Something unexpected has been gradually making itself known to geologists in the United States. A huge mass of molten rock is creeping upwards beneath the nation’s north eastern states.

“The upwelling we detected is like a hot-air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England,” says Rutgers University geophysicist Professor Vadim Levin.

Traces of the brooding mass only became evident through a large-scale new seismic study.

The idea that there may be a super volcano brewing under Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire is something of a surprise.

“Our study challenges the established notion of how the continents on which we live behave,” Professor Levin says. “It challenges the textbook concepts taught in introductory geology classes.”

The region is geologically stable. There are no active volcanoes.

So the massive magma build-up must be a relatively recent event.

But, in the timescale of Earth’s geological processes, this still means tens of millions of years.

“It will likely take millions of years for the upwelling to get where it’s going,” Professor Levin explains. “The next step is to try to understand how exactly it’s happening.”

Something strange had been noted about the region earlier. Somewhere down there was an anomaly hundreds of degrees Celsius hotter than its surroundings.

The new study has helped identify the molten blob as being centred under Vermont, with parts of western New Hampshire and western Massachusets also within its embrace.

“It is not Yellowstone-like, but it’s a distant relative,” Professor Levin says.

As to whether-or-not the magma bubble will eventually eek its way to the surface is unknown.

“Maybe it didn’t have time yet, or maybe it is too small and will never make it,” Professor Levin told National Geographic.

“Come back in 50 million years, and we’ll see what happens.”

This story originally appeared in news.com.au.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2018/06/25/new-supervolcano-is-brewing-under-massachusetts-vermont-and-new-hampshire.html

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Experts at Yellowstone National Park claim to have seen the Steamboat Geyser erupt on Thursday night.

The park service made the announcement about the world’s tallest active geyser on Friday, as geologists compared the accounts to thermal sensors in the area.

It was determined that it “could be a series of minor eruptions”.

The geyser can shoot water more than 300 feet during significant eruptions.

A New Zealand geyser has sent water higher still, albeit not for more than 100 years.

The activity will have sent fears among volcano watchers who worry for the supervolcano, located about 15 miles south of the geyser, is due to erupt.

Yellowstone National Park has more than 10,000 thermal features, sitting atop the world’s largest volcano.

It can send 2,000 times more matter into the sky than the Mount St Helens eruption.

A series of earthquakes have been rumbling underground over the past few months, with as many as 200 recorded in a matter of days.

The volcano is “under strain” according to some experts.

But researchers said steamboat eruptions had little connection to a volcano like Yellowstone.

Jacob Lowenstern, former scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, told the Casper Star and Tribune: “Their plumbing systems are in the upper few hundred feet of the Earth.

“As you get hotter and hotter and deeper and deeper, the permeability and ability of water to move around shuts off. There’s not a whole lot of connectivity of the reservoirs once you get deep.

And Meteorologist Tom Skilling told WGN news: “Minor earthquakes occur in the Yellowstone area 50 or more times per week, but a major eruption is not expected in the foreseeable future.”

Steamboat Geyser is in the Norris Geyser Basin, which is closed to vehicle access at the moment for spring plowing.

Later in the spring, the road will be open to bicycles.

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Yes, the caldera is changing shape. Sure, eruptions might prime over just a few decades. Alright, there was that earthquake swarm last month. Now, we’ve got a new one for you. Yellowstone’s heat source could be coming from much deeper in the Earth than previously believed.

Researchers from the University of Texas discovered fresh evidence of a gigantic plume that extends from the core-mantle boundary (CMB) – the solid Earth between the core and mantle – beneath the park to the California-Mexico border.

If accurate, it backs up the hotly debated plume theory developed in the 1970s, which says the heat that drives activity – like geysers and hot springs – comes from magma rising upward from within the Earth to its crust.

But finding these deep mantle plumes is no easy task. Typically, scientists measure the arrival of seismic waves from earthquakes to measure the Earth’s interior. Different arrival times lets them see the type of material waves pass through. Here’s the catch: Seismic waves travel horizontally through thin, vertical plumes, which means the waves aren’t really affected by the plume’s presence.

This time around, researchers gathered data from EarthScope’s USArray that records how a seismic wave reflects off and travels through the Earth’s core. These waves traveled slower in a “long, thin, sloping zone,” suggesting a section of the mantle is between 600 and 800°C warmer than the surrounding area. And voila! A 350-kilometer (215-mile) cylinder emerged beneath Yellowstone that runs all the way to Mexico.

The volcanic island chain that makes up the Hawaiian archipelago is a classic example of a plume story. Tectonic plates gradually drift over the malleable part of the mantle, but the superheated mantle plumes remain in a fixed position. This means that you get a chain of volcanoes, with old ones losing their heat source as new ones emerge further along the line.

“There are many suspected plumes, or hot spots, around the Earth,” said Michael Poland, scientist-in-charge at the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, who was not part of the study, in an interview with IFLScience. “Yellowstone is one of them, but it’s a bit more complex.”

Yellowstone isn’t so different from other hotspots in general, but as the authors note in their paper, it does possess “features not in accord with classical plume theory,” including, but not limited to, a second hotspot track “propagating in the opposite direction” to the primary one.

You may be asking yourself: What does this new research, which constrains the dimensions of the suspected plume somewhat, mean for the Yellowstone supervolcano?

Well, we have good news.

“It means nothing at all. The plume has always been there, it’s just that we haven’t been able to see it very well,” Poland told IFLScience. He continued that the research gives more insight into what’s driving the whole process.

“This kind of structure works on the order of millions and millions of years and has no impact on our understanding of how Yellowstone works in terms of eruptive cycles, just their driving forces,” he says. “It doesn’t change our perception of volcanic activity at all.”

Poland and the researchers agree: The study raises more questions than it does answers. They hope further research and new methods for imaging the Earth’s core will help clarify some of them.

The study was published in Nature Geoscience.

Source: http://www.iflscience.com/environment/evidence-of-vast-magma-plume-discovered-stretching-from-the-yellowstone-supervolcano-to-mexico/all/

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