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HOLON: It turns out hot spots in Earth’s mantle are not to blame for some of Hawaii’s known underwater volcanoes, but rather they formed from cracks or fractures in the oceanic crust, according to a new study.
The discovery not only sheds light on the formation of this oceanic range, but also helps explain the famous bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, where the bottom half kinks at a 60-degree angle compared to the top half.
“There has been speculation among geoscientists for decades that some underwater volcanoes form because of fracturing,” researcher Professor Dietmar Muller, from the University of Sydney, said in a statement. “But this is the first comprehensive analysis of the rocks that form in this setting that confirms their origins.”
