Biggest explosion in human history!
Here's a nifty 3-minute Flash video of 160,000 years of human migration. It depicts the Toba catasprophe theory that circa 71,500 years ago, a supervolcano in Indonesia, at what's now called Lake Toba, erupted. The eruption's explosive energy was around a gigaton, 20 times the explosive energy of the biggest nuclear bomb detonation. India and Malaysia were blanketed with ash, in places meters thick.
Ash in the atmosphere created a volcanic winter, and in the ensuing planetary extinction event, the human race dwindled to as few as 10,000 adults.One hypothesis is that an effect of this was rapid human phenotypic differentation.
The Toba Catastrophe theory is fairly recent, but my web-searching hasn't revealed anything challenging it.
Yellowstone is a supervolcano. Its last major eruption was 640,000 years ago. There are several others around the world. We can't predict when the next eruption might be.
Have a nice day.
Hi Zed - Lifewriter Doug here. LT reader, first time commenter. :)
Have you sent this to Steve Barnes? I don't know where he is on the Great Sky Woman sequel, but he might find this interesting. I thought about sending it to him myself, but since you discovered it, I thought you might like to do so yourself.
I still need to tell him about the gigantic ancient alien artifact that is apparently buried directly beneath the locale where his story takes place according to the Halo 3 trailer. I don't know if he'll find that quite as interesting.
Posted by Doug G. on June 20 2007 01:12