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The Afar Rift in Ethiopia is marked by enormous gashes that signal the breakup of the African continent and the beginnings of a new ocean basin, scientists think. The fractures appear eerily similar to seafloor spreading centers, the volcanic ridges that mark the boundaries between two pieces of oceanic crust. Along the ridges, lava bubbles up and new crust is created, slowly widening the ocean basin. But a look deep beneath the Afar Rift reveals the birth announcements may be premature. "It's not as close to fully formed seafloor spreading as we thought," said Kathy Whaler, a geophysicist at the...

Express-Lane Magma Indicates Young Earth by Tim Clarey, Ph.D. * Magma can really make tracks according to a recent study published in Nature that has significantly upped the perceived speed limit of magma movement in the earth.1 Philipp Ruprecht and Terry Plank examined rocks generated from the most recent, 1963–1965 eruption of the Irazú volcano in Costa Rica and found indications that the magma traveled at 150–300 feet per day and possibly as fast as several thousand feet per day. These findings present problems for old-earth theories that are based on sluggish magma movement. Key factors in the study were...

TOKYO: Pressure in the magma chamber of Japan's Mount Fuji is now higher than it was the last time the volcano erupted more than 300 years ago, scientists say. Tectonic shifts triggered by last year's huge 9.0 magnitude undersea quake have left the chamber under 16 times the minimum pressure at which an eruption can occur, researchers said. Researchers at the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention studied the tectonic movements caused by the tsunami-triggering quake on March 11, 2011 and a magnitude 6.4 quake that rocked central Japan four days later, Kyodo News reported. Mount Fuji...

Hot blobs of magma - the searing liquid rock beneath the Earth's crust - can spread slow-moving ripples that soar hundreds of meters high across the Earth's surface, a new study suggests. This phenomenon, which works on geologic time scales, may explain relatively rapid pre-historical changes in sea level that occurred without the typical waxing and waning of the polar ice sheets, which hold and release water on scales of thousands and millions of years. This unexplained sea level rise is one of geology's oldest mysteries. During the Paleogene era (65 million to 23 million years ago), the land under...

University of Utah scientists say seismic images of the plumbing feeding the Yellowstone supervolcano show a magma plume much larger than previously thought. Scientists say they've imaged a plume of hot and molten rock rising at an angle from the northwest at a depth of at least 410 miles, contradicting claims there is no deep plume, only shallow hot rock moving like slowly boiling soup. A related University of Utah study used gravity measurements to indicate the banana-shaped magma chamber of hot and molten rock a few miles beneath Yellowstone is 20 percent larger than previously believed, so a future...

Implications of Polonium Radiohalos in Nested Plutons of the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite, Yosemite, California by Dr. Andrew Snelling and Dallel Gates April 8, 2009 Abstract The formation of granite plutons has conventionally been thought to be a slow process requiring millions of years from generation to cooling. Even though new mechanisms for rapid emplacement of plutons have now been proposed, radioisotope dating still dominates and dictates long timescales for pluton formation. However, a new challenge to those long timescales has arisen from radiohalos. Polonium radiohalos found in biotite flakes of granites in Yosemite National Park place severe time constraints on...

The ground is so hot in one part of Southern California it can melt the shoes right off your feet. An unexplained "thermal anomaly" caused a patch of land in Ventura County, just north of Los Angeles, to reach a temperature of over 800 degrees on Friday, baffling experts who have been monitoring the area for weeks. The anomaly was discovered after the land got so hot that it started a brush fire and burned three acres last month. Firefighters were brought to the scene after reports of a blaze, but by the time they arrived only smoldering dirt and...

Sendhwa (Madhya Pradesh), Apr 16 : Small quantities of molten rock erupted near a habitation at Sendhwa near Indore, leaving neighbourhoods awestruck. Locals said the eruption began with a small explosion on Tuesday causing a two-feel wide gap in the soil. The eruptions continued with less intensity on Wednesday with the lava cooling around causing a small hump like structure. People from places in the vicinity rushed to the spot to watch the natural phenomenon. "When I got to know about this volcano, we came here to see this. We saw that this vermilion coloured eruption coming out of the...

SAN FRANCISCO - Global warming may not be the only thing melting Greenland. Scientists have found at least one natural magma hotspot under the Arctic island that could be pitching in. In recent years, Greenland’s ice has been melting more and flowing faster into the sea — a record amount of ice melted from the frozen mass this summer, according to recently released data — and Earth’s rising temperatures are suspected to be the main culprit. But clues to a new natural contribution to the melt arose when scientists discovered a thin spot in the Earth’s crust under the northeast...

Magma surge causes record rise at Yellowstone 19:00 08 November 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic The remains of the Yellowstone supervolcano in the US is huffing and puffing and rising by up to 7 centimetres a year, say researchers. They speculate this rise is caused by a mass of molten rock the size of Los Angeles being forced from the Earth’s mantle into the magma chamber beneath the ancient volcano. But the researchers, led by Wu-Lung Chang of the University of Utah in the US, caution that the movement does not mean an explosion is imminent. Calderas – the...

Thick Layer of Magma Found Under American Southwest Ker Than LiveScience Staff Writer LiveScience.com Fri Jun 22, 1:10 PM ET Scientists have spotted a thick layer of melted rock beneath the Earth’s crust that could be part of a fluid band of hot magma circling the globe. The magma ring has until now remained a theory. The molten-rock layer is 10 miles thick and can’t be seen, felt or smelt from the surface. Researchers Daniel Toffelmier and James Tyburczy of Arizona State University found the layer using a relatively new technique that measures changes in weak electrical currents flowing through...

BILLINGS, Mont. - A newly discovered surface bulge in Yellowstone National Park may be responsible for some unexpected geothermal activity in recent years, according to a study by U.S. Geological Survey scientists. The bulge, about 25 miles across, rose 5 inches from 1997 to 2003 and may have triggered some thermal unrest at Norris Geyser Basin, including a sudden rise in temperatures, new steam vents and the awakening of Steamboat geyser.The findings are part of a paper set to be published Thursday in the journal Nature.Charles Wicks, one of the USGS scientists who worked on the study, said much of...

Much of Yellowstone National Park is a giant collapsed volcano, or caldera. In an enormous eruption roughly 640,000 years ago, this volcano spit out around 240 cubic miles of rock, dirt, magma and other material. Around 70,000 years ago, its last eruption filled in that gaping hole with flows of lava. Since then the area has enjoyed an uneasy peace, the land alternately rising and falling with the passing decades. New satellite data indicate that this uplift and subsidence is caused by the movement of magma beneath the surface and may explain why the northern edge of the park continues...

Adventure stories involving the exploration of the interior of Planet Earth have a long and distinguished history in science fiction. Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) was perhaps the first such tale. Despite the title, the story involves explorers following the instructions of a 17th century runic message on a trip that descends into the crater of an Icelandic volcano and into a long tunnel connecting to a vast cave containing a conveniently phosphorescent ceiling, an ocean, islands, dinosaurs, and mastodons, all in the interior of the Earth some miles beneath the surface. Following Verne’s...

Link post: access the thread in the General/Chat section with the link below, and post any discussion and commentary there. This posting is provided as a service to any FR readers who might be interested. Geology Picture of the Week, October 3-9, 2004: Etna Eruption Caption Fun

Article link above shows many nice pictures, but site is slow, so I only chose the two below. My suggested caption is underneath it. Feel free to suggest your own for the sake of levity. I've reduced the size for display; click for the full-size pic. "If you take one step back and slide to the right just a little, dear, the picture will be perfect." "I'm glad Georgia O'Keefe didn't see this."

Scientists CloselyMonitoring YellowstoneProLiberty.com12-23-3   Recent eruptions, 200 degree ground temperatures, bulging magma and 84 degree water temperatures prompt heightened srutiny of park's geothermal activity...  BILLINGS, Mont. -- Yellowstone National Park happens to be on top of one of the largest "super volcanoes" in the world. Geologists claim the Yellowstone Park area has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago making the next one long overdue. This next eruption could be 2,500 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. Volcanologists have been tracking the movement of magma under...

ELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — The rolling pine forests, snowcapped mountains and crisp fall evenings here tend to make people forget the fact that the park sits atop a huge simmering underground volcano. But new geologic events have served up reminders.In a few days in July, acidic ground water dissolved parts of the unpaved trails in the Norris Geyser Basin, and the ground temperature of the trails shot up to 200 degrees from the usual maximum of 80. Park officials closed nearly half of the basin's trails, and they remain shut. On Aug. 21, a magnitude 4.4 earthquake shook the...

World's first bid to drill into a volcano launched in Japan TOKYO (AFP) Feb 13, 2003 A team of Japanese and foreign researchers Thursday launched the world's first attempt to drill into a volcano to collect magma samples. "We are trying to take a direct look at the (magma) conduit under a volcano for the first time in the world," said an official with the Japanese science ministry. "Until now, we could only make indirect observations of volcanoes. By directly studying the inside of a volcano, we will be able to study why some volcanoes make strong, bursting eruptions...