'Putting the whole Earth into a computer’: Chinese scientists use supercomputers to solve one of…
- Tectonic forces likely formed magma pathways before molten material rose upward
- Supercomputers enabled a full-scale reconstruction of Yellowstone’s hidden structure
- Digital models now test competing geological theories against observed data
Yellowstone National Park in the United States has long been one of the most debated volcanic systems due to its immense scale and limited direct observation.
Scientists have struggled to explain how its underground magma pathways formed and evolved, but a Chinese research team led by Liu Lijun and Cao Zebin, using high-performance computing, has now offered a new explanation grounded in large-scale simulation.
The study suggests that tectonic forces fractured the lithosphere before magma moved upward through those existing pathways - this means the cracks in the rock came first, and then the magma followed, indicating that stresses from the magma itself are not responsible for the initial fractures.
A computational approach to geological uncertainty
For decades, the explanation...
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