(ORDO NEWS) — Geologists discovered under New Zealand traces of a giant magma bubble called superplume. In the past, it caused the largest volcanic activity on Earth, according to a researchers article published in the journal Science Advances.
It is noted that the flow of molten rock detached from the outer boundary of the core at a depth of three thousand kilometers about 120 million years ago, after which it quickly appeared on the surface in the form of superplume.
This has led to the emergence of a zone with a large number of volcanoes, which is similar to those observed in Hawaii and in Iceland. Over time, the movement of tectonic plates destroyed the volcanic plateau, one of the fragments went south, being the basis of the island of North as part of New Zealand.
Scientists have discovered traces of the mantle plume by analyzing the speed of seismic waves that cause earthquakes or artificial explosions. It turned out that the waves accelerate when passing through the Hikurangi plateau (east of New Zealand), reaching nine kilometers per second.
Such changes in velocity are equally high for all waves that propagate in the horizontal direction, but lower for vertical ones. The same difference was found for the rocks of the Manihiki plateau north of Samoa and the Ontong Java plateau north of the Solomon Islands.
It turned out that they were all fragments of the same volcanic zone, the dimensions of which reached more than two thousand kilometers across.
Earlier it was reported that scientists solved the mystery of the Nile and found out that he was 30 million years old.
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