A Yellowstone eruption would be worse than 1000 hurricanes.
While scientists have been dismissing exaggerated claims that the end is near for decades, new research released in 2025 adds more evidence to the arsenal. Researchers from Rice University, the University of New Mexico, the University of Utah, and the University of Texas at Dallas were able to detect the top of the region’s magma reservoir, determining that it lies around two miles below the ground. This magma cap, which starts abruptly rather than gradually, forms a kind of a lid that keeps the pressure and heat locked in, according to the study published in Nature. Gas releases from this system regularly, preventing the kind of buildup that would result in a large-scale eruption. This data was discovered through new technology that released a series of tiny earthquakes into the ground, the seismic waves helping to create far-underground imaging. An earlier 2025 study also determined that the magma was spread out across different reservoirs in the region, making an eruption unlikely.
DOGE has eliminated much of the geological future research.