Thermochemical Piles And Cataclysmic Volcanic Eruptions In A Mega Ultra Low Velocity Zone

Thursday, February 7, 2013 - 10:31 in Earth & Climate

A new study in Earth and Planetary Science Letters analyzed seismic waves that bombarded Earth's core and indicates that two or more continent-sized chunks of rock are colliding as they move at the bottom of Earth's thick mantle, atop the thicker core some 1,800 miles beneath the Pacific. That is creating a Florida-sized zone of partly molten rock that may be the root of either of two kinds of massive eruptions far in the future: Hotspot plume supervolcano eruptions like those during the past 2 million years at Wyoming's Yellowstone caldera, which covered North America with volcanic ash. read more

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