Titanic mantle plume "tree" rising from planet's molten heart is a window into Earth's fiery future

[bigtree]

The caldera of the Piton de la Fournaise on Réunion.

___Réunion, a French island in the western Indian Ocean, is like a marshmallow hovering above the business end of a blowtorch. It sits above one of Earth’s mantle plumes—a tower of superheated rock that ascends from the deep mantle and flambées the bases of tectonic plates, the jigsaw pieces that make up the ever-changing face of the world. The plume’s effects are hard to miss: One of the island’s two massive volcanoes, the aptly named Piton de la Fournaise, or “Peak of the Furnace,” is one of the most hyperactive volcanoes on the planet.

In 2012, a team of geophysicists and seismologists set out to map the plume, deploying a giant network of seismometers across the vast depths of the Indian Ocean seafloor. Nearly a decade later, the team has revealed that the mantle is stranger than expected. The team reported in June in Nature Geoscience that the plume isn’t a simple column. Instead, a titanic mantle plume “tree” rises from the fringes of the planet’s molten heart, with superheated branchlike structures appearing to grow diagonally out of it. As these branches approach the crust, they seem to sprout smaller, vertically rising branches—super hot plumes that underlie known volcanic hot spots at the surface.

The Réunion tree’s root, which researchers already knew about from prior work, is likely a primordial object, perhaps almost as old as Earth itself. So it is possible this torrid tree has been growing its canopy of plumes for billions of years. Presuming that more branches continue to grow, scientists now have a window into Earth’s fiery future.

“From looking at the core-mantle boundary, you can maybe predict where the oceans will open,” said study coauthor Karin Sigloch. Researchers can also forecast the land that will one day be obliterated. If the new models are accurate, a few tens of millions of years from now, you may not want to be in South Africa—or, perhaps, on planet Earth at all.


read more: https://www.wired.com/story/a-huge-subterranean-tree-is-moving-magma-to-earths-surface

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-massive-subterranean-tree-is-moving-magma-to-earths-surface-20210915/

Link to tweet

[paleotn]

1. Flood basalts driven by mantle plumes....

Gargantuan flood eruptions that generally make for a bad day for anyone living on planet Earth. And this plume has a bad history of that. It may be tied to the Deccan Traps. A massive flood basalt event that may have made life a bit tough during the late Cretaceous prior to the Chicxulub impact slate wiper.

[bigtree]

2. that asteroid may have made it easier for the magma to reach the surface

...causing maximum lava flow and contributing greatly to the mass extinction events.

[paleotn]

3. Yep. The timing is tricky.

Were the Deccan traps a contributor or just the undertaker?

[eppur_se_muova]

5. Aren't the Deccan Traps and Chixculub on exactly opposite points of the globe ?

I noticed this a number of years ago and wondered if maybe the asteroid impact had produced a circularly symmetric seismic wave that traveled around the globe and re-converged at the site of the Deccan Traps, causing a huge "echo" of the collision there, and deeply fracturing the Earth's crust. A number of years later I heard on the radio (just as I was waking up) that a couple of French scientists had recently published a theory to that effect. Haven't heard any more about it.

[paleotn]

7. If they're not, they're close.

Not my field, but I wouldn't be surprised given the amount of energy transferred by the Chicxulub wallop. That had to shake something loose.

[panader0]

10. What about the Hudson Bay meteor strike? 290 million years ago.

[calimary]

12. WOW!

One of those times when you get the message that there are some things WAAAAY bigger that other things.

[Goonch]

4. ;-{)🖖

[Botany]

6. 3 things

Thanx for posting

DU has some really smart people ... which leaves me out

Fox News: Massive earthquake and volcanic activity threatens life on earth. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
are @ fault.

[TeamProg]

9. "Selfish, greedy environmental terrorists threaten to use ancient volcanoes to get what

they want, clean air and water for everyone."

[Firestorm49]

8. Fascinating article. It shows just how far, and at the same time, not so far we have come.

[jaxexpat]

11. Love this article. Thank you much.

I, too, have a tree-like structure which grows at regular angles then suddenly spurts straight up for some unknown though probably un-tectonic reason. It's a bougainvillea creature whose sub-mantle structure originates off septic tanks and plumber's fees. It didn't take a seismograph to identify the impact of it's natural origin. It was much simpler, really, the toilets just wouldn't flush.