You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. 

A New Threat in Yellowstone

It has long been known that Yellowstone National Park lies over an enormous supervolcano. The term ‘supervolcano’ implies a volcanic centre that has had an eruption of magnitude 8 on the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI), meaning the measured deposits for that eruption are greater than 1,000 cubic kilometres. This sounds worrying and Professor George Peters details the possible results if something were to happen. “A major eruption would obliterate the surroundings within a radius of hundreds of kilometres, and cover the rest of the United States and Canada with multiple inches of ash. This would shut down agriculture and cause global climate cooling for as long as a decade.” To calm everyone down, geologist, Tony Masters, explains there is little to fear today. “All VEI 8 eruptions, including the last at Yellowstone, occurred tens of thousands to millions of years ago. Another eruption could occur, but it is very unlikely to happen in the next million years or so.”

Yellowstone is no stranger to controversy. There was a previous media accusation that US Geological Survey (USGS) geologists had not done their work properly and that the identification of Yellowstone as a supervolcano was not done until scientists looked at photographs of Yellowstone from space. The Yellowstone scientists denied this. Spokesman Alice Wheeler clarifies their position. “The scientist who first identified the three Yellowstone calderas was from the USGS and he told the world about the great eruptions that formed them. He traced out the caldera boundaries through old fashioned field work, walking around with a hammer and hand lens and looking carefully at the rocks and their distributions.” The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also agreed. Stan Forsyth, their spokesman, explains. “Several authors have written that these large calderas in Yellowstone were discovered from space, but we suspect that the rumour probably got started because initial field work that identified them was partly funded by NASA.”

A new problem in Yellowstone is that the supervolcano has now been discovered to be larger than originally thought and this has made people feel more nervous. Seismologists at the University of Utah have worked with several other institutions to create an image of the Yellowstone magma reservoir using a technique called seismic tomography. Masters student, Julia Grey, explains the results. “By looking closely at data from thousands of earthquakes, we have discovered that there are two magma reservoirs, one shallow and one deep, and that they are much larger than originally believed. The shallow one was previously known about to us, but the deeper one is a new finding.”

To create an image of this second magma reservoir beneath Yellowstone, the research teams reviewed data from thousands of earthquakes. Seismic waves travel slower through hot, partially molten rock and faster in cold, solid rock. The researchers made a map of the locations where seismic waves travel more slowly, which provided a sub-surface image of the hot or partially molten bodies in the crust beneath Yellowstone. The deeper magma storage region extends from 20 to 50 kilometres depth, contains about 2 per cent melt, and is about 4.5 times larger than the shallow magma body. The shallower magma storage region is about 90 kilometres long, extends from 5 to 17 kilometres depth, and is 2.5 times larger than a prior, less accurate, study indicated. This magma reservoir contains between about 5 to 15 per cent molten rock. Although this is the crustal magma storage region that has fuelled Yellowstone’s past volcanic activity, magma typically does not erupt unless it has greater than 50 per cent melt.

The US and world media were quick to dramatise the finding and exaggerate the threat that these findings represent. Yellowstone park scientist, Amy Brent, has calming words. “These findings do not increase the assessment of volcanic hazard for Yellowstone. The inferred magma storage region is no larger than we already knew. The research simply makes a better image of the magmatic system. Simply, we have more key information about how the Yellowstone volcano works.”

Many independent reports back up Brent’s comments and have shown that the Yellowstone area has been on a long cycle of periodic eruptions. Eruptions are extremely infrequent in supervolcanos, and eventually the cycle ends in their deaths. US government geologist, Andrea Haller, explains the state of the Yellowstone supervolcano. “By investigating the patterns of behaviour in two previously completed caldera cycles, we can suggest that the current activity of Yellowstone is on the dying cycle.” This is based on comparisons with other supervolcanos. 

Scientists know the behaviour of the past and they know at what comparative stage Yellowstone is right now. It is believed that Yellowstone is currently on a third and dying cycle. This can be concluded by the fact that dying volcanos produce less fresh molten material from the Earth’s crust. Haller continues. “We’ve observed a lot of material in the magma chambers that represent recycled volcanic rocks, which were once buried inside of calderas and are now getting reused. Yellowstone has erupted enough of this material already to suggest that the future melting potential of the crust is getting exhausted.”

Whatever the truth about Yellowstone, it seems that during the lives of most people, the geological status of Yellowstone can still prove hazardous. The park has often been closed due to volcanic activity in the past and this is likely to happen again before the volcano becomes harmless.

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

The Psychology of Wealth

What stops people from succeeding financially and having on-going prosperity in their life? The answer is generally focused around the belief that financial success is not a possibility. There are many people who have unconscious barriers that prevent them from having the wealth and abundance that they deserve.

At a conscious level, most people think they are doing everything possible to achieve their goals. However, there still might be some unwitting part of them that does not believe they can obtain success. The more that unconscious part is avoided, the more a person will be blocked in their everyday life. Another problem is that, instead of focusing on all the possible ways to get rich, many people have an obsession about what they do not have. An interesting pattern develops in which they can become angry or resentful over their situation and this in turn can limit these people in their lives more and more. Individuals would find it so much easier to get ahead in life with a peaceful state of mind, rather than an angry or resentful one.

A first step in understanding the unconscious patterning of a person’s financial situation is to explore the deeper nature of how they represent money. For example, a person with money issues may have had parents who lived in poverty, and they subsequently formed a ‘Depression Era’ mentality. An unconscious belief can develop that he or she will always have to struggle financially, because that is what their parents did. Alternatively, the person might have had a parent tell them over and over again that they will never be successful, and eventually they begin to believe it.

It is very common for children to unconsciously form limiting beliefs around money at an early age. In the field of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), these types of limiting beliefs are referred to as ‘imprints.’ An imprint is basically a memory that is formed at an early age, and can serve as a root for both the limiting and empowering beliefs that people form as children. Some of the beliefs that people may develop at early ages are not always healthy, and are created as a result of a traumatic or confusing experience that they have forgotten. How we unconsciously and consciously view the world in terms of money is often based on such beliefs.

A primary and fundamental psychological difference between those who do well financially and those who do not revolves around beliefs. For example, many people do not even view financial success as an option. They do not have the capability to open themselves up to all of the possibilities that are available for achieving prosperity and they will nearly always get stuck in a monthly routine, so that they are unwilling to take risks or try something different, because they are afraid that they will end up being even worse off than before.

Another issue can be that people become over-absorbed with the idea of making money and this can be extremely unhealthy. Money does not determine who you are; it’s simply a resource. There is a term called ‘affluenza,’ which has been defined as “a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.” Affluenza is an unsustainable and seriously unhealthy addiction to personal and societal economic growth. It is most acute in those who inherit wealth and seem to have no purpose or direction. For those with wealth or for those who desire it more than anything, abandoning the urge for more can often be the key to being more successful, and certainly happier. Once people stop equating their self-worth with money, then the doors of possibility can swing open for them, because they are willing to try more things. Once they start feeling better about themselves, they become less fearful and can be open to trying something completely different.

So, can money make people happy? Research shows that it does up to a point, after which there are diminishing returns, so that the extremely wealthy are no happier than the comfortably well off. Rich nations are generally happier than poor ones, but the relationship is far from consistent; other factors like political stability, freedom and security also play a part. Research likewise shows that the money-happiness connection seems to be stronger for people paid hourly than those on a salary. This is presumably because salaried people can more easily compensate with career satisfaction. Money can also impair the ability to enjoy the simple things in life, which rather offsets the happiness that wealth brings.

Money can also impair people’s satisfaction in their play and humanitarian works. When someone has done something out of the goodness of their heart, they can be insulted by offers of payment. Cognitive dissonance experiments show that paying people derisory amounts of money for their work results in them enjoying it less and doing it less well than if they had no pay at all. The capacity for monetary reward to undermine a person’s intrinsic pleasure in work performance has been demonstrated neurologically.

In conclusion, people need to realise that their own attitudes to wealth can affect their chances of acquiring both money and happiness. As a person begins to embrace self worth and open himself or herself up to the idea of what is possible, he or she will attract wealth and prosperity into their life. The outer world is truly a reflection of people’s inner worlds. If someone feels good inside, generally it will show on the outside and they will draw positive experiences into their life.