experts have found.
he sheer volume of liquid magma is enough to cause a catastrophic super-eruption, according to an experiment at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble.
Simulating the intense heat and pressure inside these "sleeping giants" could help predict a future disaster.
The study by a Swiss team from ETH Zurich appears in Nature Geoscience.
Lead author Wim Malfait, of ETH Zurich said: "We knew the clock was ticking but we didn't know how fast: what would it take to trigger a super-eruption? "Now we know you don't need any extra factor - a supervolcano can erupt due to its enormous size alone.
"Once you get enough melt, you can start an eruption just like that."
There are about 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth - including Lake Toba in Indonesia, Lake Taupo in New Zealand, and the somewhat smaller Phlegraean Fields near Naples, Italy.
Super-eruptions occur rarely - only
once every 100,000 years on average. But when they do occur, they have a devastating impact on Earth's climate and ecology.
When a supervolcano erupted 600,000 years ago in Wyoming, in what today is Yellowstone National Park, it ejected more than 1,000 cubic km of ash and lava into the atmosphere - enough to bury a large city to a depth of a few kilometres.
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