Scientists have realized concerning the inner workings of volcanoes by learning the northward movement of the Australian continent over a ‘hotspot’ contained in the Earth over the last 35 million years. Image for Representation.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Scientists have realized concerning the inner workings of volcanoes by learning the northward movement of the Australian continent over a ‘hotspot’ contained in the Earth over the last 35 million years, which left behind volcanic relics throughout its panorama.
The researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia, stated these relics revealed that the interior construction of the Australian volcanoes grew to become more and more complicated because the hotspot’s magma output decreased. Their analysis is revealed in Nature Geoscience.
The hotspot was extremely robust in its early levels, producing some of jap Australia’s most beloved pure points of interest, in response to one of the researchers, Al-Tamini Tapu.
“These large volcanoes were active for up to seven million years,” Tapu stated.
“The volcanoes formed as the continent moved over a stationary hotspot inside the planet, melting the land above it so magma could ooze upward.
“This left a treasure trove of volcanic landmarks in its wake, forming the longest chain of continental ‘hotspot’ volcanoes on Earth – alongside Australia’s jap facet,” said Tapu.
Enormous, long-lived lava outpourings in Tweed volcano, one of the ‘shield volcanoes’ and a popular tourist spot, may have weakened the hotspot, and caused the younger volcanoes to the south to become smaller and shorter-lived, the researchers said.
Associate Professor Teresa Ubide said that as the magma production waned, the volcanoes became internally more complicated, erupting lavas full of complex crystals.
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“As these cooled down and have become extra viscous, it grew to become harder to generate eruptions, which can have been extra explosive.
“We found that the arrival of new, hotter, and gas-rich magma acts like a shaken bottle of fizzy drink, causing a build-up of pressure in the magma, and, eventually, an eruption,” stated Ubide.
She stated Australia’s extinct ‘hotspot volcanoes’ present a novel laboratory for researchers to analyze processes resulting in volcanic eruptions throughout the globe.
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“The effect of erosion over tens of millions of years allows us to access complete sequences of lava that can be difficult to access in more recent volcanoes,” Ubide stated.
“It then makes it possible to reconstruct the inner structure of the volcanoes, sort of like opening a doll’s house, which gives us a much better understanding of hotspot activity globally.
“This is especially vital, given there are various energetic hotspots on Earth, together with within the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, and in different continents, such because the United States’ Yellowstone volcano.
“Volcanoes in these areas produce large volumes of lava and have an important role in the evolution of our planet and atmosphere – so having a real-world ‘doll’s house’ to play around in and observe variations with time and magma supply is very helpful,” stated Ubide.
