Tag: Magma

science

This lava planet has a magma ocean and ‘rocky’ weather

[email protected]_84

That’s the portrait painted in a new study by scientists from McGill University, York University and the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata published on Tuesday in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The researchers described conditions on this planet, called K2-141b, which is located about 210 light-years from Earth. It orbits extremely closely around its star, which is just slightly smaller than our sun.

This “lava” planet completes a revolution in about six or seven hours, just about grazing the star’s surface as it hurtles through space.

By contrast, Mercury, the closest planet to the sun in our solar system, takes 87 days to orbit the sun.

“Almost half of the planet is molten magma,” said lead study author Tue Giang Nguyen, a doctoral student at York University in Toronto. “The atmosphere created by vaporized rocks spreads around the planet.”

That vaporized silicon dioxide,

… Read More
science daily

Magma ‘conveyor belt’ fuelled world’s longest erupting supervolcanoes — ScienceDaily

[email protected]_84

International research led by geologists from Curtin University has found that a volcanic province in the Indian Ocean was the world’s most continuously active — erupting for 30 million years — fuelled by a constantly moving ‘conveyor belt’ of magma.

It’s believed this magma ‘conveyor belt,’ created by shifts in the seabed, continuously made space available for the molten rock to flow for millions of years, beginning around 120 million years ago.

Research lead Qiang Jiang, a PhD candidate from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the studied volcanoes were in the Kerguelen Plateau, located in the Indian Ocean, about 3,000 kilometres south west of Fremantle, Western Australia.

“Extremely large accumulations of volcanic rocks — known as large volcanic provinces — are very interesting to scientists due to their links with mass extinctions, rapid climatic disturbances, and ore deposit formation,” Mr Jiang said.

“The Kerguelen Plateau is gigantic,

… Read More
science

Magma ‘conveyor belt’ fuelled world’s longest erupting supervolcanoes

[email protected]_84

volcano
A small eruption of Mount Rinjani, with volcanic lightning. Location: Lombok, Indonesia. Credit: Oliver Spalt, Wikipedia.

International research led by geologists from Curtin University has found that a volcanic province in the Indian Ocean was the world’s most continuously active—erupting for 30 million years—fuelled by a constantly moving conveyor belt of magma.


It’s believed this magma conveyor belt, created by shifts in the seabed, continuously made space available for the molten rock to flow for millions of years, beginning around 120 million years ago.

Research lead Qiang Jiang, a Ph.D. candidate from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the studied volcanoes were in the Kerguelen Plateau, located in the Indian Ocean, about 3,000 kilometers south west of Fremantle, Western Australia.

“Extremely large accumulations of volcanic rocks—known as large volcanic provinces—are very interesting to scientists due to their links with mass extinctions, rapid climatic disturbances, and ore deposit formation,”

… Read More