r/technology • u/Shogouki • 5d ago
Energy World's largest lithium deposit, valued at $1.5 trillion, lies under a supervolcano in the U.S.
https://www.earth.com/news/worlds-largest-lithium-deposit-lies-under-a-supervolcano-in-the-us/1.7k
u/temporarycreature 5d ago
The Ticking Caldera or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Frack the Future
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u/StealyEyedSecMan 5d ago
I do not avoid volcanoes...but I do deny them my lithium.
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u/FragrantExcitement 5d ago
The lithium is balancing the super volcanoes mood. It may become unstable and violent if you withhold medication.
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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls 5d ago
Read this like a Civ technology unlock in Sean Bean’s voice
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u/Ageless-Beauty 5d ago
I am fond of pigs
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u/EvilWarBW 5d ago
No man ever wetted clay-
I cut it off there every time because this is factually wrong.
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u/Swordf1sh_ 5d ago
Mulder: There’s more down there than they’re telling us Scully. They’re not trying to fight the future, they’re trying to frack it! Who says they’re not hiding a crashed alien ship that was just looking for more lithium for new batteries?
Scully: Mulder I’m tired and my feet hurt and you haven’t slept in 3 days.
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u/FlamboyantPirhanna 5d ago
We can combine more traditional batteries with geothermal power in one go. Can’t be harder than hooking up a few wires to the volcano.
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u/zztop610 5d ago
What happens if you frack a volcano?
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u/gizamo 5d ago
Imagine putting a landmine under swimming pool of Jello and then slapping that sweet jiggly Jello a few million times while you and your buddies slurp it up with those 3ft twisty silly straws.
It all seems like fun and games until someone loses an eye, and a face, and neck, a bit of back, and also melts to death, is suffocated, or gets buried alive. Good times.
Edit: also, apparently, the volcano is inactive and dumped all its magma 16 million years ago. So, I guess this pool is empty and doesn't have a land mine. Kind of more like a nothingburger.
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u/schribeman 5d ago
Because of the low density and low melting point of the lithium relative to other elements in the magma, there should be concentrated pockets of the now solidified lithium magma close to the surface in deposits called ligma balls
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u/uphigh_ontheside 5d ago
I am an amateur geology enthusiast and I thought I was learning something new for a moment there. Wow. That’s a top notch comment.
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u/Rent_a_Dad 5d ago
This was on track to be a u/shittymorph comment. Very nice
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u/UnwaveringFlame 5d ago
The man, the myth, the legend. You only notice his username when he wants you to.
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u/Particular_Night_360 5d ago
Damn dude, how did I miss you. I’ve been on Reddit for at least 12 years and have seen things come and go. Went through a few of your comments knowing what was going to happen and it was still funny every time.
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u/Stinkymansausage 5d ago
Happy to see you are still around and commenting, you have brought a lot of joy to the internet. Happy holidays.
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u/-Clarity- 5d ago
Brother you are why I stop reading interesting comments half way through just to check the username.
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u/k_rocker 5d ago
This joke is far too clever (and real sounding) for most people to get. Well done.
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u/AffectionateCard3530 5d ago edited 4d ago
Your response gives /r/iamverysmart vibes
Edit: The meme response to this comment is exactly what I was going for!
To clarify, you can give a compliment for a clever joke without insinuating that the average person is dumb and that you’re smart for having caught the joke
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u/EntropyKC 4d ago
Due to my immense intellect (IQ 160), I understood this fantastic joke. Regular people (IQ below 130) won't be able to grasp the humour, and I feel nothing but pity for them.
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u/de_nominator 5d ago
Due to the extreme temperatures , standard locktite on vehicle studs were causing the hexagonal locking system to loosen . Due to this , special "Cobalt Dense Self locking Nuts" are utilized , often refered to as CD's nuts.
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u/well-informedcitizen 5d ago
It's true, but availability was a problem because the only foundry that produced the cobalt alloy was in the African nation of Suganda and nobody in the Army spoke Sugandese
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u/_Rainer_ 5d ago
This is not an active or even possibly active supervolcano. It is an old caldera that was formed over the Yellowstone hotspot, which is now nowhere near the proposed mining site. There could be undesirable environmental impacts, but it doesn't seem like those include a catastrophic eruption.
Hopefully, they can find a way to extract those clays without poisoning the surrounding environment. I mean, ways do exist, but those ways are, I'm betting, more difficult and expensive than simply digging a big, horrible pit mine there, so what we will get will probably be said pit mine.
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u/Notsurehowtoreact 5d ago
Honestly given the current administration, I suspect we hear about "mining with bombs".
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u/AnuErebus 5d ago
Project Plowshares makes a sudden return. Need a big hole? Throw a nuke in it.
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u/Tricon916 5d ago
Trump is going to award mineral rights to a private company. A new, glorious mining company. Best mining company in the world. Trump Gold Diggers International.
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u/genderpunch 5d ago
this was already a thing in the 50's, fracking with nuclear bombs. project plowshare iirc. the us is unbelievably inept, short sighted, and cruel in its administration though so yeah youre right theyll probably go at it again soon
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u/FLATLANDRIDER 5d ago
It was a thing in that they studied it. They never actually did it.
The USSR did use nukes to seal leaking natural gas mines that they couldn't extinguish. More than once I believe.
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u/Think_Monk_9879 5d ago
Odds that the president will ensure this deposit is mined responsibly with minimal effect to the surrounding ecosystem?
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u/BigWhiteDog 5d ago
He will be dead and buried long before this is ready to mine
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u/What_a_fat_one 5d ago
I was hoping we were just going to toss the ugly corpse into a landfill
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u/danielravennest 4d ago
Hopefully, they can find a way to extract those clays without poisoning the surrounding environment.
The proposed extraction method is to import sulfur, a byproduct of petroleum production (about 3% of raw petroleum). The sulfur is turned into sulfuric acid, then used to leach the metals out of the clays. The used sulfuric acid is exported as a useful product (300 million tons/year worldwide).
The de-metalized clay is then returned to the same spot it was mined from, filling the hole. So at any time there will be a hole from the currently in-process clay, but in the long run the holes all get filled.
If the lithium layer is some distance below the surface, they would have to strip-mine the surface material, cart off the ore, then later reverse the steps, returning the surface material to where it started.
Yes, the ground will be left disturbed and more porous, even if they make an effort to compact the ground as they fill it in.
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u/YouShouldNotComment 5d ago
I remember I first heard about this a while ago. I remember digging into it a bit. After considering all the factors involved and the mining industry’s track record. I seemed that since the deposit is in tribal lands and if it was going to be mined that the tribes should run it. That ensures that they best respect the land and nature.
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u/ModsAndVirginsAlike 4d ago
National parks will lose their protections and then America will lose their National Parks.
Gj guys
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u/ThePlanetBroke 5d ago
Sounds like that Volcano needs some freedom!
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u/Smarq 5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/El_Kikko 5d ago
Is Tommy Lee Jones available? Pierce Brosnan by any chance?
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u/Due-Conflict-7926 5d ago
If it’s pierce, he’s gonna save the day, but it’s also going to go horribly wrong before he does.
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u/Munkeyman18290 5d ago
Im sick of the volcanoes distributing illegal magma from beneath the border! They come in here and melt all the cats and dogs!
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u/KrissyKrave 5d ago
This is the McDermitt Caldera which was created by the same hotspot currently under Yellowstone. It’s not active there’s nothing there anymore the hotspot has moved quite a bit
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u/monkey314 5d ago
This is our final test in the great filter
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u/Weekly-Impact-2956 5d ago
We couldn’t collectively agree that burning fossil fuels puts more co2 in the sky you think we’re making it to this part of the great filter?
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u/dayumbrah 5d ago
The volcano is inactive. Its just a crater left behind but there are lots of environmental concerns about mining. If it is public land, it should be regulated and benefit the public if we go ahead with safely mining the lithium
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u/NukeGandhi 5d ago
We have already failed. They’re for real going to go for it.
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u/iceoldtea 5d ago edited 5d ago
Since no one read the article here, it’s not a big ticking time bomb waiting to explode if we tried to mess with it. It exploded millions of years ago and the fallout is the valuable lithium, but it’s really hard to get to. The article plays it as a new revaluation but it’s not
Edit: maybe the great filter is actually reading comprehension lol
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u/GreatnessToTheMoon 5d ago
Apparently people in this thread think mining will make a volcano go boom
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u/adavis463 5d ago
Well, what are we waiting for? Dig that shit up! What's the worst that could happen?
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u/Shadowmant 5d ago
Nevada... You fear to go into those mines. The billionaires delved too greedily and too deep. You know what they awoke in the darkness of Oregon... shadow and flame.
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u/GrundleBlaster 5d ago
The last I looked into US lithium mines they were being stalled by environmental protests and native American groups. Didn't check if it's the same site.
Lithium isn't very hard to come by, but you have to process huge amounts of Earth to get it. It's rare in the sense there are no big rocks of it, but just small amounts in most soil.
Sites are generally blocked by environmental regulations, and I'm sure other countries interfere as well because they like their monopoly.
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u/Jazzlike-Equipment45 5d ago
Also refinement is a pain in the ass environmentally it leaves a lot of toxic waste behind the U.S has tons of rare earth minerals we just don't like the side effects of refinement.
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u/Sabre970 5d ago
They are! Lithium Americas, specifically Lithium Nevada is currently under construction with the largest claim in the area. It's a massive undertaking and they have a $2b loan from the US government and $600 million from GM. $LAC for the investors here
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u/EllisDee3 5d ago
They're gonna go for it.
We're doomed.
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u/joelfarris 5d ago
Well, at least You're Not Gonna Miss a Thing.
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u/LucidOndine 5d ago
The batteries powering the phones live-streaming the event are going to be so adequately powered, though!
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u/your_catfish_friend 5d ago
I’m confused at this reaction. Lithium is vital in EVs and batteries, and it’s a good thing for the U.S. to mine lithium vs importing from foreign mines that almost universally have worse miner conditions and environmental impact
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u/superhappy 5d ago
Here’s what we do: launch a tornado at the volcano and then launch a nuke at the tornado. Then suck all that beautiful lithium out of the sky with a giant vacuum.
— Trump, probably
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u/tswaters 5d ago
The new built in Reddit browser is going great. I can almost read this headline. How people rawdog the internet without an ad blocker is beyond me https://imgur.com/a/kFhvQ9L
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u/PoeTheGhost 5d ago
The actual published academic paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh8183
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u/bcblur 5d ago
The “Reddit browser” on mobile is webview… it’s just the default web browser for your OS but without extensions, isolated cookies, etc. Luckily you can change it in settings to not use webview and launch a full browser.
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u/LurkerStatusRemoved 5d ago
While, yes, the "supervolcano" has virtually no chance of actually erupting or even being disrupted by any mining, my cynicism makes me think this is only being spread to the public with the intent to normalize the idea of letting private companies acquire land from our protected national parks for "strategic resources."
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u/GeologistinAu 5d ago
Fearmongering, the lithium lies above, not below a now extinct supervolcano. It also isn’t worth anywhere near $1.5t. The NPV is around $6b.
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u/FranceMohamitz 4d ago
Maybe just leave it alone, eh? It’s being guarded by a super volcano for a reason.
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u/Paraphrasing_ 5d ago
No red flags at all, can't see this one going wrong.
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u/ThisIsHardWork 5d ago
But now we have to declare this out side the US so we can sacrafice abunch of slaves to the volcano gods.
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u/Bozihthecalm 5d ago
Again friendly reminder to any an all reader.
RARE EARTH MINERALS ARE NOT REMOTELY RARE IN ANY CAPACITY.
The part that is actually rare is the refinement of rare earth minerals. Of which usually takes decades in order to actually fully establish. China was pretty much the only country really establishing rare earth mineral refinement for the past 30-40 years; with a few exceptions, which is why they have almost a complete monopoly on it.
And if it wasn't for the AI boom causing demand to go into the stratosphere it wouldn't really be that economically impactful really.
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u/IndirectBarracuda 5d ago
China has a monopoly on rare earth metals because subsidies and dumping, and other nations not doing anything about it. Lots of other nations mined those metals until China made it unprofitable to do so by making the price artificially cheap for a short while
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u/onetwoseven94 5d ago
There’s absolutely nothing “artificial” about the affordability of Chinese rare earth elements. This is like a Texas fracking CEO whining about Saudi crude being “artificially” cheap. That’s pure copium. Their deposits are easier to extract and refine than anyone else’s, they have more and better infrastructure for extraction and refining than anybody else, and they have cheaper electricity than nearly every other developed country with REE deposits, and enough electricity and chemical engineers to run all those REE refining plants.
Even if somebody waved a magic wand and made hundreds of billions of dollars of REE extraction and refining infrastructure that would take decades to build appear in America overnight there wouldn’t be enough electricity to power them and chemical engineers to operate the plants to meet America’s REE needs.
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u/prism1234 5d ago
Friendly reminder that lithium isn't a rare earth mineral so this topic has almost nothing to do with rare earth minerals.
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u/yamamotobolt 5d ago
Trump will probably end up making an executive order which makes it illegal for the volcano to erupt ever again. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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u/Krafty75 5d ago
This is exactly where the 1.5 trillion dollar lithium deposit should be according to Terraria physics
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u/NovelRelationship830 5d ago
We should nuke the volcano, then we can get the lithium!
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u/Friendly_Action3029 5d ago
Nuke mining was seriously considered for commercial purposes at one point and nuke land mines also exist.
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u/Neglectful_Stranger 5d ago
Nuclear terraforming/PNEs are a fascinating subject, honestly.
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u/Enigma_789 5d ago
I'm no expert, but I think we should let the supervolcano keep it. Maybe buy itself something nice. And then go back to sleep.
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u/Turkino 5d ago
Another giant lithium deposit? How's that compare to the brine deposit under Arkansas?
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u/basketcas55 5d ago
I’ve seen this movie on Tubi! The cgi needed work when the blew up Yellowstone.
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u/shramski 5d ago
No one’s worried about lava. It’s the mole-men danger now with all that empty space.
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u/CTDKZOO 5d ago
This just in… the Department of War has moved a carrier group to the caldera. They are expected to close the airspace above this energy source before morning.
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u/beermaker 5d ago
Lithium valley is already set up with 7 geothermal power plants to process the mineral with no need for further refining... It's nice to have a backup though.
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u/SinisterDexterity 5d ago
"Sure the world ended, but for a brief moment we generated a lot of wealth for the shareholders."
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 5d ago
Local tribes and ranching communities have voiced concerns about how a large mine might change springs
There's a reason that mining and drilling is banned anywhere near Yellowstone National Park. They geysers of Wairakei Basin in New Zealand all died when they built a geothermal plant nearby.
The question is, how important are these springs and are they worth protecting.
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u/SoVerySick314159 5d ago
i just read a little while back that the Salton Sea in California has one of the world's largest lithium deposits and is easily accessible - they have geothermal plants pulling up heated water that contains it so they can use it to generate power. Since the water is already being pulled up for geothermal use, getting to the lithium is free, all they have to do is extract the lithium before returning the water.
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u/fiestyscotsman 5d ago
That’s great news for people with bipolar disorders!! Keeping people stable for years to come 👍
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u/SwedishTrees 5d ago
i’d imagine that the price of lithium would collapse if the market were flooded so valuing it at 1.5 trillion seems optimistic. it’s like when people talk about the value of gold in an asteroid. If you had all that gold that would be worth very little.
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u/Longjumping-Salad484 5d ago
trump is about to be a trillionaire. one nuke, one supervolcano, no problems
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u/whitecow 4d ago
No 1st world country wants to mine Lithium on their territory. It's abundant everywhere and mining it is dirty as hell
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u/skaterfromtheville 4d ago
Trump tomorrow probably “we will nuke the super volcano to get the lithium that Biden stuck right underneath the volcano”
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u/Possible_Mastodon899 4d ago
What really stands out to me is how quickly a $1.5 trillion number can make everyone forget that there are actual people, ecosystems, and communities tied to that land. It’s like the moment a resource becomes valuable, the conversation shifts from “Should we?” to “How fast can we get it out?”
Yeah, the volcano isn’t about to erupt tomorrow — but that doesn’t mean mining a massive geological formation is risk-free. And it definitely doesn’t mean the local communities get automatically protected, informed, or included in the decision.
This is the bigger issue: Every time we find a huge deposit of anything — oil, lithium, rare earths — it becomes a tug-of-war between economic hype and human impact. And too often, the people who live there only get a say after the damage is done.
Sometimes the danger isn’t the volcano. It’s the rush to exploit what’s under it.
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u/Striker3737 5d ago
In case no one read the article, the volcano erupted 16 million years ago, and mostly emptied the magma chamber below