IN tudying tory of Yellooional Park, Bobsen of ted States Geological Survey became puzzled about somet,oddly,    troubled anyone before:    find t ime t Yelloone ure—t’s ed for all itsgeysers and oteamy features—and t voloes is t tty spicuous. But sen couldn’t find tone voloanyructure known as a caldera.

        Most of us, es in a symmetrical mound.

        t Parí in Mexico, a farmer artled tosee smoke rising from a patc    opped out at almost fourteen    aen trusivelyvisible voloes o a fe. But ted type of volo t doesn’t involve mountain building. t t open in a single migure, leaving be subsided pit,tin one obviously ype,but sen couldn’t find the caldera anywhere.

        By ce just at time NASA decided to test some neude cameras bytaking pograpone, copies of o ties on tion t t make a nice bloors’ ters. As soon as sen saos o spottually ta crater more ty miles aucoo o be perceived from any some time in t Yelloone must o humans.

        Yelloo turns out, is a supervolo. It sits on top of an enormous    spot, areservoir of molten rock t rises from at least 125 miles do fromt spot is one’s vents, geysers,    springs, and popping mudpots. Be is about forty-five miles acr eig its t point. Imagine apile of tNt about t miles into to about t of t cirrus clouds, and you    visitors to Yellooneare sop of. t su tabove ed Yelloone and about territory about1,700 feet    bleaclysm is pretty o Professor Bill McGuire of Uy College London, “you be able to get ers of it” ing. t followed would be even worse.

        Superplumes of type on s are ratini glasses—t spreading out as to create vast boable magma.

        Some of to 1,200 miles across. Acc to tal explosively but sometimes burst fort, tinuous outp—aflood—of molten rock, sucraps in India sixty-five million years ago.

        (trap i es from a Sributed to tainly didn’t gassings. Superplumesmay also be responsible for ts t cause tis to break up.

        Suc all t rare. t ty active ones on t t, and t-k int apart from Yelloo idea one’s ended up beial plate. Only tain: t t at Yelloone is t t is . But    spot or    is t is tter of ed (as it e. tialnature of t makes a o its eruptioo bubble aeadily and in a paratively benign fasone blo doesn’t en, but    to stand well back.

        Sis first knoion 16.5 million years ago, it    a imes, but t ret tions are t get ten about. t eruptionimes greater t of Mount St.    imesbigger, and t nobody knoly     least ty-five imes greater t.    per timesmore monstrous.

        e ely noto pare it to. t blast i times    ofKrakatau in Indonesia in August 1883, ed around ter slos if you imagied material from Krakatau as being about t of tone blasts    about    St. han a pea.

        toion of t out enougo bury o a depty-seve or California to a depty. tmade Mike Voorern Nebraska. t blast occurred in    a rate of about one inc raveled over it, so t today it is directly under nort yoming. (t spot itselfstays in one place, like ayleorc a ceiling.) In its    leaves t ofric are ideal froatoes, as Idas like to joke, Yelloone eppingaround geysers.

        t Yellooion covered all or parts of eeates (plus parts of ada and Mexiearly ted States    of t of America, a produces roug is    like a big sno    io grooput all t took t monto clear 1.8 billion tons of debrisfrom teen acres of trade ter site in Ne ake to clear Kansas.

        And t’s not even to sider tiseque supervolo eruptio toba, in nortra, seventy-four te     it obablast    least six years of “volic er” and goodness kno. t, it is t, may    to tin, redug tion to no more t means t all modern ion base,y. At all events, tosuggest t for t ty total number of people o any time. t is, needless to say, a long time to recover from asingle volic blast.

        All tically iing until 1973, ous: er in Yelloone Lake, in t of to ru te end of ter mysteriously flos did a y survey and discovered t a largearea of ting up one end of ter to run out at ted one side of a cral region of t     formallysurveyed. tral part of t inoo be swelling again.

        ts realized t only oless magma chamber.

        Yellooe of an a supervolo; it e of an active o    about time t to    t toions averaged one massive blo one, iingly enougo appears, is due.

        “It may not feel like it, but you’re standing on t active volo in toional Park geologist, told me soon after climbing off an enormousorcycle and s at ters atMammot Springs early on a lovely m in June. A native of Indiana, Doss is anamiable, soft-spokeremely tful man ail. A smallsappud graces one ear. A sligrains against his crisp Park Serviiform.

        employee. In fact,     t plato do it,”    off in a bouncy, battered four-o let me apany    doing    is a park geologist does. t assigoday is to give anintroductory talk to a neuides.

        Yelloone, I    out, is sensationally beautiful, atelymountains, bison-specked meadoumbling streams, a sky-blue lake, ing. “It really doesn’t get aer t,” Doss says. “You’vegot rocks up at Beartoot are nearly ters of to Eart mineral springs s at t springs from s title—“—or prettier.”

        “So you like it?” I say.

        “O,” y. “I mean I really love it ers are toug too , but ’s just—”

        errupted o point out a distant gap in a range of mountains to t, o vieains, old me, ins.

        “t gap is sixty or maybe seventy miles across. For a long time nobody could uandiansen realized t it o be because tains    bloy miles of mountains just obliterated,you knoty potent. It took sen six years to figureit all out.”

        I asked    caused Yellooo blow w did.

        “Don’t kne t uandt all. Vesuvius, in Italy, ive for til aion in 1944and t just stopped. It’s been silent ever since. Some volologists t it isrectle . But nobody knows.”

        “And    if Yelloone o go?”

        time it bleand possibly some s of beeam vents, butnobody really knows.”

        “So it could just bl?”

        fully. trouble,    nearly all t itute    in some measure at Yelloone. “Eartions, but ts of eart year. Most of too small to be felt, but theless.”

        A    of geyser eruptions migaken as a clue,    too vary uably. O famous geyser in tused to erupt regularly and spectacularly to s of t, but in 1888 it juststopped. t erupted again, to a    of eig. SteamboatGeyser is t geyser in t bloer four    intot tervals bets eruptions tle as four days to almostfifty years. “If it bleoday and agai     tell us anyt all about miger or ty years from now,” Doss says.

        “tile t it’s essentially impossible to draanyt happens.”

        Evacuating Yelloone s some tors ayear, mostly in tively fe iionally narroly to sloraffic, partly to preserve an air ofpicturesqueness, and partly because of topograpraints. At t of summer, it easily take o cross to get anyop, bison jams. e get wolf jams.”

        In tumn of 2000, representatives from tional ParkService, along    and formed sometoneVolic Observatory. Four suce already—in on—but oddly none in t volie in t actually a t more an idea—an agreement to coordinate efforts at studying andanalyzing t tasks, Doss told me, o draion in t of a crisis.

        “t one already?” I said.

        “No. Afraid not. But there will be soon.”

        “Isn’t t just a little tardy?”

        ’s just say t it’s not any too soon.”

        O is in place, t tiansen in Menlo Park, California,Professor Robert B. Smit ty of Utaential cataclysm and advise te. te ake to evacuate tone o blo tes.

        Of course it may be tens of t day es. Doss t e at all. “Just because ttern in t doesn’t mean t it stillrue,” o suggest t ttern may be a series ofcatastrop. e may be in t no most of tallizing. It is releasing itsvolatiles; you o trap volatiles for an explosive eruption.”

        In time ty of otone, as atingly evident on t of August 17, 1959, at a place called outside t ty mio midnig date, astrop ude 7.5, not vast as eart so abrupt and collapsed aire mountai    of tunately not so many people    to Yelloone in tymillion tons of rock, moving at more t fell off tain, traveling um t t up a mountain on ts pat of ty-eigeen of toodeep ever to be found again. tation    but breakingly fickle. tent, s, sleeping in a besidet away and never seen again.

        “A big eartime,” Doss told me. “You t on t. t zone for earthquakes.”

        Despite tone didn’t getperma seismometers until the 1970s.

        If you needed a o appreciate ture of geologic processes,you could do o sider tetons, tuously jagged ra stands justto toional Park. Nine million years ago, tetons did.

        t a    ty-mile-long faultopened    once every onsexperience a really big earto jerk t    is ted jerks over eons t o t majestic s of sevent.

        t nine    misleading one. Acc toRobert B. Smito tory of t major teton quake    five and seveons, in s, are about t overdue eart.

        risk. time, pretty muy predictability. “You knoors intotold me after o see. Did you kns at Yelloo of the world bined?”

        “I didn’t kno.”

        en t migo a place called Duck Lake, a body of er a couple of    lookspletely innocuous,” ’s just a big pond. But t used to be here.

        At some time in t fifteen tens of millions of tons of earted er blo at it    at Old Faitors’ ters.” he made an unhappy face.

        “ould there be any warning?”

        “Probably not. t signifit explosion in t a place called Pork C left a crater about five meters across—not    bigenougo be standing t time. Fortunately, nobody    t     past t ell you    standing t does.”

        Big rockfalls are also a da Gardiner yon in 1999, but againfortunately no one e in ternoon, Doss and I stopped at a place    any time,” Doss said tfully.

        “You’re kidding,” I said. t a moment , all filled    literal sense, happy campers.

        “O’s not likely,”    saying it could. Equally it could stay like t fordecades. t no telling. People o accept t t’sall to it.”

        As o o o Mammot Springs, Doss added: “Butt of time bad t    fall. Eartoccur. Nes don’t suddenly open up. For all tability, it’s mostly remarkably andamazingly tranquil.”

        “Like Eartself,” I remarked.

        “Precisely,” he agreed.

        t Yelloone apply to park employees as muco visitors. Doss got a in    e one nig activity knoting”—s publicize it, not all tone are dangerously . Some are extremely agreeable to lie in, and it    of some of to e at nig    to do so. Fooliso take a flas, o a scaldi beloo tream t to leap over earlier. t of took a running jump. In fact, it tream at all. It    three survived.

        I t about t m as I made a brief call, on my    of t aplace called Emerald Pool, in t ime to take me t I t I oug least to    it, for Emerald Pool is a oricsite.

        In 1965, a eam of biologists udy trip,    rimmed t for life. to tually t extremop could live i o bemucoo    or acid or co bear life. Emerald Pool, remarkably,    at least types of living ticus as t genial. It    notemperatures of 50°C (122°F), but ers nearly t .

        For almost ty years, one of teria, ticus,remained a laboratory curiosity until a stist in California named Kary B. Mullis realizedt -resistant enzymes    could be used to create a bit of , s to gee lots of DNA from verysmall amounts—as little as a single molecule in ideal ditions. It’s a kind of geicpocopying, and it became t geic sce, from academicstudies to police forensic    ry in 1993.

        Means    ures of 80°C (176°F) or more. tanism found so far, acc to Frances As in Life at tremes, is Pyrolobusfumarii, ure    reac for life is t to be about 120°C (248°F), tually kno all events, tely    of tist Jay Bergstral it: “o    ile possible enviros for life—as long as ter and some source of chemical energy we find life.”

        Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.

        t to see,    doesn’t altogeto    us here.

        PARt V     LIFE ItSELFtudy tails of its arcecture,t t haveknoere ing.

        -Freeman Dyson
请记住本书首发域名：966xs.com。966小说手机版阅读网址：wap.966xs.com