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The Earth is a gigantic ball of semi-molten rock, with a heart of iron as hot as the surface of the Sun.
地球是一个巨大的半熔岩球，其铁心的温度与太阳表面一样热。
Titanic amounts of heat left over from its birth and the radioactive decay of trillions of tons of radioactive elements find no escape but up.
地球诞生时遗留下来的巨量热量和数万亿吨放射性元素的放射性衰变只能向上释放。
Currents of rock spanning thousands of kilometers carry this energy to the surface. Earth's crust is the only thing in their way.
绵延数千公里的岩石流将这种能量带到地表。地壳是唯一的阻碍。
It feels solid to us, but it is only a fragile barrier, an apple skin around a flaming behemoth.
我们感觉它很坚固，但它只是一个脆弱的屏障，就像一个燃烧的庞然大物外面的一层苹果皮。
True apocalypses can break through and unleash eruptions tens of times more powerful than all of our nuclear weapons combined,
真正的末日可以突破并引发比我们所有核武器总和还要强大数十倍的喷发，
subjecting the climate to centuries worth of change in a single year, while drowning continents in toxic ash and gases: supervolcanoes.
使气候在一年内经历几个世纪的变化，同时将大陆淹没在有毒的火山灰和气体中：超级火山。
How big can they get? And will they put an end to humanity?
它们能有多大？它们会终结人类吗？
Volcanoes. There are many types of volcanos, from towering mountains to lava domes, but they have two main sources:
火山有很多种类型，从高耸的山脉到熔岩穹丘，但它们有两个主要来源：
The first is at the boundaries between tectonic plates, the pieces of the crust that cover the Earth like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
第一个位于板块边界，板块是覆盖地球的地壳碎片，就像一个巨大的拼图。
There are seven major tectonic plates and dozens of smaller ones, drifting against each other at up to 15 cm per year.
有七个主要板块和数十个较小的板块，它们以每年15厘米的速度相互漂移。
This sounds slow, but on geological timescales it is a titanic struggle over who gets to stay on the surface.
这听起来很慢，但从地质时间尺度上看，这是一场争夺谁能留在地表的巨大斗争。
The winning plate crumples into a new mountain range while the loser is shoved underneath, into an ocean of hot rock at1300°Ct: The asthenosphere.
获胜的板块会坍缩成新的山脉，而失败的板块则会被推到下面，进入1300°C的热岩海洋：软流圈。
The temperature here is enough to melt rock into a liquid, but the insane pressures of all that mass keep it a superheated solid.
这里的温度足以将岩石熔化成液体，但所有这些质量的巨大压力使其保持过热固体状态。
Tectonic plates are usually in contact with water for thousands of years and absorb some of it.
板块通常与水接触数千年并吸收其中的一些。
When they are submerged into the hot underworld, this water triggers chemical transformations that allow tiny portions to melt into magma.
当它们沉入炎热的地下世界时，这些水会引发化学变化，使微小部分融化成岩浆。
Liquid magma is less dense than solid rock, so it rises to the surface in furious bubbles that accumulate in sponge-like reservoirs right under the crust.
液态岩浆的密度小于固体岩石，因此它会以剧烈的气泡形式上升到表面，这些气泡会积聚在地壳下方海绵状的储层中。
If enough magma accumulates, it becomes powerful enough to pierce through the crust – which we experience as volcanoes.
如果积累了足够多的岩浆，它就会变得足够强大，可以刺穿地壳——即我们体验到的火山。
This happens under the winning plate, like a revenge attack by the loser before it is erased forever.
这发生在获胜的板块下，就像失败者在被永远抹去之前的报复性攻击。
The second main source of volcanoes are thought to be mantle plumes.
火山的第二个主要来源被认为是地幔柱。
These are columns of abnormally hot rock that rise all the way from the planet's core-mantle boundary to the surface.
这些是异常热的岩石柱，从行星的核心地幔边界一直上升到表面。
Much less is known about them, but in a way it is as if the Earth's mantle has weather patterns and mantle plumes are a little like hot air rising to form storm clouds.
人们对它们的了解很少，但在某种程度上，它就像地球的地幔有天气模式，地幔柱有点像热空气上升形成风暴云。
Storms hundreds of millions of years old, made of rock circulating at a rate of a few millimetres per month.
数亿年前形成的风暴，由岩石组成，以每月几毫米的速度流动。
They don't care about the motion of tectonic plates, so they can break the crust to create volcanoes in the middle of nowhere that stubbornly stay active as the crust shifts around them.
它们不关心板块的运动，所以它们可以破坏地壳，在荒无人烟的地方形成火山，当地壳在它们周围移动时，这些火山仍然顽固地保持活跃。
The volcanic boom-meter Scientists love to put big booms on a scale and came up with a logarithmic scale that measures the volume ejected during an eruption:
火山爆炸仪科学家喜欢将大爆炸放在秤上，并想出了一个对数刻度来测量火山喷发期间喷出的体积：
The Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI. Simply put, it starts really small and gets very big very quickly.
火山爆发指数，简称VEI。简而言之，它开始时很小，然后很快变得很大。
A VEI 2 eruption would fill four hundred full Olympic swimming pools with lava. We have around 10 of these per year.
VEI 2级喷发将用熔岩填满四百个奥林匹克游泳池。我们每年大约有10次这样的喷发。
At VEI 3 we already see devastating effects, like the eruption of the Semeru volcano in 2021 that destroyed thousands of homes in Indonesia.
在VEI 3级，我们已经看到了毁灭性的影响，例如2021年塞梅鲁火山的喷发摧毁了印度尼西亚的数千所房屋。
At VEI 5, we see catastrophic amounts of materials, cubic kilometers of debris, equivalent to an entire lake of molten rock blasted into the air.
在VEI 5级时，我们看到了灾难性的大量物质、立方公里的碎片，相当于一整湖熔岩被喷向空中。
Like the 2022 Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption that sent a shockwave around the globe many times and created ocean-wide tsunamis.
就像2022年的洪加汤加-洪加哈帕伊火山喷发一样，它多次向全球发出冲击波，并引发了海洋海啸。
At a VEI of 6, an eruption can change the world. In 1883, the Indonesian island volcano Krakatoa erupted nearly continuously over the course of 5 months.
在VEI为6级时，一次喷发可以改变世界。1883年，印度尼西亚岛屿喀拉喀托火山在5个月的时间里几乎连续喷发。
One of those eruptions blew it apart, producing the loudest sound recorded in history, 10 trillion times louder than a rocket taking off, heard halfway around the world.
其中一次喷发将其炸开，产生了有史以来最响亮的声音，比火箭发射的声音大10万亿倍，半个地球都能听到。
30m high tsunamis swept away nearby populations and so much gas and ash were released that global temperatures cooled by nearly 0.5°C. Red dusty sunsets followed for many years.
30米高的海啸卷走了附近的居民，释放出如此多的气体和灰烬，导致全球气温下降了近0.5°C。随后许多年都是红色的尘土飞扬的日落。
At VEI 7, we get Super-Colossal eruptions, millennium-defining events that human civilization has only encountered a handful of times.
在VEI 7级时，我们会看到超大规模火山喷发，这是人类文明仅经历过的少数几次千年大事。
Mount Tambora was a 4300m high mountain until it exploded in 1815 and released 400 times more energy than the Tsar Bomba.
坦博拉山是一座4300米高的山峰，直到1815年爆发，释放的能量是沙皇炸弹的400倍。
