Researchers Unearth Glass Labyrinth Created by Underwater Volcanic Eruption
Researchers Unearth Glass Labyrinth Created by Underwater Volcanic Eruption
The unusual formation is situated nearly three miles below the ocean’s surface—a distance greater than Mount Rainier’s height above sea level
The labyrinthine network stretches roughly 4.5 miles across the ocean floor (Courtesy of Oregon State University/Bill Chadwick)
By Meilan Solly
SMITHSONIAN.COM
NOVEMBER 1, 2018
Sometime between 2013 and 2015, an underwater volcano located in the western Pacific’s Mariana Trench back-arc erupted, spewing forth a torrent of molten lava. As the sprawling tendrils hit the chilly seawater, they abruptly started cooling. The result: a nearly three-mile deep, labyrinthine network of glassy black lava that stretches roughly 4.5 miles across the ocean floor.
Researchers chanced upon this ethereal glass palace during a routine dive in December 2015, Robin George Andrews writes for The New York Times. The team had originally hoped to use robotic submersibles to uncover hidden hydrothermal vents, but the volcanic deposits proved to be a far more interesting find.
The lava labyrinth, which is newly documented in Frontiers in Earth Science, sits about 2.8 miles below the ocean’s surface. According to Eleanor Imster of EarthSky, this distance is greater than Mount Rainier’s height above sea level, officially making the eruption that produced the unusual phenomenon the world’s deepest.
Earther’s Maddie Stone reports that the scientists, led by Oregon State University marine geologist Bill Chadwick, initially noticed the surface of the structure was sediment-free and venting a milky hydrothermal fluid, suggesting the still-cooling lava was fresh. A second survey conducted in 2016 enabled the team to further pinpoint the timing of the eruption: As the study states, the lava flows exhibited a “rapidly declining hydrothermal system” that pointed toward the eruption occurring just months before the December 2015 expedition.
Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-unearth-glass-labyrinth-created-underwater-volcanic-eruption-180970672/#hc5ZcoIVEPL2ZRgO.99
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A Vault of Glass and the Deepest Volcanic Eruption Ever Detected
Close to the Mariana Trench and nearly three miles below sea level, scientists found evidence of an underwater eruption that was only months old.
Various images made by the Deep Discoverer, a remote operated vehicle, showing lava deposits made by the eruption, including pillow tubes, glass and other formations.CreditCreditChadwick WW Jr. et al
By Robin George Andrews
Oct. 30, 2018
In 2015, an international team of researchers sent robotic submersibles beneath the waves north of Guam. They had set out to study an area south and west of the Mariana Trench — the deepest groove in Earth’s oceans — and an arc of volcanoes, hoping to spy hidden hydrothermal vents.
Instead, they discovered a spectacular glassy labyrinth, nearly three miles below sea level. It was recently cooled lava, the product of the deepest underwater volcanic eruption ever recorded by scientists.
The researchers reported their discovery last week in Frontiers in Earth Science. The identification of deep-sea eruptions happens very rarely, said Bill Chadwick, a seafloor geologist at the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Oregon and lead author of the new study, and discovering one “is an opportunity to learn about a fundamental Earth process that we know little about.”
The finding wasn’t just notable for its extraordinary depth. The extremely young age of the lava deposit offers scientists a window into the very beginnings of what happens when a volcanic outburst occurs beneath the seas. So often, they just see an epilogue.
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/science/deep-sea-volcano.html
