TOMSK, Jul 20 – RIA Tomsk. The international research team, which part the Tomsk scientist is, described the structure and "the principle of work" of the most dangerous volcano on Earth – Indonesian Toba; its eruption changed climate and life on Earth 70 thousand years ago, TASS with reference to the scientific magazine Nature Communications reported on Wednesday.
According to the magazine, the Tomsk participant of the collective is Sergey Smirnov from Tomsk State University.
"Scientists described the structure of Toba – the most dangerous supervolcano of Earth located on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. Geophysics from Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and also from France, Saudi Arabia and Egypt took part in work", – TASS reports.
It is specified that on the basis of seismic observations scientists assumed that at a depth more than 150 kilometers under the earth's plate gases and melts create the magma flows which rise up. They lead to formation of a magmatic chamber under the volcano. Eruption happens when the chamber pressure reaches a critical point because of what magma begins to rise and melts crust.According to the scientists, eruption of this supervolcano led to change of climate and extinction of types of live organisms more than 70 thousand years ago, but accelerated evolution of people, forced to show all the mental abilities to survive. After this eruption the caldera of 80 kilometers long and 30 kilometers wide in size was formed, more than 2,8 thousand cubic kilometers of breeds were released into the atmosphere.
Scientists don't consider eruption of Toba to be inevitable, but they don't exclude such opportunity completely. Now the science knows about 20 supervolcanoes. Their state is constantly traced, that allows to predict catastrophic eruptions on the planet.