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In 1963, a geophysicist named John Tuzo Wilson proposed that the islands, that are lined with layers of volcanic stone, sit above a magma plume, which types when rock from the deep mantle bubbles up and swimming pools under the crust. This “scorching spot” frequently pushes towards the floor, generally bursting by way of the tectonic plate, melting and deforming the encompassing rock because it goes. The plate shifts over thousands and thousands of years whereas the magma plume stays comparatively nonetheless, creating new volcanoes atop the plate and leaving inactive ones of their wake. The outcomes are archipelagoes just like the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain and components of the Iceland Plateau.
The recent spot idea gained broad consensus within the subsequent a long time. “There isn’t any different idea that is ready to reconcile so many observations,” mentioned Helge Gonnermann, a volcanologist at Rice College.
Some confirming observations got here comparatively not too long ago, within the 2000s, after scientists started inserting seismometers, which measure terrestrial power waves, on the ocean flooring. John Orcutt, a geophysicist on the College of California, San Diego, who helped lead that analysis, mentioned that the seismometers had supplied an X-ray of the magma plume rising beneath Hawaii. The devices had been capable of precisely learn the path and pace of the magma’s move; the outcomes pointed resoundingly towards the presence of a scorching spot.
This scorching spot has in all probability been fomenting volcanic exercise for tens of thousands and thousands of years, though it arrived in its present place beneath Mauna Loa solely about 600,000 years in the past. And so long as it stays there, Dr. Orcutt mentioned, it’ll reliably produce volcanic exercise. “Few issues on Earth are so predictable,” he added.
Nearer to the floor, predicting when, the place and the way intense these eruptions will likely be turns into harder, regardless of the profusion of seismometers and satellite tv for pc sensors. “The deeper you go, the extra clean the habits will get,” Dr. Orcutt mentioned. “By the point you get this interface between rock and molten rock and the ocean, the magma tends to come back out sporadically.”
Below the hood of the volcano
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