East Pacific Rise Study Supports Multi-Chamber Theory

Hydrothermal Vents at the East Pacific Rise

A newly released paper on the East Pacific Rise assures to have provided base ground evidence for the Theory of Multi-Chambers. The theory is the most supported theory of those who aim to provide some logic scientific reason to ocean crust generation and formation.

Two-thirds of earth’s surface is covered in oceanic crust -unique stratus where new ocean crust is formed through magma active cycles and tectonic plate drifting.

Columbia Blogs reported that the paper reveals that the volcanic plumbing at Mid-Ocean Ridges goes far deeper than thought. Nature Geo Science reported on October 19^th on the paper authored researchers of Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Lamont-Doherty, Dalhousie University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

"Here we use high-fidelity seismic data to image the crust beneath the East Pacific Rise. We identify a series of reflections below the axial magma lens that we interpret as magma lenses in the upper part of the lower crust," the authors explained.

If the interior of land volcano continue to hide mysteries one can only imagine the secrets which underground massive fissures and rises keep to themselves. The importance of crust formation is endless. Many marine biologists assure that the life as we know it on Earth may have originated in these extreme environments or under the conditions set by these extreme active environments rich in living and non-living elements.

Rises and fissures are areas bursting with energy, the natural resource sector eyes them from different angles. Temperatures, chemical elements, discharging of diverse valuable elements and rare elements…where crust is formed new land is formed under water. Understanding deep plumbing of the Pacific Ocean Rise is also fundamental to understand issues which lead to natural disasters, earthquakes tsunami and the Ring of Fire.

The paper highlights the use of acoustic high power instruments in understanding that which is hidden beneath the surface deep under thousands of meters of ocean water. High power acoustic and new sonar technology which opens the view for underground-underwater mapping has already been developed by natural resources exploitation sector such as the hydrocarbon, gas and metal international Groups which use them on daily basis. This equipment has also been recently viewed by prestigious international science expeditions for their potential to reveal the secrets of the interior of volcanoes out in isolated ocean islands and could very well provide accurate high detailed mapping of the Pacific Rise and other international basin rises. Technology could answer questions such as are rises changing? "stable"? Can the ancient past of the ocean and the formation of the ocean and oceanic continental drift theory be completed with new data with this study?

"New images from a chain of volcanoes beneath the Pacific Ocean show that magma may be erupting from a multi-layered magma chamber extending two miles or more beneath the seafloor, far deeper than originally thought.

The pictures, in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience, may help resolve a debate about how new crust forms at mid-ocean ridges where earth’s tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart," the media reported.

The new images seem to support the multi-tier view, predicted by geologists who have studied eroded oceanic crust on land.

“We now see that during an eruption we may have magma moving from one level to another,” said study coauthor Suzanne Carbotte, a geophysicist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Data was extracted from a 2008 research expedition to the East Pacific Rise, a chain of submarine volcanoes that run from California’s Salton Sea to the northern shores of Antarctica. Aboard the RV Langseth. Scientists used pulses of sound to map the sub-seafloor beneath a region that saw massive eruptions from 2005 to 2006. In the sub-surface images, Carbotte and former Lamont graduate student Milena Marjanovic and others on the cruise recognized multi-layered magma pools, or “melt lenses,” stacked one on top of the other. In addition, these multiple tiers looked as if they had been connected during the eruption

The Theory of Multi-Chambers had been predicted in 1998 by Lamont-Doherty geophysicist Peter Kelemen and colleagues based on field observations in the Middle Eastern nation of Oman, where mantle peridotites formerly at the bottom of the ocean have been heaved onto land, providing easy access.

“We hoped that someday techniques would improve and the deeper lenses would emerge from their obscurity,” he added. “With the dedication and hard work of many research teams, this finally seems to be happening,” Researchers revealed.

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