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Pacific Fire Ring
The name Ring of Fire, which is very contested among the investigators, designates a horseshoe waist with hundreds of volcanoes, many of which active, known for their explosive eruptions and intense wise – the largest of our planet.
The Ring of Fire is a huge waist of volcanoes, active and sleeping, which surrounds most of the Pacific Ocean.
Extend From O Sul do Chilerising along the west coast of the Americas, passing through the islands off the Alaska and going down the Japan to the Philippines.
Some geologists also include an Indonesian chain of volcanoes in the ring.
These volcanoes arise due to subduction – the movement of a tectonic plate under a neighboring plate – which decreases the rock’s melting point in the cloak. THE Rocha becomes magmasurface and breaks like a volcano.
But the fire ring makes this subduction on a massive scale. “What is special in the fire ring is that multiple ocean plates in the Pacific have subduction boundaries there,” explains LoC VANDRULSENvolcanologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Ao.
Nearly 90% of the 55,000 kilometers of signs borders Subduction on Earth are in the Pacific, details VanderkLuysen.
This tectonic movement It also causes earthquakes. When one plate is forced under another, “there is a lot of friction and resistance while the plates friction against each other,” he explains Jeffrey KarsonEmeritus Professor of Tectonics at the University of Syracuse in New York, Live Science. “And that’s where the Biggest earthquakes of our planet“.
The fire ring contains About 75% of active volcanoes of the earth and this is where they occur 90% of the registered seismal.
This name is very contested among the investigators. “Many scientists They hate the term“, Diz Vanderkluysen.
On the one hand, It is not really a complete ring. The volcanoes follow the edges of the tectonic plates, which only subduce in the north, this and west of the Pacific. Furthermore, Some areas of the ring have no volcanism None, like Peru and the center of Chile.
In addition, the fire ring Includes more than 450 volcanoes in different regions. And all differ in their magma productionstorage and positioning of your plate in subduction, says VanderkLuysen.
“Each volcano has its own history Individual and characteristics that, from a research perspective, it is more effective to study individually rather than trying to connect all volcanoes of the fire ring that are otherwise not geologically linked, ”he adds.
Some scientists believe that the term Won a false meaning in popular culture, with the implication that it is a large structure, says Erik Klemettivolcanologist at Denison University in Granville, Ohio, Live Science.
“It works well as a way of describing the fact that there are huge volcanoes along the edge of the Pacific, but the ring It is just a geographical coincidence From our current moment on Earth, ”he details.
“One Great wrong idea is the catastrophist notion that all volcanoes in the fire ring are interconnected And that an eruption or earthquake in a location can trigger the entire region with dramatic consequences, ”says VanderkLuysen.
Although it is clear to scientists That an eruption in Japan will not trigger an eruption in Chile, for example, the term is sometimes used to suggest that it is possible, he said.
The investigation into the ring covers many fields. About 2/3 of the volcanoes that have erupted on Earth since 1960 were in the ringtherefore “due to absolute numbers, the Pacific region It is a huge laboratory Natural for Vulcanism, and explosive vulcanism in particular, ”says VanderkLuysen.
Klemetti hopes that the fire ring investigation eventually reveals the internal operation of volcanoes which occurs kilometers below sea level. Over the next 10 or 20 years, he thinks that scientists can learn where and how magma is stored between eruptions, how long it takes the magma to warm and understand more about the transition from numbness to the eruption.
Syismologists also study the fire ringsince more than 80% of earthquakes with magnitude 8.0 or higher occurred in the ring. Researchers can study these earthquakes to learn more about how tension accumulates in subduction zones before powerful earthquakes, says Butler.
The vast amount of data helps scientists differentiate between types of extreme events and their causes. “It is a general problem that we need to solve in geology, The differences between frequent eventsNot very serious, and those that occur rarely but are super-vaults, ”said Butler.
Analyzing volcanoes and earthquakes in the fire ring can help scientists improve the forecast of extreme dangers for volcanic eruptions. Scientists estimate that about 800 million people – Approximately 10% of the world’s population – live within 100 kilometers of an active volcano.
