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U.S. National Science Foundation-supported researchers published new findings suggesting a location where the Yellowstone Caldera could erupt, hundreds of thousands of years from now.

The Yellowstone Caldera is one of the largest volcanic systems on Earth. It lurks beneath Yellowstone National Park and touches three states: Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Over the past two million years, the volcano significantly erupted three times, leaving behind calderas, or massive craters.

To better understand future eruptions, Ninfa Bennington, a volcanic seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, used magnetotelluric methods to identify four pots of magma stored underneath the Yellowstone Caldera.

Magnetotelluric instruments help scientists identify materials that can conduct electricity beneath Earth’s crust. The team used those instruments at over 100 measuring stations across the caldera to identify magma, which has a much higher conductivity than solid rocks.

Of the four magma-rich regions the team discovered, only the northeastern one will remain hot enough to keep magma liquid on a long-term scale and eventually erupt. Previous major eruptions took place in different locations across the caldera.

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NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, will soon begin scanning the Southern Hemisphere sky every night for 10 years. Among the trillions of cosmic events and objects it will capture will be millions of exploding stars called Type Ia supernovas.

These supernovas are produced by exploding white dwarf stars and are some of the brightest cosmic spectacles. They are particularly useful to researchers because they provide a sort of reliable cosmic yardstick that can be used to accurately measure vast distances in the universe. With enough observations of Type Ia supernovas, scientists can measure the universe’s expansion rate and whether it changes over time.

Every time NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory detects a change in brightness or position of an object, it will send an alert to the science community. With such rapid detection, Rubin will be the most powerful tool yet for spotting Type Ia supernovas before they fade away.

Observations of Type Ia supernovas were used to discover the mysterious phenomenon known as dark energy, thought to be causing the universe to expand faster than expected. In just its first few months of operation, Rubin Observatory will discover many more Type Ia supernovas than were used in the initial discovery of dark energy in the 1990s. The observatory will

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NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan spent the week reinforcing the agency’s mission to inspire and harness talent everywhere to catalyze the progress of innovation.

On Monday, Jan. 13, Panchanathan welcomed the Government of Canada’s Chief Science Advisor Mona Nemer to agency headquarters, where they explored opportunities to sync global talent to advance cutting-edge research and underscored the importance of supporting societally relevant and use-inspired research to promote global prosperity. NSF has supported U.S. researchers working with Canadian counterparts in areas such as artificial intelligence, quantum information science, the bioeconomy and energy and resilience.