Tag Archives: molten rock

New View of Rainier’s Volcanic Plumbing

By Guest PostSeptember 16, 2014Sciencebank of montreal, beat bannwart, bernd laber, caixabank, cocktail geoengineering, commerzbank, ct scans, earth, electricity, erste group, fabio keller, jeffrey shell, jordi fontanals, juvenile remains, magnetic fields, molten rock, mount rainier, patrick goetz, reservoir, ring of fire, seismic waves, tectonic plates, trade finance platform, ubs, university of utah, zone

Electrical Images Show Upward Flow of Fluids to Magma Chamber

By measuring how fast Earth conducts electricity and seismic waves, a University of Utah researcher and colleagues made a detailed picture of Mount Rainier’s deep volcanic plumbing and partly molten rock that will erupt again someday.

“This is the most direct image yet capturing the melting process that feeds magma into a crustal reservoir that eventually is tapped for eruptions,” says geophysicist Phil Wannamaker, of the university’s Energy & Geoscience Institute and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “But it does not provide any information on the timing of future eruptions from Mount Rainier or other Cascade Range volcanoes.” (more…)

Magma can survive in upper crust for hundreds of millennia

By Guest PostSeptember 1, 2013Scienceandes mountains, cascades range, craggy granite formation, crystallization, francisco gutierrez, hawaii, heat conductivity, hundreds of millennia, kilauea volcano, magma, modeling research, molten rock, mount pinatubo, mount st helens, national scientiﬁc, olivier bachmann, oozing, pacific northwest, period, Philippines, plutonic magma, plutonic rock, reservoir, Santiago, sarah gelman, silica rich magma, south america, survive, temperature dependent, universidad de chile, university of washington, upper crust, volcanic arcs, volcanic eruptions, volcanic magma, washington state, yellowstone national park, yosemite national park

Reservoirs of silica-rich magma – the kind that causes the most explosive volcanic eruptions – can persist in Earth’s upper crust for hundreds of thousands of years without triggering an eruption, according to new University of Washington modeling research.

That means an area known to have experienced a massive volcanic eruption in the past, such as Yellowstone National Park, could have a large pool of magma festering beneath it and still not be close to going off as it did 600,000 years ago.

“You might expect to see a stewing magma chamber for a long period of time and it doesn’t necessarily mean an eruption is imminent,” said Sarah Gelman, a UW doctoral student in Earth and space sciences. (more…)

Lunar impacts created seas of molten rock

By Guest PostMarch 25, 2013Scienceanalysis of data, apollo moon rocks, apollo program, brown university, crust, differentiation, differentiation processes, fluid rock, geological sciences, james w head, laser altimeter, liquid rock, lola, luna missions, lunar crust, lunar magma ocean, lunar orbiter, magma ocean paradigm, mantle, maunder crater, melt sea, model, molten rock, moon, NASA, orientale basin, orientale melt, planetary geologist, pristine rocks, remote sensing data, rock forming processes, rock layers, russia, william vaughan

A new analysis of data from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) shows that molten rock may have been present on the Moon more recently and for longer periods than previously thought. Differentiation — a settling out of rock layers as liquid rock cools — would require thousands of years and a fluid rock sea at least six miles deep.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Early in the Moon’s history an ocean of molten rock covered its entire surface. As that lunar magma ocean cooled over millions of years, it differentiated to form the Moon’s crust and mantle. But according to a new analysis by planetary scientists from Brown University, this wasn’t the last time the Moon’s surface was melted on a massive scale. (more…)

Landmark Volcano Study Brings to Life Huge Alaska Eruption on its Centennial

By Guest PostMay 27, 2012Environmentair quality, alaska eruption, alaska peninsula, ash, centennial, chronology, fumarole plumes, judy fierstein, katmai national park, kodiak, magnitude, marcia mcnutt, mediterranean sea, molten rock, mount katmai, municipal anchorage, novarupta, novarupta katmai centennial, novarupta volcano, scientific expedition, united states, volcanic complexes, volcanic eruption, volcanic event, volcano, volcanology, wes hildreth

MENLO PARK, Calif. – 100 years ago, in June 1912, the most powerful volcanic eruption of the 20th century took place in what is now Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve. This massive volcanic event once again comes alive for scholars and enthusiasts in a new centennial volume by two U.S. Geological Survey scientists whose work has made major contributions to volcano science.

“The Novarupta-Katmai Eruption of 1912 – Largest Eruption of the Twentieth Century: Centennial Perspectives,” by Wes Hildreth and Judy Fierstein, is the most comprehensive study of a geographically remote but huge and devastating volcanic event. The eruption’s dynamics mystified researchers for decades. Today, study of Novarupta and Katmai volcanoes sheds light on how future events in Alaska’s volcanic regions could affect air quality and air-transportation safety locally and across the globe. (more…)

New Understanding of Earth’s Mantle Beneath The Pacific Ocean

By Guest PostMarch 24, 2012Scienceasthenosphere, boundary, carnegie, crust, earth, evolution, factors, gutenberg discontinuity, lab, lithosphere, lithosphere asthenosphere boundary, mineral, molten rock, nick schmerr, pacific ocean basin, planet, plate tectonics

Washington, D.C. — Scientists have long speculated about why there is a large change in the strength of rocks that lie at the boundary between two layers immediately under Earth’s crust: the lithosphere and underlying asthenosphere. Understanding this boundary is central to our knowledge of plate tectonics and thus the formation and evolution of our planet as we know it today. A new technique for observing this transition, particularly in the portion of Earth’s mantle that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean basin, has led Carnegie and NASA Goddard scientist Nick Schmerr to new insight on the origins of the lithosphere and asthenosphere. His work is published March 23 in Science.

The lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary, or LAB, represents the transition from hot, convecting mantle asthenosphere to overlying cold and rigid lithosphere. The oceanic lithosphere thickens as it cools over time, and eventually sinks back into the mantle at Earth’s so-called subduction zones. (more…)

Some Earthquakes Expected Along Rio Grande Rift in Colorado And New Mexico, New Study Says

By Guest PostJanuary 15, 2012Environmentactive, anne sheehan, anthony lowry, colorado plateau, earth, earthquake hazards, earthquakes, fault bounded basins, fort collins, frederick blume, garden city, geologically alive, geologists, global positioning system, gps, magnitude, mark murray, Mexico, molten rock, nanostrain, new mexico tech, rates of deformation, rio grande rift, rise of magma, spreading motion, steven nerem, surface coloradom rocky mountains, unavco, university of colorado boulder, university of new mexico, western great plains

The Rio Grande Rift, a thinning and stretching of Earth’s surface that extends from Colorado’s central Rocky Mountains to Mexico, is not dead but geologically alive and active, according to a new study involving scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.

“We don’t expect to see a lot of earthquakes, or big ones, but we will have some earthquakes,” said CU-Boulder geological sciences Professor Anne Sheehan, also a fellow at CIRES. The study also involved collaborators from the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Tech, Utah State University and the Boulder-headquartered UNAVCO. The Rio Grande Rift follows the path of the Rio Grande River from central Colorado roughly to El Paso before turning southeast toward the Gulf of Mexico. (more…)

Yellowstone’s Electrical Conductivity Hints Volcano Plume is Bigger Than Thought

By Guest PostApril 11, 2011Environmentcataclysmic caldera, central processing unit, cpu, ct scan, earthquake waves, electrical conductivity, geoelectric image, geophysicists, giant crater, hotspot, michael zhdanov, molten rock, plume, robert smith, salt lake city, seismic waves, volcanic ash, volcanically active area, yellowstone, yellowstone plume, yellowstone supervolcano, yellowstone volcano, yellowstone volcano observatory

WASHINGTON — Geophysicists have made the first large-scale picture of the electrical conductivity of the gigantic underground plume of hot and partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano. The image suggests that the plume beneath the volcanically active area—renowned today for geysers and hot springs—is even bigger than it appears in earlier images made with earthquake waves.

“It’s like comparing ultrasound and MRI in the human body; they are different imaging technologies,” says geophysics Professor Michael Zhdanov of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Zhdanov is principal author of the new study and an expert on measuring magnetic and electrical fields on Earth’s surface to find oil, gas, minerals and geologic structures underground. (more…)

Cassini Spots Potential Ice Volcano on Saturn Moon

By Guest PostDecember 15, 20101 commentScience3 d map, cassini, cassini huygens mission, cassini radar images, cassini spacecraft, cryovolcanoes, earth, enceladus, erupts, flagstaff, ice, ice volcanoes, Iceland, italy, jeffrey kargel, laki, molten rock, moon, mt etna, NASA, randolph kirk, saturn, solar system, sotra facula, subterranean geological activity, titan, topography, volcanic topography

PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has found possible ice volcanoes on Saturn’s moon Titan that are similar in shape to those on Earth that spew molten rock.

Topography and surface composition data have enabled scientists to make the best case yet in the outer solar system for an Earth-like volcano landform that erupts in ice. The results were presented on December 14 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. (more…)