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140 billion tons of ash and dust were shot halfway to space before smothering the world's skies, turning them a sickly yellow.
1400亿吨火山灰和尘埃被射向半个太空，然后笼罩了全球的天空，使天空变成了病态的黄色。
There was no summer the following year, crops died and over a hundred thousand people perished.
第二年没有夏天，庄稼枯死，十多万人丧生。
This is the dreadful potential of volcanic eruptions, with famines across the other side of the world and even centuries-long cold periods being attributed to them.
这就是火山爆发的可怕潜力，世界另一端的饥荒甚至长达数个世纪的寒冷期都归因于火山爆发。
Ok. But what is a supervolcano? The term "Super volcano" is a media invention and not a scientific term.
但什么是超级火山？“超级火山”一词是媒体造词，而不是科学术语。
The main issue with them is that not every eruption from a supervolcano is a super eruption.
它们的主要问题是，并非超级火山的每次喷发都是超级喷发。
What makes super volcanoes special is that they have been waiting to erupt for hundreds of thousands of years.
超级火山的特殊之处在于它们已经等待了数十万年才喷发。
Pressure builds up in colossal magma reservoirs several kilometers deep, until it becomes strong enough to lift the rock above it by several meters.
压力在几公里深的巨大岩浆库中积聚，直到它变得足够强大，可以将岩石抬高几米。
Rocks crack under the pressure, until they finally give way and billions of tons of gas and ash blast out at supersonic speed.
岩石在压力下破裂，直到最终崩塌，数十亿吨的气体和火山灰以超音速喷出。
An insane explosion of at least a thousand cubic kilometers that impacts every corner of the globe. And yet, that is only a small portion of the magma reservoir.
至少一千立方公里的疯狂爆炸影响到地球的每个角落。然而，这只是岩浆库的一小部分。
Super eruptions are like a boiling pot of water popping its lid off and spilling a bit off the top.
超级喷发就像一锅沸腾的水被掀开盖子，从顶部溢出一点。
Afterwards the ground collapses into the void left behind, forming a hole called a caldera.
之后地面塌陷到留下的空隙中，形成一个叫做破火山口的洞。
Under this caldera, pressure starts building again until the volcano gathers enough energy for another supereruption – but this could take hundreds of thousands of years.
在这个破火山口下面，压力开始再次增大，直到火山聚集足够的能量进行另一次超级喷发——但这可能需要数十万年。
It is estimated that one of the few volcanoes capable of supereruptions on Earth could cause a catastrophic eruption every 17,000 years on average.
据估计，地球上少数几座能够发生超级喷发的火山之一平均每17000年就会引发一次灾难性的喷发。
That would make them far more frequent than comparable asteroid impacts.
这将使它们比同类小行星撞击的频率高得多。
The most recent super-eruption is the Oruanui eruption 26,500 years ago in New Zealand.
最近的一次超级火山喷发是26500年前新西兰的奥鲁阿努伊火山喷发。
With the force of dozens of billions of tons of TNT, a Mount Everest- sized pile of explosives, a huge portion of the landscape was scooped out and thrown into the atmosphere.
威力相当于数百亿吨TNT，相当于珠穆朗玛峰大小的炸药堆，将很大一部分地表掏空并抛入大气层。
It left behind a caldera spanning 20km and it caused the entire Southern Hemisphere to undergo a period of abrupt cooling.
它留下了一个20公里长的破火山口，并导致整个南半球经历了一段突然冷却期。
Though among super-eruptions, it is a mere firework. The Lake Toba eruption of 74,000 years ago was a much more significant turning point in history.
不过在超级火山喷发中，它只是一场烟花。74000年前的多巴湖火山喷发是历史上更重要的转折点。
It released a gargantuan 5300 cubic kilometers of material, enough to blanket parts of South Asia in 15 cm of ash and trigger a rapid 4°C drop in global temperatures.
它释放出巨大的5300立方公里物质，足以将南亚部分地区覆盖在15厘米厚的火山灰中，并引发全球气温迅速下降4°C。
It's possible that the volcanic winter lasted ten years, followed by worldwide droughts for centuries. Earth's climate might have not recovered for a thousand years.
火山冬季可能持续了十年，随后全球干旱持续了几个世纪。地球的气候可能一千年都无法恢复。
The largest volcanic events we know of were not really huge explosions, but floods of millions of cubic kilometers of lava.
我们所知的最大火山事件并不是真正的巨大爆炸，而是数百万立方公里熔岩的洪流。
The grand finale were the Siberian Traps around 250 million years ago, a continuous release of lava for two million years.
最盛大的火山事件是大约2.5亿年前的西伯利亚暗色岩，两百万年来熔岩不断喷涌。
They raised the ocean temperatures to over 40°C, which caused the Permian–Triassic extinction, killing over 90% of all species.
它们使海洋温度升高到40°C以上，导致二叠纪-三叠纪灭绝，杀死了90%以上的物种。
Earth's surface needed 9 million years to recover. These sorts of eruptions don't change the climate: they are the climate.
地球表面需要900万年才能恢复。这类火山喷发不会改变气候：它们就是气候。
But thankfully, we haven't seen anything even remotely close to that scale in many millions of years. So. Should you be scared of super-volcanoes? Definitely not.
但值得庆幸的是，我们在数百万年内从未见过任何接近这种规模的火山喷发。那么，你应该害怕超级火山吗？绝对不会。
They've been used to frighten many people and are overhyped as an unavoidable apocalypse.
它们曾被用来吓唬很多人，并被夸大为不可避免的末日。
The most famous one, Yellowstone, will erupt again, but they will be relatively small eruptions.
最著名的黄石公园将再次喷发，但喷发规模相对较小。
Natural disasters for sure, but not enough to devastate the US or come close to ending humanity.
肯定是自然灾害，但不足以摧毁美国或接近毁灭人类。
The chance of a VEI 8 eruption in the next few hundred years is less than 2% and more importantly, it would not come as a sudden surprise.
未来几百年内VEI 8级火山爆发的概率不到2%，更重要的是，它不会突然爆发。
However, less powerful but more frequent eruptions can also do serious damage to our civilizations and are in many ways a much greater concern.
然而，威力较小但更频繁的火山爆发也会对我们的文明造成严重破坏，在许多方面更令人担忧。
So we must watch for slow changes in magma reservoirs, like ground swelling and temperature increases, to get an early warning that can save the lives of people living the closest to a volcano.
因此，我们必须关注岩浆库的缓慢变化，如地面膨胀和温度升高，以便获得早期预警，从而挽救居住在火山附近的人们的生命。
And there's time to develop solutions that can remove sulfur and ash from the stratosphere to eliminate the root cause of the climate disruption we've seen from previous eruptions.
还有时间开发解决方案，从平流层中去除硫和灰烬，以消除我们在以前的火山爆发中看到的气候紊乱的根本原因。
Who knows, maybe we'll even be able to turn this force of destruction into an agent for good by exploiting the geothermal energy held in their giant magma reservoirs.
谁知道呢，也许我们甚至可以通过利用巨大岩浆库中的地热能，将这种破坏力转化为一种有益的因素。
We've done this work for so many other disasters and we are already doing things we could only have dreamed about decades ago, like sending a probe to perform our first asteroid redirection test.
我们已经为许多其他灾难做过这项工作，而且我们已经在做几十年前我们只能梦想的事情，比如发射探测器进行我们的第一次小行星重定向测试。
With determination, humanity really can solve anything. So while deep below us an angry hell is churning and waiting for its moment, you can sleep well tonight.
只要有决心，人类真的可以解决任何问题。当我们脚下深处的愤怒地狱正在翻滚，等待时机到来时，你今晚可以睡个好觉了。
