If a super-eruption were to occur, the blast would launch enough ash into the atmosphere to disrupt weather for years to follow, potentially causing famine, health crisis, and global civil unrest.
如果超级火山喷发即将发生，那么该爆炸将喷射出足够多的火山灰到大气之中，从而扰乱接下来多年的天气，有可能会造成饥荒、健康危机和全球动乱。
And leading up to the catastrophic event, the world would have just one year to prepare.
而在迎来这一悲惨事件之前，人类仅仅只有一年的时间来准备应对。
Researchers have determined this based on a microscopic analysis of quartz crystals in pumice from the Bishop Tuff in California, the site of a super-eruption 760,000 years ago.
通过对加利福尼亚主教凝灰岩（76万年前此地曾发生过一场超级火山喷发）浮石中的石英晶体进行显微分析，研究者们确定了这一结论。
The ancient super-eruption in eastern California formed the Long Valley Caldera – a feature that is nearly 20 miles long and 11 miles wide.
古代东加尼福利亚这场超级火山喷发形成了长谷火山口--约20英里长，11英里宽。

In the study, the researchers from Vanderbilt University and the University of Chicago analyzed dozens of small quartz crystals, remnants from the original underground magma, from the Bishop Tuff.
在这项研究中，来自范德堡大学和芝加哥大学的研究者们分析了几十块小石英晶体，这些石英晶体采自主教凝灰岩，是地下岩浆喷射而出后的残余物质。
Quartz crystals have distinctive rims, they explain in a paper published to the journal Plos One, and are rich in titanium. Along with this, they are bright in cathodoluminescence, which allowed them to make high-resolution measurements of variation in the titanium, providing detailed insight on the transition from pre-eruptive crystallization to the decompression and crystallization at the time of the blast.
研究者们在《Plos One》期刊上发表了一篇论文，解释说这些石英晶体有不同的轮辋，并且富含钛。除此之外，这些石英晶体还被置于阴极射线的照射下，从而使得研究者们可以得到钛物质变动的高精确测量，进而可以详细地观察到喷发前的晶体减压、在爆炸时结晶的转化过程。
This analysis helped to determine rim growth times and growth rates – revealing that these processes largely occurred in a span of less than a year.
这项分析能够帮助确定轮辋的生长时间和生长率--而分析结果显示，这些过程大部分都发送在不到一年的时间里。
'Maximum rim growth times span from approximately 1 minute to 35 years, with a median of approximately 4 days,' the authors wrote. 'More than 70 percent of rim growth times are less than 1 year, showing that quartz rims have mostly grown in the days to months prior to eruption... Growth took place under conditions of high supersaturation suggesting that rim growth marks the onset of decompression and the transition from pre-eruptive to syn-eruptive conditions.'
作者们写道：“大部分轮辋的生长时间都在约1分钟到35年之间，其中中位数大约是4天。超过70%轮辋的生长时间不足1年，这表明石英轮辋生长的时间大多截止到超级火山喷发前几个月。轮辋生长只会发生在高度饱和的情况下，这表明轮辋的生长记录下了减压的开始时间，以及从爆发前到爆发时的情况变化。”
It takes tens of thousands of years for the crust to generate enough eruptible magma, but once formed, these unstable magma bodies only last for centuries to a few millennia. As the decompression occurs, the magma body would likely be expanding as well, having detectable effects at the surface.
地壳聚集足够喷发的岩浆需要数万年的时间，但是一旦准备完毕，这些不稳定的岩浆体就只会在地壳内存在几百年到几千年的时间。一旦减压作用发生，岩浆体就有可能膨胀，并在地表产生明显的影响。