CPT Spirits in the Sky - Janis Joplin, Charter Member of the 27 Club!

From the Gulf Coast of Texas to the San Francisco Underground, Janis Joplin was the Queen of Blues when the Blues came from the Heart and Soul and Life or Death hung in the balance.  It has been forty-five years since Janis died, at just 27 years old, when the world was just beginning to sit up and take notice.  The following is her biography from A&E Network.

Bio. - AE Network

Janis Joplin Biography

Singer (1943–1970)

Singer Janis Joplin rose to fame in the late 1960s and was known for her powerful, blues-inspired vocals. She died of an accidental drug overdose in 1970.

Synopsis

Born on January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas, Janis Joplin developed a love of music at an early age, but her career didn't take off until she joined the band Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1966. Their 1968 album, Cheap Thrills, was a huge hit. However, friction between Joplin and the band prompted her to part ways with Big Brother soon after. Known for her powerful, blues-inspired vocals, Joplin released her first solo effort, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, in 1969. The album received mixed reviews, but her second project, Pearl (1971), released after Joplin's death, was a huge success. The singer died of an accidental overdose on October 4, 1970, at age 27.

Wild Child

Janis Lyn Joplin was born on January 19, 1943, in Port Arthur, Texas. Breaking new ground for women in rock music, Joplin rose to fame in the late 1960s and became known for her powerful, blues-inspired vocals. She grew up in a small Texas town known for its connections to the oil industry with a skyline and dotted with oil tanks and refineries. For years, Joplin struggled to escape from this confining community, and spent even longer to trying to overcome her memories of her difficult years there.

Developing a love for music at an early age, Joplin sang in her church choir as a child and showed some promise as a performer. She was an only child until the age of 6, when her sister, Laura, was born. Four years later, her brother, Michael, arrived. Joplin was a good student and fairly popular until around the age of 14, when some side effects of puberty started to kick in. She got acne and gained some weight.

At Thomas Jefferson High School, Joplin began to rebel. She eschewed the popular girls' fashions of the late 1950s, often choosing to wear men's shirts and tights, or short skirts. Joplin, who liked to stand out from the crowd, became the target of some teasing as well as a popular subject in the school's rumor mill. She was called a "pig" by some, while others said that she was sexually promiscuous.

Joplin eventually developed a group of guy friends who shared her interest in music and the Beat Generation, which rejected the standard norms and emphasized creative expression (Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were two of the Beat movement's leading figures).

Early Musical Interests

Musically, Janis Joplin and her friends gravitated toward blues and jazz, admiring such artists as Lead Belly. Joplin was also inspired by legendary blues vocalists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey and Odetta, an early leading figure in the folk music movement. The group frequented local working-class bars in the nearby town of Vinton, Louisiana. By her senior year of high school, Joplin had developed a reputation as a ballsy, tough-talking girl who like to drink and be outrageous.


After graduating from high school, Joplin enrolled at Lamar State College of Technology in the neighboring town of Beaumont, Texas. There, she devoted more time to hanging out and drinking with friends than to her studies. At the end of her first semester at Lamar, Joplin left the school. She went on to attend Port Arthur College, where she took some secretarial courses, before moving to Los Angeles in the summer of 1961. This first effort to break away from wasn't a success, however, and Joplin thus returned to Port Arthur for a time.

In the summer of 1962, Joplin fled to the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied art. In Austin, Joplin began performing at folksings—casual musical gatherings where anyone can perform—on campus and at Threadgill's, a gas station turned bar, with the Waller Creek Boys, a musical trio with whom she was friends. With her forceful, gutsy singing style, Joplin amazed many audience members. She was unlike any other white female vocalist at the time (folk icons like Joan Baez and Judy Collins were known for their gentle sound).

In January 1963, Joplin ditched school to check out the emerging music scene in San Francisco with friend Chet Helms. But this stint out west, like her first, proved to be unsuccessful, as Joplin struggled to make it as a singer in the Bay Area. She played some gigs, including a side-stage performance at the 1963 Monterey Folk Festival—but her career didn't gain much traction. Joplin then spent some time in New York City, where she hoped to have better luck getting her career off the ground, but her drinking and drug use (she'd begun regularly using speed, or amphetamine, among other drugs) there proved to be detrimental to her musical aspirations. In 1965, she left San Francisco and returned home in an effort to get herself together again.

Back in Texas, Joplin took a break from her music and her hard-partying lifestyle, and dressed conservatively, putting her long, often messy hair into a bun and doing everything else she could to appear straight-laced. But the conventional life was not for her, and her desire to pursue her musical dreams wouldn't remain submerged for long.

Joplin slowly returned to performing, and in May 1966, was recruited by friend Travis Rivers to audition for a new psychedelic rock band based in San Francisco, Big Brother and the Holding Company. At the time, the group was managed by another longtime friend of Joplin's, Chet Helms. Big Brother, whose members included James Gurley, Dave Getz, Peter Albin and Sam Andrew, was part of the burgeoning San Francisco music scene of the late 1960s; among the other bands involved in this scene were the Grateful Dead.

Big Brother

Joplin blew the band away during her audition, and was quickly offered membership into the group. In her early days with Big Brother, she sang only a few songs and played the tambourine in the background. But it wasn't long before Joplin assumed a bigger role in the band, as Big Brother developed quite a following in the Bay Area. Their appearance at the now legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967—specifically their version of "Ball and Chain" (originally made famous by R&B legend Big Mama Thornton) brought the group further acclaim. Most of the praise, however, focused on Joplin's incredible vocals. Fueled by heroin, amphetamines and the bourbon she drank straight from the bottle during gigs, Joplin's unrestrained sexual style and raw, gutsy sound mesmerized audiences—and all of this attention caused some tension between Joplin and her bandmates.


After hearing Joplin at Monterey, Columbia Records President Clive Davis wanted to sign the band. Albert Grossman, who already managed Bob Dylan, the Band, and Peter, Paul & Mary, later signed on as the band's manager, and was able to get them out of another record deal they'd signed earlier with Mainstream Records.

While their recordings for Mainstream never found much of an audience, Big Brother's first album for Columbia, Cheap Thrills (1968), was a huge hit. While the album was wildly successful—quickly becoming a certified gold record with songs like "Piece of My Heart" and "Summertime"—creating it had been a challenging process, causing even more problems between Joplin and band's other members. (The album was produced by John Simon, who'd had the band do take after take in an attempt to create a technically perfect sound.)

Cheap Thrills helped solidify Joplin's reputation as a unique, dynamic, bluesy rock singer. Despite Big Brother's continued success, Joplin was becoming frustrated with group, feeling that she was being held back professionally.

Solo Career

Joplin struggled with her decision to leave Big Brother, as her bandmates had been like a family to her, but she eventually decided to part ways with the group. She played with Big Brother for the last time in December 1968.


Following a historic performance at Woodstock (August 1969), Joplin released her first solo effort, I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, in September 1969, with Kozmic Blues Band. Some of the project's most memorable songs were "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" and "To Love Somebody," a cover of a Bee Gees tune. But Kozmic Blues received mixed reviews, with some media outlets criticizing Joplin personally. Feeling uniquely pressured to prove herself as a female solo artist in a male-dominated industry, the criticism caused distress for Joplin. "That was a pretty heavy time for me," she later said in an interview with Howard Smith of The Village Voice. "It was really important, you know, whether people were going to accept me or not." (Joplin's interview with Smith was her last; it took place on September 30, 1970, just four days before her death.) Outside of music, Joplin appeared to be struggling with alcohol and drugs, including an addiction to heroin.

Joplin's next album would be her most successful, but, tragically, also her last. She recorded Pearl with the Full Tilt Boogie Band and wrote two of its songs, the powerful, rocking "Move Over" and "Mercedes Benz," a gospel-styled send-up of consumerism.

Tragic Death and Legacy

Following a long struggle with substance abuse, Joplin died from an accidental heroin overdose on October 4, 1970, at a hotel in Hollywood's Landmark Hotel. Completed by Joplin's producer, Pearl was released in 1971 and quickly became a hit. The single "Me and Bobby McGee," written by Kris Kristofferson, a former love of Joplin's, reached the top of the charts.

Despite her untimely death, Janis Joplin's songs continue to attract new fans and inspire performers. Numerous collections of her songs have been released over the years, including In Concert (1971) and Box of Pearls (1999). In recognition of her significant accomplishments, Joplin was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and honored with a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammy Awards in 2005.

Dubbed the "first lady of rock 'n' roll," Joplin has been the subject of several books and documentaries, including Love, Janis (1992), written by sister Laura Joplin. That book was adapted into a play of the same title. Amy Berg’s documentary, Janis: Little Girl Blue, premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2015.
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A NASA satellite that monitors CO2 is revealing the inner workings of our planet

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That’s key to figure out how our world will respond to climate change

by Alessandra Potenza@ale_potenza  Oct 12, 2017, 2:00pm EDT

NASA is advancing new tools like the supercomputer model that created this simulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to better understand what will happen to Earth’s climate if the land and ocean can no longer absorb nearly half of all climate-warming CO2 emissions. Image: NASA / GSFC

Thanks to a NASA satellite that’s been mapping the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in unprecedented detail, scientists are learning much more about how plants work, and how the land and oceans suck up and release CO2. This information could help us figure out how our world will respond to global warming.

New research shows that during the 2015–2016 El Niño, for instance, droughts, heat, and fires in tropical areas caused plants and soil on three continents to contribute to the largest growth of carbon dioxide on record. Plants use CO2 to grow, and they suck it out of the atmosphere. But during this event, because of little rain and higher than normal temperatures in South America, Africa, and Asia, some plants didn’t absorb as much CO2; others died and decomposed more quickly, releasing the carbon they’d pulled from the air. The newly observed behavior may provide clues for how the changing climate will create new feedback systems that can accelerate global warming.

The OCO-2 satellite, launched in 2014. Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech

These findings, published in one of five studies coming out today in Science, represent just the first batch of discoveries from a mission NASA launched in 2014. The satellite, called Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2, is designed to monitor carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere. CO2 levels have been increasing since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, and because CO2 is a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, our planet is warming up. Today, we keep pumping out huge amounts of carbon by burning fossil fuels, but about 25 percent of those emissions are absorbed by the ocean, and another 25 percent is vacuumed up by plants. Today’s papers are the beginnings of explanations about how this carbon is taken up, and if these processes will last as the world continues to warm.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty on what the world might be like in 100 years, and understanding more of what we’re seeing now can help us predict better what the future holds,” says Annmarie Eldering, the deputy project scientist for the OCO-2 mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the co-author of a few of the studies.

The OCO-2 satellite zooms around the Earth over 14 times a day, gathering about 100,000 measurements per day — including in areas that haven’t been observed much before, like the middle of the ocean and the Amazon rainforest. Using that data, researchers put together a map of CO2 concentrations over the planet, to see how the gas is absorbed and emitted, and how it’s dispersed into the atmosphere.

This map shows how CO2 concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere change dramatically from season to season. Photo: A. Eldering et al., Science (2017)

One such map, described in one of the studies, shows how the Northern Hemisphere — where most continents are — is engulfed in carbon dioxide in the winter. But as the spring arrives and plants reactivate, concentrations take a nosedive. “To me, it was just like, ‘Wow!’” says Eldering. “It looked like some monster took a bite out of the carbon dioxide in those regions. I was amazed by how powerful the natural systems are.” Another study shows that the OCO-2 satellite can be used to track CO2 over really small areas, like volcanoes and cities like Los Angeles. That could be used not only to better understand city pollution, but also to predict when volcanoes will erupt.

As scientists keep delving through the first years of data, here are some of their major findings so far.

EL NIÑO

The OCO-2 satellite launched in July 2014, right before the beginning of one of the strongest El Niños ever. “It was just dumb luck,” says Scott Denning, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, who was not involved in the research. El Niño is a recurring climate pattern that brings warm waters to the tropical Pacific Ocean, affecting weather all over the globe. And the first El Niño the satellite observed was a doozy.

“IT WAS JUST DUMB LUCK.”

An extra 2.5 gigatons of CO2 was released into the air compared to 2011, when conditions were normal, one of the Sciencepapers reported. That extra carbon, about 25 million Statues of Liberty worth of mass, came from tropical areas in South America, Africa, and Asia — where plants all reacted differently. In South America, the plants’ growth was stunted by drought, causing them to vacuum up less CO2 than usual. In Africa, the heat caused dead plants to decompose more quickly, releasing high amounts of CO2. And in Asia, drought and heat caused forest fires, which also pumped huge quantities of carbon into the air.

In another study, researchers looked at how the same El Niño affected the ocean. Although the world’s oceans suck in about 25 percent of our CO2 emissions, different oceans behave differently: while the northern Atlantic absorbs CO2, the tropical Pacific usually releases CO2, says study co-author Abhishek Chatterjee, a scientist at University Space Research Association, working at NASA Goddard. That’s because powerful winds that blow east to west across the Pacific carry deep ocean water rich in CO2 to the surface. From there, part of that CO2 is leaked into the atmosphere.

But during El Niño, those winds weaken, bringing less CO2 to the surface. That means less carbon is dispersed into the air. But how little? The rate at which CO2 leaked from the tropical Pacific dropped as much as 54 percent between March and July 2015, the first months of El Niño, Chatterjee and his colleagues found. The concentrations of CO2 then skyrocketed as plants in South America, Africa, and Asia released huge amounts of carbon as described in the other Science paper.

“This is really a first for the carbon cycle community,” Chatterjee says. Scientists have long wondered how exactly CO2 fluctuates during El Niños, what roles the land and ocean play, and these papers finally provide some answers to these questions. “Observations from OCO-2 have solved that critical scientific puzzle,” Chatterjee says.

VOLCANOES AND CITIES

The OCO-2 satellite makes such high-resolution measurements that researchers can look at CO2 concentrations over very small areas, such as a city or a volcano. CO2 over Los Angeles, for instance, was higher in the winter, when plants absorb less CO2 and more plants die, than in the summer, according to one of the Science studies. It was also higher in urban areas, where there are more cars and power plant emissions, than in suburban areas, says lead author Florian Schwandner, an analytical geochemist at JPL. The findings show that the OCO-2 satellite can quickly scan cities for pollution, complementing ground-based measurements.

The Yasur volcano in Vanuatu, in 2006. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The OCO-2 satellite can also be used to monitor active volcanoes, such as the Yasur volcano in Vanuatu, which constantly spews out a plume rich in CO2. The measurements suggest that Yasur is pumping out 41.6 kilotons of CO2 a day. When a volcano emits CO2, it means new batches of magma are moving toward the surface — a sign of unrest. So this new technique could be used to predict volcanic eruptions, Schwandner says. “We can’t stop a volcano, but we can evacuate people,” he says. “And the earlier we get the heads up the better.”

PHOTOSYNTHESIS

The OCO-2 satellite can also detect when plants take solar energy to grow, a process known as photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, plants emit a tiny amount of that energy back into the atmosphere, effectively glowing. This glow is invisible to the naked eye, but not to the OCO-2 satellite, which measures it at a much higher resolution than previous satellites like NASA’s Global Ozone Monitoring Instrument 2, according to another study published inScience.

“IT’S KINDA OF A DOUBLE WHAMMY.”

Detecting photosynthesis is key to understand whether plants are absorbing CO2. These measurements were used in one of the two El Niño papers, to figure out that during the 2015-2016 El Niño, plants in South America weren’t absorbing as much carbon. In the future, these worldwide observations of photosynthesis can be used to improve predictions of how productive crops will be in the future, as the world warms up, Eldering says.

All these observations have one main goal: to help us better understand the planet we live in — and how it’ll change in the future. And monitoring CO2 can help us unravel the mystery. “CO2 affects climate change, but also climate change affects CO2,” Denning says. “It’s kinda of a double whammy.” 

Yellowstone - Mother Nature's Dooms Day Weapon

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Yellowstone’s supervolcano could erupt much faster than anyone thought

 Mike Wehner,BGR News Wed, Oct 11 3:32 PM EDT

There’s a dangerous giant sitting dormant in the United States, and when it finally wakes up it has the potential to cause utter devastation. I’m talking of course about the supervolcano hiding beneath Yellowstone National Park, and while it’s long been thought that any hint of a possible eruption would be seen thousands and thousands of years in advance, new research throws that safety buffer right out the window, suggesting that the Yellowstone Supervolcano could go from calm to critical in as little as decades.

The research, which was presented at the IAVCEI 2017 volcanology conference in Portland, focuses on the most recent eruption of the volcano, which is thought to have occurred some 631,000 years ago. But rather than taking several thousands of years to build up, as previously thought, the newest data suggests that the most recent eruption was prompted by new magma pushing into the Yellowstone system just decades ahead of the big event.

This much more rapid timeframe between dormancy and eruption is obviously very troubling, especially when you consider the global impact that the event could have. The most recent eruption of the Yellowstone system spewed an estimated 240 cubic miles of material into the air. 2.1 million years ago an even larger eruption occurred, sending 585 cubic miles of rock and dust skyward. For comparison, that’s approximately 6,000 times the amount of material launched from Mount St. Helens during its 1980 eruption.

“It’s shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption,” Hannah Shamloo, graduate student at Arizona State University and lead author of the study, said of the discovery.

Still, at the moment there’s little reason to be concerned, as the Yellowstone Supervolcano seems to be perfectly content to continue its unusually long quiet spell. When the mighty beast decides to wake back up is anyone’s guess, but now at least we know that we might not have nearly as much warning as we once thought.

Yellowstone Supervolcano Could Erupt Sooner Than We Thought. Here’s What You Need to Know.

 Grace Donnelly 

Did you know there's a supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park? Maybe you've heard that it could erupt with much less advance warning than expected?

Researchers from Arizona State University spent weeks studying fossilized ash deposits from the Yellowstone volcano and recently shared their findings. The minerals in these deposits revealed that the critical changes in temperature and composition preceding an eruption build up over a matter of decades, rather than thousands of years as scientists originally thought.

"It's shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption," Hannah Shamloo, a graduate student at Arizona State University who worked on the research, told The New York Times.

This is an alarming thing for a volcanologist to say. The good news is that scientists are likely just decades away from being able to more accurately predict when an eruption would occur.

Sometimes knowing more about the world around us makes us feel more in control of our lives and survival. And sometimes knowing more only underscores how small and helpless we are compared to the forces of nature on the angry rock where we reside.

Here are some more facts about supervolcanoes that may or may not make you feel any better.

Is Yellowstone the only supervolcano to worry about?

No, of course not. There are about 20 others around the world and three others, besides the Yellowstone supervolcano, in the U.S. Scientists suspect that one of them erupts every 100,000 years or so.

While Yellowstone hasn't had a super-eruption in 631,000 years, others have been active more recently. Campi Flegri, a supervolcano in Italy whose name translates to "burning fields," had a super-eruption 15,000 years ago.

Campi Flegri is in a "critical state," according to researchers in Italy. It's due for an eruption soon, but it would be a minor event compared to the 72 cubic miles of molten rock it spewed in its most notorious eruption 39,000 years ago, called Campanian Ignimbrite, that likely contributed to the extinction of the Neanderthals.

What areas would a Yellowstone eruption affect?

If the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, it could shoot out more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock and ash into the air.

That's 250 cubic miles. That's more than three times as large as the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption in Italy, which created a sulfurous cloud that floated more than 1,200 miles away to hang over Russia. That's 2,500 times more material than Mount St. Helensexpelled in 1980, killing 57 people.

An eruption at Yellowstone would result in a cloud of ash more than 500 miles wide, stretching across nearly the entire western United States.

The explosion could be so incredibly large that it could plunge the entire planet into a volcanic winter. That means it would be impossible to grow crops and current food stores would only last about 74 days, according to a 2012 estimate by the United Nations(though innovations in farming may mean that food could be grown underground).

Will a supervolcano eruption end life on Earth?

None of this sounds ideal, but how does it rank in terms of apocalyptic near-future possibilities? According to NASA, supervolcano eruptions are a bigger danger to life on Earth than any asteroid.

Luckily NASA has a plan to neutralize supervolcano threats. It would cost approximately $3.4 billion and involves drilling down just over 6 miles into the volcano in order to release heat and hopefully avoid a violent eruption.

This plan could cool the supervolcano over the course of hundreds or even thousands of years. There’s another bonus: It would become a source of geothermal energy, too. But there are considerable risks, too. It could trigger the eruption it's meant to save us from.

How likely is it that the Yellowstone supervolcano will erupt?

Despite the fact that this new research shows conditions leading up to supervolcano eruption could occur in several decades, the chances that you will personally experience an explosion of this scale are still low.

The odds of the Yellowstone supervolcano erupting within a given year are one in 730,000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Here’s a little perspective: Those odds are significantly better than your chances of winning the lottery and only slightly worse than the chance you'll be struck by lightning.

TECH & SCIENCE

WHEN WILL YELLOWSTONE ERUPT? SUPERVOLCANO COULD RUMBLE TO LIFE FAR FASTER THAN WE THOUGH

BY HANNAH OSBORNE ON 10/12/17 AT 9:42 AM

Yellowstone supervolcano last erupted 640,000 years ago.JIM URQUHART/REUTERS

Before the Yellowstone supervolcano next erupts, we might have only a few decades to prepare—not thousands of years, as previously thought. By analyzing the last eruption to take place, a team of researchers has estimated how long it took for the required amount of magma to build up in the main chambers. The preliminary findings show it happened startlingly fast.

The last major eruption at Yellowstone—one of the world’s largest active supervolcanoes—took place around 640,000 years ago, sending about 240 cubic miles of volcanic ash, dust and rock into the sky.

If an eruption were to talk place today, experts estimate a blanket of ash would cover most of the U.S. "Ash-fall thicknesses of centimetres throughout the American Midwest would disrupt livestock and crop production, especially during critical times in the growing season,” a 2014 report said. "Thick deposits could threaten building integrity and obstruct sewer and water lines. Electronic communications and air transportation would likely be shut down throughout North America. There would also be major climate effects."

To understand what goes on beneath Yellowstone before an eruption—in a bid to work out what might happen prior to the next one—researchers at Arizona State University analyzed the last big eruption, looking at crystals that show the changes that took place in the run-up to the event.

Hannah Shamloo, a graduate student at the university, and colleagues presented the team’s preliminary findings at a volcanology conference in September. According to The New York Times, she said changes to the crystals indicate there was a fast increase in temperature at the site. The magma appears to have accumulated very quickly, and then an eruption occurred a few decades later. “It’s shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption,” Shamloo said.

The findings do not help scientists predict when the next eruption might take place. They could, however, serve as something of an early warning system. By monitoring what’s going on underneath Yellowstone, they can track changes to the magma and be on alert if it starts accumulating.

Mike Poland, the scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory at the U.S. Geological Survey, says the research is interesting, and while the results are preliminary, they potentially open the door to many more questions—including what processes actually trigger rapid magma movement and an eruption.

“I think it's important to note that these results say that the rejuvenation of Yellowstone's magma system may have occurred over decades prior to eruption,” he tells Newsweek. “The research does not provide any information about what actually triggered the eruption.

Ground deformation at Yellowstone National Park over the last two years. USGS

“One thing I would emphasize is that even if large eruptions are preceded by only decades of unrest, this is still something we are positioned to detect well in advance. Yellowstone is one of the best-monitored volcanoes in the world, with a host of seismic, deformation, thermal and geochemical sensors and satellite datasets always looking for changes,” Poland says.

An example of this was the earthquake swarm that has been taking place at the supervolcano since June. Since it began, almost 2,500 earthquakes have been recorded at the site—making it the longest and most vigorous swarm since 1985.

“We see interesting things all the time, but we haven't seen anything that would lead us to believe that the sort of magmatic ‘rejuvenation’ event described by the ASU researchers is happening now,” Poland says. “We're in a good position to see that sort of event thanks to the monitoring systems that are in place—seismicity (not just the numbers of earthquakes, but also their types) would change drastically, as would styles of deformation, and there would probably be significant thermal manifestations. 

“The research does a great job of helping us understand the conditions that set up the last large eruption at Yellowstone. Hopefully, the researchers will continue their investigations to see what more the crystals they are studying can tell us, particularly about the specific conditions that led to the eruption.”

Yellowstone supervolcano may be only decades from a catastrophic eruption

 Aris Folley, AOL.com,AOL.com 

Researchers are saying the supervolcano sitting beneath Yellowstone National Park could erupt sooner than thought -- and could possibly plunge the planet into a "volcanic winter."

It's been roughly 631,000 years since Yellowstone's last super-eruption and, until now, scientists thought it would take centuries for the supervolcano to make the transition, according to National Geographic.

Now, after analyzing minerals in fossilized ash from Yellowstone, researchers from Arizona State University are saying the lava-filled mountain could erupt in just a few decades.

The discovery arrives several years after a 2011 study found that the ground above Yellowstone's caldera had risen as much as 10 inches in some places over the course of seven years.

"It's an extraordinary uplift, because it covers such a large area and the rates are so high," the Bob Smith, an expert in Yellowstone volcanism at the University of Utah, told National Geographic at the time.

Researchers are also saying the supervolcano has the ability to produce an eruption of a thousand times more powerful than Mount St. Helen's eruption in 1980 and eject more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of rock and ash -- which could blanket large areas of the US.

Arizona State graduate state Hannah Shamloo, who developed the theory that there was a much shorter timeline than once anticipated for an eruption, spent weeks with several colleagues at the site in Yellowstone where they collected and studied fossilized ash from its last eruption.

"It’s shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption," Shamloo told New York Times, while adding that more research is necessary before drawing definite conclusions.

Though the pair presented the study at a recent volcanology conference before the American Geophysical Union in 2016, it has yet to be peer-reviewed.