Secrets of Yellowstone's Geysers

[Hum]

Despite more than a century of scrutiny, the inner workings of Old Faithful and other Yellowstone National Park geysers remain a mystery.

Scientists still hash over the basics, such as how water and steam pressurizes underground before a geyser erupts. Now, a high-tech look at Lone Star Geyser, one of the park's most punctual bubblers, could finally solve some of these long-standing puzzles. The research may also help scientists better understand and predict volcanic eruptions.

"The signals we record in geysers may put better constraints on the sources that generate those signals in volcanoes," said Shaul Hurwitz, a co-author of the study and a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.

 Geysers are like miniature volcanoes, with tiny tremors that warn of coming blasts and deathly hot fluids fountaining in the air. The big differences between the two are the plumbing ? water versus lava ? and the punctuality. But the predictability of geysers makes them an ideal test bed for figuring out how eruptions work.

In 2010, Hurwitz corralled a baker's dozen of geoscientists from around the world for a weeklong experiment at Lone Star Geyser. They measured water discharge, ground motions, seismic waves and sound waves, and recorded high-speed visible and infrared video. Lone Star Geyser erupts every three hours.

The results help explain the processes controlling a geyser's graceful jets of water and steam, as well as what's happening underground before, during and after an eruption, the researchers said. The findings were published June 19 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

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[Growled Member]

But the predictability of geysers makes them an ideal test bed for figuring out how eruptions work.

 

I'm not so sure real volcanoes are like that.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

 

For geyser to occur there must be heat, water, and a plumbing system. A magma chamber provides the heat, which radiates into surrounding rock. Water from rain and snow works its way underground through fractures in the rock.

 

As the water reaches hot rock it begins to rise back to the surface, passing through rhyolite, which is former volcanic ash or lava rich in silica. The hot water dissolves the silica and carries it upward to line rock crevices. This forms a constriction that holds in the mounting pressure, creating a geyser's plumbing system.

 

As superheated water nears the surface, its pressure drops, and the water flashes into steam as a geyser. Hot springs have unconstricted plumbing systems.

 

(Source) Oddly enough the official Yellowstone website :P

[DocM]

And in Yellowstone's case that magma chamber is massive, 60x30x12 kilometers, forming a supervolcano.

http://livescience.com/28821-yellowstone-supervolcano-bigger-plume.html