Tag: Volcanic activity

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Volcanoes Transforming Dark Depths by Douglas J. Lanzo

plate tectonics
plumes of fire, sulfur and ash
erupting undersea

by Douglas J. Lanzo

Magma erupts through ocean floors from the earth’s mantle when oceanic plates collide with, or tear away from, each other, with staggering force.  This results in spectacular undersea volcanic activity that forges massive sea mounts from plumes of magma that thrust toward the ocean’s surface with incredible heat, speed and fury.  Yellow-orange magma turns red and then further glassy black as it cools so quickly that crystals do not have time to form, spewing plumes of sulfur and billowing ash into surrounding waters. 

While this activity brings death to some sea creatures, others thrive off of it, with aptly named Pompeii worms, vent shrimp, yeti crabs and giant tube worms thriving off the bacteria and superheated minerals found in abundance by these smoking-hot hydrothermal vents.

This activity is on such a massive scale that over time it can produce entire volcanic island chains, such as the Hawaiian Islands.  Even when a sea mount does not become a “Mauna Kea” and pierce the ocean’s surface, it can rise for thousands of meters and form one of the highest mountains on earth.  Just for the record, Hawaii’s now dormant volcano, Mauna Kea is over 10,000 meters in height when measured from its base on the Pacific Ocean’s floor, which dwarfs Mount Everest’s mere 8,849-meter height.

Further reading:

To learn more about this awe-inspiring undersea tectonic activity, I highly recommend the breathtaking 2017 BBC Blue Planet II (2017) Episode 2 “The Deep” documentary narrated by Sir David Attenborough and the 2006 BBC Planet Earth Episode 11 “Ocean Deep”. 

For some good reading on it, check out the Underwater Volcanoes webpage published by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution under its Ocean Learning Hub at https://www.whoi.edu/ocean-learning-hub/ocean-topics/how-the-ocean-works/seafloor-below/volcanoes/.

Author bio:

Doug is an award-winning American author and poet of over 560 internationally published poems whose debut novel The Year of the Bear won the Ames Award for YA Books and whose second book I Have Lived was named American Book Fest Novella of the Year. His Author’s website is www.douglaslanzo.com.

Check out other sciku by Doug here.

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Mars

If you say water

then we say volcanism,

else Mars is too cold.

Recent observations of Mars have suggested the presence of liquid water beneath the ice at the South Pole, prompting researchers to ask how water could exist in liquid state under Mars’ environmental conditions.

Research by Soria and Bramson (2019) suggests that the most likely theory to explain the presence of water would be an underground source of heat such as the formation of a magma chamber in the area within the past few hundred thousand years. The researchers also suggest the reverse is true – if there isn’t such a heat source then it’s unlikely that the earlier suggestions of liquid water are correct.

Original reseach: http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2018GL080985

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What lurks beneath?

What lurks beneath the

‘Mountains of Madness’? Maybe

it’s a mantle plume?

 

Antarctica has numerous subsurface lakes and rivers under its glaciers. Over 30 years ago it was hypothesised that there might be a mantle plume under West Antarctica which might be in part responsible for these subglacial water bodies.

Now there is increased evidence that such a mantle plume might actually exist: Seroussi et al (2017) wrote a three-dimensional ice flow model to understand how much geothermal heat would be needed to create the conditions observed at Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica. They then compared this model with observations collected by a Nasa satellite. Their results lend support to the theory that there may indeed be a mantle plume under Antarctica.

Original research: https://doi.org/10.1002/2017JB014423