Yellowstone (USA) is a place where there were several giant eruptions in the past
A new study has revealed that huge bubbles in the depths of the earth’s surface should be the source of giant volcanic eruptions.
Volcanic eruptions to the surface of the earth have significant consequences. The smallest can “only” scare tourists on Mount Etna and disturb air traffic.
But the Giant and large -scale eruptions can have much more serious impacts.
One of these events contributed to the disappearance of dinosaurs 66 million years ago. The giant volcanoes also triggered events that led to the greatest mass extinction of the Earth, the permatic extinction, 252 million years ago.
But what does it feed a giant eruption and how does it reach the surface coming from the depths of the planet?
In a new study last week in Communications Earth and Environmenta group of scientists at the University of Wollongong (Australia) showed that the warm rock columns, which rise about 3000 kilometers through the land cloak and cause giant eruptions, are linked to regions of continental source that we call BLOBS.
Bubbles hidden inside the Earth
Blobs are Hot regions at the bottom of the terrestrial cloak (Between about 2,000 km and 3,000 km deep) that can be composed of materials other than those of the surrounding rocks.
Scientists have long known of the existence of these two hot regions under the Pacific and Africa Ocean.
The geologist David Evansfrom the University of Yale, suggested the Acronym Blobs, which means Big Lower-Mantle Basal Structures (large basal structures).
These blobs possibly existed for hundreds of millions of years. It is not clear whether they are stationary or move as part of the mantle movement (called convection).
The cloak feathers were the implicit connection in previous studies that related blobs with giant volcanic eruptions. Its shape is slightly similar to a jumpy suck: the “dick” is the tail of the feather and the “candy” is the head of the feather.
Mantlic feathers rise very slowly through the cloak because they carry hot solid rock and not melting or washing. Lower pressures in the upper 200 km of the terrestrial cloak, the solid rock fuses, giving rise to eruptions.
A long -sought after relationship
In the new study, the team simulated the convection of the cloak of a thousand million years ago and found that the Plumes of the cloak rise from moving blobs and can sometimes be gently inclined.
Giant volcanic eruptions can be identified by the volcanic volcano volcanoes preserved to the earth’s surface. The bottom of the ocean preserves detailed fingerprints of the manentlic feathers of the last 120 million years (there is not too much of the older sea than that).
Oceanic plateaus, such as the Planalo Ontong Java-Minkki-Hikurangicurrently in the southwest of the Pacific Ocean, they are linked to head feathers.
In turn, the volcano series, as are examples to the chain of submarine hills Hawaii-Emperor and the submarine chain of hills Lord Howeare linked to tails feathers.
The new study has proven that the locations of giant volcanic eruptions of the past are significantly related to the cloak feathers foreseen by their models. This is encouraging as it suggests that simulations predict mantlic feathers in places and moments generally consistent with geological record.
Mobile Blobs
In an article, researchers explain that one of the study’s conclusions is the confirmation that the Deep land is dynamic.
Blobs, which are about 2000 km below the earth’s surface, hundreds of kilometers move over time And they are connected to the earth’s surface by mantlic feathers that create giant eruptions.
To step back and keep things in perspective: although the deep movements of the earth are significant over tens of millions of years, they are usually of the order of 1 centimeter per year.
This means that the BLOBs move in a year at the rhythm that human hair grows each month.
