Hawaiian Island Plumes

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How do hot spots support plumes? Mantle plumes produce hot spots with heat. Gillian R. Foulger (2010), a professor of Geophysics at Durham University, said that the term ‘hot spot’ carries with it the presumptions that the volcanism in question is fed by an unusually hot, highly localized source. Some plumes rise beneath the centers of oceanic plates said Charles, Diane, and Lisa (2010). The mantle plumes start from the mantle which is above the core making the plume rise forming a tail and a head rising to where the lithosphere is located, the head of the plume when it touches the lithosphere forms a volcanic activity that is what we call a hot spot. In this essay, I will talk about how and where plumes and hot spots are form, important …show more content…

Different studies have showed that the mantle plumes and the hot spots have different shapes and size. An evidence that we have that backs up the hot spots and plumes is the Hawaiian Island. The Hawaiian Island it said that its formed right in the middle of an Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, during the time that the Hawaiian Island had formed, there was a lot of studies to do because scientist had no idea of how it could be possible for an island to form in the middle of a plate away from its boundaries. A scientist, Wilson, “suggested in the 1960’s that the convection in the underling mantle produced what we now know as a hot spot, and that the islands arose from the magma poking through the sea flow as the plate moved over the hot spot.” This Hawaiian Island Chain is one of the proofs that we have that show the plate movements over the hot spots where also earthquakes help a lot in the hot spot formation. It is said the Hawaiian hot spot appears to be deep and wide and it’s said that as wide as where it could feed three volcanoes at the same time. Robert and Barbara Decker wrote, “The Hawaiian hot spot, whether of deep or shallow origin, seems to be ide enough to feed three volcanoes at the same time.” But of course, this doesn’t end here, after Wilson’s theory, many scientist questioned