Sentences with phrase «deep mantle plumes»

Not all scientists are convinced that deep mantle plumes can propel tectonic plates, or are responsible for hot spots areas of unusually high volcanic activity such as the one under Réunion island.

«For the scientists who do not believe hot spots like Réunion are due to deep mantle plumes, this should be a challenge.»

They slow down the seismic waves caused by earthquakes and may be the culprit for deep mantle plumes, which can lead to volcanic hotspots like those that created Yellowstone National Park or the Hawai'ian Islands.

Not exact matches

Scientists studying volcanic hotspots have strong evidence of this, finding high helium - 3 relative to helium - 4 in some plumes, the upwellings from Earth's deep mantle.

Iceland is also where scientists have long debated whether a mantle plume — a vertical jet of hot rock originating from deep inside Earth — intersects the mid-ocean ridge.

The Hawaii research relies on a new seismic technique for detecting aligned flows of rock that has yet to be verified, says marine geophysicist Cecily Wolfe of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, D.C.. However, the Iceland study is «very clear and compelling,» she says, and consistent with a deep mantle origin for the plume.

Since the island «birth order» moves from east to west, the Canaries must have formed as the continental plate drifted eastward over a stationary, periodically erupting plume of hot magma deep in Earth's mantle.

One of the most contentious debates in geoscience has centred on whether piles of rock in the deep mantle — to which plumes are anchored — have remained stationary, unaffected by mantle flow over hundreds of millions of years.

These plumes of hot rock welling up from deep in the mantle are a key link in the plate - tectonic cycle.

The magma comes from within the upper 200 kilometers of the mantle and not thousands of kilometers deep, as the mantle - plume theory suggests.

Since the 1970s, geologists have theorized that the Hawaiian Islands formed from magma generated by a hot, rising deep - mantle formation known as a plume.

«For the first time we could obtain images of the deeper crustal structure in the region where the Walvis Ridge joins the African continent, in order to study the impact of a mantle plume» explains Trond Ryberg from GFZ.

It is commonly assumed that enormous masses of magma ascended from the deep mantle up to higher levels, and that this hot mantle plume (the Tristan mantle plume) weakened the continental lithosphere, eventually causing the break - up of the continental plate of Gondwana.

«This new constraint on plume structure has important implications for how deep mantle material is entrained in plumes, and it gives us the clearest picture yet for the chemical structure of an upwelling mantle plume.»

«This is consistent with the idea of a relatively deep - seated mantle plume,» she said.

That indicates the plume comes from a relatively deep source, though the data doesn't allow the team to peer deeper into the mantle, near the core.

Peter Nelson is a fourth - year doctoral student in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin and co-author of the new paper, which provides the first convincing evidence of a deep - mantle plume beneath Yellowstone.

But despite widespread acceptance of the deep plume theory, geoscientists have failed to produce seismic imaging of just such a mushroom - shaped plume extending 3,000 kilometers down to the core - mantle boundary.

According to the NASA press release, the study «adds evidence that a geothermal heat source called a mantle plume lies deep below Antarctic Marie Byrd Land, explaining some of the melting that creates lakes and rivers under the ice sheet.»

A new NASA study adds evidence that a geothermal heat source called a mantle plume lies deep below Antarctica's Marie Byrd Land, explaining some of the melting that creates lakes and rivers under the ice sheet.