How can geologists really know that there is a miniscule chance that the Yellowstone super volcano will erupt in the next few thousand years?
In: Earth Science
They know from geological evidence that it erupts periodically. Deposits of certain types of rocks and minerals at certain depths, or in certain places, stuff like that. Most geological events occur periodically, and consistently.
In geological terms “periodically” is a very long time. Thousands, millions, or even billions of years, depending on the event in question. “Soon” has a similar time scale. Because the timeframe in question is so long, they could be off by less than 1% and miss the date by *millions* of years.
They know that the last eruption was some number of years ago, less than the usual amount of time between eruptions. Because it hasn’t happened yet, they know that it will happen again, and because the timeframe is so large, they can confidently say that it will happen again “soon” and be right.
For a smaller timeframe example, look at Old Faithful, also in Yellowstone. We know it erupts as frequently as it does because it happens so often that we can see it, that’s our evidence. It also does it regularly, it’s “periodically” just happens to be very short.
Take that idea and extrapolate it out to a billion year time scale. That’s the super volcano.
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