By using seismic waves, scientists have mapped where the famous "hot spot" that caused the Emperor Seamounts and which created the Hawaiian islands, and which keeps the lava from Kilauea flowing (subtitled: "Still Waiting for Loa"). The research team put a lot of seismometers (73) on the sea floor -- just keeping them running down there is pretty daunting -- and then via the seismometers listened to the wave patterns from earthquakes. They mapped the plume in three dimensions down to a depth of 1,500 km. This showed that the hot spot really is a mantle plume -- a place where mantle rock punches up through the upper mantle and crust to make big middle-of-the-sea islands.
Here's the press release:
New research uncovers deep origins of the 'Hawaiian hotspot'
and here's the Web site, which doesn't have much info:
The Plume-Lithosphere Undersea Melt Experiment (note: it's bad form to use the name of your acronym in the title from which the acronym is derived)
and as of yet, there are no cartoons of what the plume actually looks like from the 3-D model. I guess we'll have to wait for Hollywood to make the movie.
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