No, it's not like a balloon, an eruption isn't the earth popping, it's an upheaval from the mantle eventually surfacing through a weak spot that causes it.

> Drilling into, or above, the magma chamber below Yellowstone would be fraught with problems. For one, it could potentially cause the volcano to erupt, the very thing we’re trying to avoid.

He literally just said that's not how volcanos work

Lol, thats a quote from the article.

I, for one, am pretty sure the article is wrong there. What I've heard from geologists is that Yellowstone's magma chambers simply are not molten enough to erupt.

Right, "up to 20%", whereas the threshold for "barely eruptible" is in the 50% range, according to this article: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1617105113 Unless the rules are way different for supereruptions, which I guess we have to consider, but probably not 30% different.

Upheaval is the load bearing word in your sentence. This is what causes the extreme pressures.

Anything to relieve the pressure can, by definition, cause an eruption if there is an inadvertent feedback loop.

I've seen several professional geologists answer this question, and no, really, volcanos don't work that way.

For one, the scale is way, way too big. It's like stabbing an elephant with a needle and expecting it to bleed out.

Also, the dangerous type of magma is extremely viscous and gas-rich. It doesn't flow like Hawaiian lava does.

But in this case, we want the elephant to (significantly) bleed out, so won’t we need a BIG needle?

If you want to move lots of heat away fast, you either need a big pipe or a very high flow rate.

“Gas-rich”, to me, also sounds as if it would be more dangerous.

In this analogy, the needle is as big as we can make it.

Gas-rich is where the danger is, as I understand it. Those gasses expand as they get closer to the surface, and if they're trapped in viscous magma that doesn't flow easily and puts a lot of stress on the rocks above.

The fluid basaltic lavas of Hawaii don't explode, they flow out and make shield volcanos.

Check out geologist Shawn Wilsey's videos.

Given that eruptions are primarily driven by the ejection of gas, the “earth popping like a balloon” analogy is more apt than you think it is (even if it's not exactly like that, and more like opening a shaken bottle of Champaign after you won the Grand Prix).

Are they "primarily driven by the ejection of gas" or more accurately preceded by gas and steam as the magma itself is gas rich and thermo and fluid dynamics dictate the gas will be at the vanguard of the breach?

The magma, like Champaign, is indeed gas rich, and when the pressure lowers, the gas is released and wants to go away, carrying lots of material with it, be it Champaign, rock or lava, that's how you get the projections (the eruption per se)

"an upheaval from the mantle eventually surfacing through a weak spot" sounds like a more technical way of saying "the earth popping like a balloon". I'm prepared to believe there are differences but your explanation doesn't really convey them to me.

A weak spot like the puncture from a well?