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Yellowstone Hot Spot Shreds Ancient Pacific Ocean

Posted by Soulskill on from the tectonic-violence dept.

jamie passes along this excerpt from DiscoveryNews: "If you thought the geysers and overblown threat of a supervolcanic eruption in Yellowstone National Park were dramatic, you ain't seen nothing: deep beneath Earth's surface, the hot spot that feeds the park has torn an entire tectonic plate in half. The revelation comes from a new study (abstract) in the journal Geophysical Research Letters that peered into the mantle beneath the Pacific Northwest to see what happens when ancient ocean crust from the Pacific Ocean runs headlong into a churning plume of ultra-hot mantle material."

4 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Fix Wikipedia, please by mangu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A lot of people don't realize the gulf of mexico was formed by a giant hot spot like yellowstone.

    Perhaps you could fix the Wikipedia article adding that information. Remember, citations are always needed.

    1. Re:Fix Wikipedia, please by penguinchris · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think mangu's point is that the parent's assertion that the gulf was created by a hotspot is incorrect, if you believe what's in the well-cited Wikipedia article.

      (I'm a geologist, and while I don't know much specifically about the gulf, I'm pretty sure Wikipedia is right here).

    2. Re:Fix Wikipedia, please by game+kid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Internet people don't want to fix errors anymore. They want to point and laugh at the idiot who added them, and maybe caption them EPIC FAIL all the while.

      The Information Age is dead. Long live the Age of Lulz.

      --
      You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
  2. Whats the worst that could happen? by gmuslera · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Considering that they are talking there about ~20 millon years, could be as dramatic as the slow, gradual, taking millon years appearence of a new ocean in the middle of africa. Could eventually lead to a different world? probably. But could lead to catastrophic events per se, in the next i.e. 10000 years ? Don't think so... well, unless the supervolcano there decides to explode pretty soon, and that have any chance to make things even worse.