Scientists unravel the mystery of ancient underwater volcanoes in Hawaii

Scientists used supercomputers to simulate and reconstruct the dynamics of tectonic movement

Pacific plates.This will help explain the mysterious nature of the bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, the scientists write. For their work, the researchers used the resources of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) system.

“With the help of computer models, we are for the first timeshowed how the Pacific Plate can dramatically change direction from north to west,” explains Michael Gurnis, professor of geophysics at the California Institute of Technology. “Understand why this happened, how to find the holy grail,” he said. The scientist was a co-author of a study on the origin of the seamount chain.

Giant tectonic plates in the earth's crustmainly move along hot and weak rocks of the mantle. The Pacific Plate is one of the largest. It covers about 64 million km² under water, outlined by the mountains and volcanoes of the "Ring of Fire". They, in turn, were formed as a result of the transformation of plates into a mantle.

But the volcanoes of Hawaii and the Hawaiian-Imperiala chain of seamounts appeared in a different way. Scientists believe plumes of Earth's hottest rock from its core rise up through the mantle, forming a volcanic hot spot. It is believed that the chain of seamounts was created by a plate that moved along a hot plume.

About 80 million years ago, the Pacific Platemoved mainly northward for about 30 million years, as evidenced by the Hawaiian Seamounts line. But about 50 million years ago something strange happened. The Pacific plate apparently changed direction, and the mantle plume also shifted. 

Using physics and a supercomputer, scientistsdeveloped a new theory. They took into account the subduction zone in the Russian Far East (Kronotsky arc), whose formation ended about 50 million years ago. The calculation showed that first the Pacific plate moved to the north, and then to the west, slowly creating other subduction zones . The scientists said their hypothesis is "much stronger from the point of view of the physics on which it is based." She also explained the appearance and bending of the underwater chain of the Hawaiian mountains.

Read more

"James Webb" took the clearest photo of a star in history

At a depth of 8,000 meters, scientists have found strange bacteria: they were not expected to be seen there

Scientists stumble upon 1,500-year-old archaeological anomaly