What is a mantle plume and why are they important?
A mantle plume is a proposed mechanism of convection within the Earth’s mantle. Because the plume head partially melts on reaching shallow depths, a plume is often invoked as the cause of volcanic hotspots, such as Hawaii or Iceland, and large igneous provinces such as the Deccan and Siberian Traps.
What does mantle plume do?
A mantle plume is an upwelling of abnormally hot rock within the Earth’s mantle. As the heads of mantle plumes can partly melt when they reach shallow depths, they are thought to be the cause of volcanic centers known as hotspots and probably also to have caused flood basalts.
How does a mantle plume create an island?
As the plume rises towards the base of the lithosphere, the reduction in pressure allows partial melting of the mantle material within the plume to form basaltic magma. The magma melts its way through the oceanic crust and erupts onto the ocean floor to build up an active volcanic island.
Where do mantle plumes come from?
Mantle plumes can be emitted from the core-mantle boundary region to reach the Earth’s crust. Because of the lateral displacement of the tectonic plates at the surface, the mantle plumes can create a series of aligned hot-spot volcanoes. A mid-ocean ridge and a subducted plate are also shown.
Does the mantle exist?
The mantle is the mostly-solid bulk of Earth’s interior. The mantle lies between Earth’s dense, super-heated core and its thin outer layer, the crust. The mantle is about 2,900 kilometers (1,802 miles) thick, and makes up a whopping 84% of Earth’s total volume.
What is mantle in a volcano?
Lava (which as you undoubtedly know, is partially molten rock erupted by volcanoes) typically comes from the mantle—the Earth’s middle layer, sandwiched between the crust and the core. Once it reaches the surface, lava quickly cools down and solidifies completely, creating new land.
How fast do mantle plumes rise?
about 10 cm/year
Mantle plumes are columns of hot rock, roughly 100 km in diameter, that rise from deep within the Earth. These plumes rise because they are hotter (by perhaps as much as 200 degrees centigrade) and therefore less dense, than the surrounding rock. The rate of ascent is about 10 cm/year or so.
How big are mantle plumes?
Almost a decade later, in 1971, it was hypothesized that such a hotspot could form above a vertical, narrow, hot mantle plume rising from the deep mantle1. In these initial models, mantle plumes were defined as narrow thermal upwellings1 with a wide ~1,000-km plume head, followed by a thinner ~100-km tail3,4.
What color is the mantle?
Earth’s Interior. The Earth is divided into three main layers. The dense, hot inner core (yellow), the molten outer core (orange), the mantle (red), and the thin crust (brown), which supports all life in the known universe.
How thick is the mantle?
about 2,900 kilometers
The mantle is about 2,900 kilometers (1,802 miles) thick, and makes up a whopping 84% of Earth’s total volume.
Where are mantle plumes located today?
But really the hotspot is remaining in a fixed location, and the Earth’s plates are shifting above it. Two of the most famous places that might have mantle plumes underneath them are the Hawaiian Islands and Iceland. We have written many articles about volcanoes and the interior of the Earth for Universe Today.
Where does the mantle plume occur on the Earth?
A mantle plume is posited to exist where hot rock nucleates at the core-mantle boundary and rises through the Earth’s mantle becoming a diapir in the Earth’s crust.
Why is the mantle considered a volcanic hotspot?
A mantle plume is a proposed mechanism of convection of abnormally hot rock within the Earth’s mantle. Because the plume head partly melts on reaching shallow depths, a plume is often invoked as the cause of volcanic hotspots, such as Hawaii or Iceland, and large igneous provinces such as the Deccan and Siberian traps.
Is there a mantle plume in Yellowstone National Park?
Plumes and Yellowstone. Yellowstone National Park is located within a huge volcanic crater that has periodically erupted. In fact, the park’s crater is at the Northeast end of a chain of volcanic craters that have formed over the past 17 million years or so. Some geologists think a mantle plume is the explanation.
Is the mantle plume an observation or an assumption?
Although Morgan initially presented mantle plumes as an assumption, over time, the fact that they were an assumption — not an observation — has been forgotten, Foulger says.