© РИА Томск. Павел Стефанский
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.
© РИА Томск. Олег Асратян
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.