eruption, are unlikely to spread more than a few miles beyond the boundary of Mount Rainier National Park in the Pacific Northwest. According to the US Geological Survey, most volcanic ash will likely drift downwind to the east, away from populated centers.

Instead, many scientists are concerned about a lahar, a fast-moving slurry of water and volcanic rock formed when ice or snow is rapidly melted by an eruption. Lahars gather debris as they run down valleys and drainage channels.

According to Seth Moran, a research seismologist at USGS Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, Mount Rainier’s tall height and ice and snow cover make it resilient to eruptive activity. “Hot stuff … will melt the cold stuff and a lot of water will start coming down,” he explained.

“And there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people who live in areas that potentially could be impacted by a large lahar, and it could happen quite quickly.”

A lahar is a rapidly flowing debris flow.
The deadliest lahar in recent memory occurred in November 1985, when Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted. Just a few hours after the eruption began, a flow of mud, rocks, lava, and freezing water surged over the village of Armero, killing over 23,000 people in minutes.

In an episode of CNN’s “Violent Earth,” Bradley Pitcher, a volcanologist and Columbia University lecturer in Earth and environmental sciences, described a hardened, concrete substance that can be difficult to escape.

Pitcher stated that Mount Rainier had approximately eight times the amount of glaciers and snow Nevado del Ruiz had when it erupted. “There’s the potential to have a much more catastrophic mudflow.”

According to the US Geological Survey’s 2018 threat assessment, Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano is the most dangerous in the US, which is unsurprising given its proximity to the population and periodic eruptions. Mount St. Helens exploded violently in May 1980 and was voted second most dangerous, followed by Mount Rainier in third.

Lahars are most commonly associated with volcanic eruptions, but landslides and earthquakes can also create them. Moran said geologists have discovered evidence that at least 11 massive lahars from Mount Rainier have reached the surrounding area, known as the Puget Lowlands, over the last 6,000 years.

Scientists have not linked the most recent of these lahars, which occurred approximately 500 years ago, to any volcanic activity. According to analysts, the flow event could have been the result of a huge landslide on the mountain’s west face.

The loose, weak rock remains in that location, and Moran and other volcanologists are particularly concerned about the possibility of a similar, spontaneous landslide-induced lahar.

Volcano | CNN Image

Why Mount Rainier Is The US Volcano Keeping Scientists Up At Night

“We now know that the volcano can do it again. “And then we’re in this world where anything can happen at any time,” Moran explained.

“If it were the same size, it would be 10 minutes to the nearest places where people live and 60 minutes to the nearest significant settlements. “And those are very short time frames,” he added.

A 2022 study considered two worst-case scenarios. In the first scenario, a 260 million cubic meter, 4 meter deep (9.2 billion cubic feet, 13-foot deep) lahar would form on Mount Rainier’s west slope. According to Moran, the debris flow would be equivalent to 104,000 Olympic-size pools and could reach the heavily populated lowlands of Orting, Washington, roughly an hour after an eruption, moving at a rate of 13 feet (4 meters) per second.

According to the simulation, a second “pronounced hazard” area is the Nisqually River Valley, where a major lahar may displace enough water from Alder Lake to allow the 100-meter-tall (330-foot-tall) Alder Dam to spill over.

Mount Rainier’s neighbor, Mount St. Helens, farther south in the Cascade Range, erupted four decades ago, causing a disastrous lahar that did not reach any highly populated regions.

Venus Dergan and her then-boyfriend, Roald Reitan, were trapped in the Mount St. Helens lahar while on a camping vacation and are among the few persons known to have survived being swept up in a debris flow.

“I tried to cling on as we were swept downstream, but the tree bark was scraping. … During an interview for CNN’s “Violent Earth,” she recounted feeling it on her legs and arms.

“At one point, I went under the logs and dirt and accepted that this was the end. I was not going to get out of this, and I was going to die.

Volcano | CNN Image

Why Mount Rainier Is The US Volcano Keeping Scientists Up At Night

Following the explosion of Mount St. Helens, the US Geological Survey established a lahar detection system on Mount Rainier in 1998, which has been modified and expanded since 2017.

About 20 places on the volcano’s slopes and the two paths identified as most at risk of a lahar now have broadband seismometers that send real-time data and additional sensors such as trip wires, infrasound sensors, web cameras, and GPS receivers.

Moran explained that the device is designed to identify both a lahar if the volcano erupts in the future and a lahar caused by a landslide.

Because of the constraints of 1990s technology, the original system had limited bandwidth and power requirements, resulting in data transmission every two minutes.

In March, 45,000 kids from Puyallup, Sumner-Bonney Lake, Orting, White River, and Carbonado, Washington, took part in a lahar evacuation simulation. According to the USGS, this was the first time numerous school districts exercised on the same day, making it the world’s largest lahar drill.

Approximately 13,000 pupils walked up to 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) to specified areas outside of the defined lahar zone, while the remaining schools outside the lahar zone practiced sheltering in place.

Moran stated that the fail-safe components of the Lahar detection system are roughly 45 minutes away from the next significant community; thus, that was the time window within which communities had to work.

“Most of what happens at volcanoes is close by, and that’s why you try to keep people away because things happen fast, but lahars can travel a long way from the volcano and have a big impact.”

SOURCE – (CNN)

Science

A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test

Published

2 weeks ago

2024-10-10

Kiara Grace

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – A spacecraft launched Monday to probe the site of a cosmic accident.

The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft launched on a two-year trip to the little, harmless asteroid slammed by NASA two years ago as a practice run for the day when a murderous space rock threatens Earth. It’s the second phase of a planetary defense experiment that could one day save the globe.

SpaceX’s Falcon rocket vanished with Hera into the late morning clouds. An hour later, cheering erupted in the control center in Germany as the spacecraft split from the rocket’s upper stage and returned home. “It’s an amazing day,” the space agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said later.

The 2022 crash of NASA’s Dart spacecraft reduced Dimorphos’ orbit around its larger companion, indicating that if a harmful rock was heading our way, it might be pushed off course with adequate warning.

nasa

A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test

Scientists are eager to analyze the aftermath of the impact up close to determine how effective Dart was and what improvements may be required to protect Earth in the future.

“The more detail we can glean the better as it may be important for planning a future deflection mission should one be needed,” University of Maryland astronomer Derek Richardson stated before launch.

Researchers want to know if Dart (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test) created a crater or changed the 500-foot (150-meter) asteroid more dramatically. It seemed to be a flying saucer before Dart’s blow and may now resemble a kidney bean, according to Richardson, who participated in the Dart mission and is assisting Hera.

Dart’s wallop sent rubble and boulders hurtling off Dimorphos, adding to the impact’s momentum. For months, the debris track extended thousands of miles (almost 10,000 kilometers) into space.

According to flight director Ignacio Tanco, some rocks and debris may still be hovering about the asteroid, posing a threat to Hera.

A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test

“We don’t really know very well the environment in which we are going to operate,” Tanco informed me. “But that’s the whole point of the mission is to go there and find out.”

European authorities refer to the $400 million (363 million euros) effort as a “crash scene investigation.”

“Hera is going back to the crime scene and getting all the scientific and technical information,” said project manager Ian Carnelli.

Carrying a dozen science instruments, the compact car-sized Hera must swing past Mars in 2025 for a gravitational boost before landing at Dimorphos by the end of 2026. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, the Greek word for twin, a five-times larger asteroid that spins quickly. At that point, the asteroids will be 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) from Earth.

Hera will attempt to enter orbit around the rocky duo, progressively reducing flyby distances from 18 miles (30 kilometers) to a half-mile (1 kilometer). The spacecraft will examine the moonlet for at least six months to determine its mass, shape, composition, and orbit around Didymos.

Before the crash, Dimorphos circled its larger partner from three-quarters of a mile (1,189 meters) away. Scientists believe the orbit has become tighter and more oval-shaped, and that the moonlet may be tumbling.

Two shoebox-sized Cubesats will launch from Hera for even closer drone-like examinations, with one employing radar to peek beneath the moonlet’s boulder-strewn surface. Scientists believe Dimorphos was produced from particles shed by Didymos. The radar measurements should assist in determining whether Didymos is the small moon’s parent.

A Spacecraft Is On Its Way To A Harmless Asteroid Slammed By NASA In A Previous Save-The-Earth Test

After their survey, the CubeSats will attempt to land on the moonlet. If the moonlet tumbles, the situation will become more complicated. Hera may potentially conclude its mission with a perilous touchdown but on the bigger Didymos.

Neither asteroid poses a threat to Earth, before or after Dart appeared. That is why NASA chose the pair for humanity’s first asteroid-deflecting demonstration.

Asteroids, which are remnants of the solar system’s origin 4.6 billion years ago, circle the sun principally between Mars and Jupiter in what is known as the main asteroid belt, where millions of them live. When they fall from the belt and land in our area, they become near-Earth objects.

NASA now has around 36,000 near-Earth objects, the majority of which are asteroids, although there are also some comets. More than 2,400 of them are deemed potentially dangerous to the Earth.

SOURCE | AP

Science

A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October

Published

2 weeks ago

2024-10-09

Kiara Grace

NEW YORK — Prepare to spot a rare and dazzling comet.

The space rock is hurling toward Earth from the far reaches of the solar system and will make its closest approach on Saturday. It should be visible through the end of October, assuming clear skies.

A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October

Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas should be visible to the naked eye, but binoculars and telescopes will provide a clearer view.

“It’ll be this fuzzy circle with a long tail stretching away from it,” explained Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the Bell Museum in Minnesota.

What is a comet?
They are frozen remains from billions of years ago when the solar system was formed. They heat up as they swing toward the sun, revealing their distinctive streaming tails.

In 2023, a green one that had last visited Earth 50,000 years ago flew past again. Other significant flybys were Neowise in 2020 and Hale-Bopp and Hyakutake in the mid to late 1990s.

Where did Tsuchinshan-Atlas come from?
Also known as C/2023 A3, was found last year and named after the observatories in China and South Africa that spotted it.

It originated in the Oort Cloud, which extends far beyond Pluto. After making its closest approach to Earth at 44 million miles (71 million kilometers), it will not return for another 80,000 years, provided it survives the journey.

A Rare Comet Brightens The Night Skies In October

Every year, several comets are detected, but many of them burn up near the sun or are too far away to be observed without special equipment, according to Larry Denneau, a key researcher with the Atlas telescope that helped discover it.

How to View

Those seeking to see Tsuchinshan-Atlas should go outside about an hour after sunset on a clear night and look to the west.

The comet should be visible from both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

SOURCE | AP

Science

NASA Switches Off Instrument On Voyager 2 Spacecraft To Save Power

Published

2 weeks ago

2024-10-07

Kiara Grace

NEW YORK — To save power, NASA turned off another scientific equipment on its long-running Voyager 2 spacecraft.

NASA Switches Off Instrument On the Spacecraft To Save Power

The space agency announced on Tuesday that 2’s plasma science instrument, meant to study the movement of charged atoms, was turned off in late September to allow the spacecraft to continue exploring for as long as possible, which is estimated to be into the 2030s.

NASA turned off a suite of instruments on Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, after exploring the gas giant planets in the 1980s. Both are currently in interstellar space or the region between stars. The plasma instrument on Voyager 1 stopped working years ago and was finally shut off in 2007.

The remaining four instruments on 2 will continue to collect data on magnetic fields and particles. Its mission is to investigate the regions of space beyond the sun’s protective sphere.

NASA Switches Off Instrument On Voyager 2 Spacecraft To Save Power

It launched in 1977, is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. It is now more than 12 billion miles (19.31 billion kilometers) from Earth. 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24.14 billion kilometers) beyond Earth.

SOURCE | AP