Yellowstone: Magma Chamber

Guest: Jamie Farrell, postdoctoral researcher in Geology at the University of Utah and co-author of a recent report on the existence of an even larger magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone National Park, where hot springs bubble and more than 300 geysers erupt spontaneously, is actually situated inside the crater of one of the world’s largest volcanoes, 45 miles wide in places. Scientists have long known that the magma in the reservoir beneath Yellowstone could fill the Grand Canyon a couple times over. But a team of geologists has just discovered that, in fact, there is a second, much larger magma chamber that sits below the previously known chamber containing enough magma to fill the Grand Canyon 11 times!