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New Zealand Sits on Top of the Remains of a Giant Ancient Volcanic Plume

posted by martyb on Friday May 29 2020, @09:52AM   
from the ancient-plumage dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

New Zealand sits on top of the remains of a giant ancient volcanic plume:

Back in the 1970s, scientists came up with a revolutionary idea about how Earth's deep interior works. They proposed it is slowly churning like a lava lamp, with buoyant blobs rising as plumes of hot mantle rock from near Earth's core, where rocks are so hot they move like a fluid.

According to the theory, as these plumes approach the surface they begin to melt, triggering massive volcanic eruptions. But evidence for the existence of such plumes proved elusive and geologists had all but rejected the idea.

Yet in a paper published today, we can now provide this evidence. Our results show that New Zealand sits atop the remains of such an ancient giant volcanic plume. We show how this process causes volcanic activity and plays a key role in the workings of the planet.

Journal Reference:
J.-P. Macquart, J. X. Prochaska, M. McQuinn, et al. A census of baryons in the Universe from localized fast radio bursts, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2300-2)

The remains of Mt. Doom after the hobbits got finished with it?

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Original Submission

• Subduction volcanism (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @10:57AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @10:57AM (#1000477)

  New Zealand in lies on a subduction zone formed by the collision of the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, and this subduction produces a lot of volcanic activity. The same is true for many of the islands on the Rim of Fire, like those of the Philippines (Eurasian and Philippine plates) and Japan (Eurasian, Philippine, Pacific, and North American plates). I suppose these volcanic plumes they talk about are a mechanism in addition to the subduction volcanism that has been long known. I'd have thought that the Hawaiian islands were the prime example of these volcanic plumes, being produced by such a mantle plume so hot that it pierced the crust in the middle of the Pacific Plate.

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