Yellowstone is using a 53,000-pound vibrator truck to create custom-made earthquakes to study the supervolcano the park sits on. The goal is to learn more about the massive magma chamber that makes Yellowstone such a dynamic geological wonderland.
https://x.com/daily_cowboy/status/1919089934696071638
Yellowstone Makes Earthquakes With 53,000-Pound Vibrator Truck To Study Volcano
Yellowstone, one of the largest active volcanoes on the planet, is impotent.
Skeptics need to look no further than the data collected by the 53,000-pound vibrator truck that spent two months assessing its eruptive potential.
The latest research on Yellowstone’s magma chamber analyzed data collected by a “vibroseis truck.”
It’s a sophisticated machine that revealed what’s hidden miles underground by vibrating a massive metal plate at the right frequency.
Mike Poland, scientist-in-charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, said the 2020 vibroseis truck study provided a wealth of intriguing information on Yellowstone’s supervolcano.
However, its conclusion is the same as that reached by several previous studies of the vast magma chamber that makes Yellowstone such a dynamic landscape.
“It’s confirming things we’ve been pretty confident about for a while,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “The conditions to generate a volcanic eruption just aren't there.”
Vibroseis is a process in which artificially generated force waves can be used to map subsurface earth structure.
When those waves are sent into the ground, they “echo” off pockets of solids, liquids, and gases in ways that can be interpreted to determine their size, location and composition.
The most efficient way to conduct vibroseis studies is using “vibrator trucks.” These trucks have massive metal plates on their undersides that are pressed directly against the ground.
They use hydraulic systems to generate waves of low-frequency seismic energy to find oil, gas, rare-earth minerals, or anything else being sought.
“It's not punching the ground like a jackhammer,” Poland said. “The plate makes contact with the ground and generates energy tuned to a frequency that we know will do a nice job bouncing off things in the subsurface.”
In 2020, a team of seismologists from the University of Utah and the University of New Mexico drove a vibrator truck along the Grand Loop Road in Yellowstone.
Their goal was to learn more about the massive magma chamber that makes Yellowstone such a dynamic geological wonderland.
“There were 600 seismometers deployed as part of this experiment,” Poland said. “The low-frequency vibrations from the truck were sent into the earth, hit the top of the magma chamber, and bounced off the top of the magma chamber.
“That was recorded by the network of seismometers deployed for the specific purpose of measuring that energy.”
The massive truck stopped at every paved pullout in the park, set its plate down, vibrated, and moved on.
The study was conducted between August and September 2020 using 650 autonomous seismic sensors installed along the roads and trails to pick up the vibrations.
The vibrator truck didn't generate earthquakes. It jostled the grounded metal plate at a specific frequency that the sensors and seismographs could detect, allowing the scientists to conduct a controlled experiment and interpret the data accordingly.
"There are a lot of earthquakes in Yellowstone, and we can record all of them, Poland said. "But when you control the seismic source and the energy frequency, you have much more ability to design an experiment that will target an area of interest, like the top of the Yellowstone magma chamber. That's the advantage of the artificial nature of using the vibroseis truck to generate the energy."
SAUCE: https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/05/04/yellowstone-makes-earthquakes-with-53-000-pound-vibrator-truck-to-study-volcano/