Where are Hawaiian Islands
So where are the Hawaiian Islands?Thunder and explosion, bursting with volcanic eruption for ten million years. In a submarine, researchers have now dismounted to investigate an explosion of force on the front line of the jets that accompanies the labor pains of a new Hawaiian Isle. Her destination, half a kilometer down, was the top of the Loihi, which has become one of the most dynamic volcanos in the underworld.
It' s nerve-racking," said Dr Alexander Malahoff, the expedition's lead explorer, about his diving in the murky, turbulent water. The top of the lava is a shipwreck. In July and August, the site was shaken by several thousand earthquakes, the most severe ever in Hawaii. Located only 17 leagues south-east of the great Isle of Hawaii, the catastrophe authorities were afraid that the devastating force could trigger tsunamis on the sea floor that could destroy the great Isle of Oahu and more remote coasts of Oahu, as well as Honolulu and Waikiki Beach.
However, Dr. Malahoff and the other researchers who dived into the rugged niches of the underwater volume detected an uprising of landslips, overturned rocks and bus-sized rocks spread over four or five mils. Turbulence at the top of the peak had crashed and created a 1,000-foot depth craters more than half a nautical metre high.
This was a Mount St. Helens major vulcanic event," Dr. Malahoff said at a press briefing on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington. Pete's Dome, an area on the south edge of the vulcano that was previously regarded as very sturdy, has just disappeared. He made three deep diving trips to the vulcanic waters last months and the diving will be continued until Saturday.
A Pisces dive boat that can take three persons down a little over a nautical distance and is therefore restricted to the exploration of the volcanic apex. It' the whole mount rising almost three leagues off the seabed. Dr. Malahoff is Principal of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory at the University of Hawaii, and the scientific research is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Plunging into the new craters, Dr. Malahoff found chimneys spitting a mix of overheated groundwater, solute mineral and microbe that thrived in the bedrock. It seeped through the inside of the vulcano and fell over a labellum on the west of it.
It is said that the turmoil is part of the volcano's continued expansion. Lavastreams create it, landslides and catastrophic exploding destroy and broaden it and create a bigger basis for the next construction phase. We can expect to expect ten thousand of years before the volcano's passionate peak climbs over the sea.
The battle between build and destruction," said Dr. Malahoff at the press conf. It is known that the Loihi's cliffs were rocked by landslides, but no episodes of this violence have ever been investigated up- close. Researchers say the meeting casts an important new perspective on the dynamism of insularity as well as a whole host of ecological questions, such as the degree to which exploding emissions of igneous fuels such as CO2 can contribute to global hothouse warfare.
It also supports the overall investigation of the Hawaiian Jets, the most vibrant area of the Earth's outburst. Below the large Hawaiian Isle, it is driven by the firework of the two volcanos Kilauea and Mauna Loa. We think it's pretty big, as much as 200 kilometres in diameter," or about 125 mi, Dr. James G. Moore, a geographer with the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.
Loihi is the first demonstration of igneous activities on this crust," added Dr. Moore, who has investigated the Hawaiian volcanos. The great thermal machine in the ground agitates a ocean of warm synthetic stone that partially smelts through the rust, most of the superficial actions taking place in the dark secret of the undersea.
The internal temperature creates nozzles or warm vanes of materials that are fixed in respect to the depth of the ground but continually increase towards the top. One such path can be seen in the Pacific, where the Hawaiian hotspot has not only shaped the Loihi but also an endangered string that runs from Hawaii to the west across the Pacific and then turns north to create the Emperor-Seamount range that extends to the northwestern edge of the North.
All in all, the range spans several thousand kilometres and reflects million of years of igneous activity. This curve, in which the Hawaiian necklace is transformed into the Kaiserkette, marks a shift in the movement of the plates that took place some 40 million years ago. Vulcan islands are gradually eroded by mudslides and descend deep into the ocean, usually with only the newer islands remaining above the surface of the range - or fighting to breach the wave.
Loihi, which in Hawaiian means "long" and pronounces Low-EE-hee, is an oblong 13-mile long beast. Pacific seafloor on which it lies is 3. 4 mile down at its shallowest point. Loihi has been growing during the volcanic activity and the eruption over 10 thousand years, until the vulcano is now more than 2. 8 mile high.
His movements are closely supervised by several government authorities, among them the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an branch of the Department of Commerce, and the United States Geological Survey, which operates a seismometer system on the large isle. The Loihi region has been hit by a seaquake before, most recently in 1991, but not like this summer's war.
In the aftermath of the quake, Harry Kim, the Civil Defense Directors of Hawaii County, who includes the large isle, warned the people to go to higher altitudes immediately if they felt an quake, as there would be no such thing as the need for a siren or an ambush before a tsunami hit. The islanders are used to dealing with the dangers of flood waters caused by remote seismic events far beyond the oceans, but not those caused by land.
In order to better comprehend what was going on and in part to devise ways of predicting and warning of potential threats, Dr. Malahoff and his research teams dived into the mud. Something will someday happen," he said about land-based catastrophes caused by the low mountain, but perhaps not during our lifetime.
'' Trying to uncover the secret of the profound upheavals, the crew observed the force early on with mics hung on buoy and discovered crackles that were like the stream of low cava. However, submergible soundings of the north peak of the vulcano in the area of the crackles showed no new, but only old currents.
On the basis of a comparative study with older observation, the crew found that a large part of the volcanic crest had crumbled in the rapture of devastation. No one, " said Dr. Malahoff, "has ever witnessed the emergence of these crater mines. The breakdown of the peak probably lasted two or three long nights, and its slow pace was a gift from heaven.
One likely way, he said, is that the gradual breakdown was caused when warm volcanic air seeped out of the volcano's inner walls at a deep point somewhere below the area where the fish could dive. Fifty million tippers with molten metal have gone somewhere," he pondered, and added that the subject was still a big one.
At the most perilous point of the dive show, Dr Malahoff and two fellow divers dared to explore the bottom of the new craters, past broken rock faces that threatened topple. Later on, at the bottom of the craters 1,000 ft below the top, the fearful crew in the dive boat could hear the rumbling of a far-off landslip.
It' s creepy," said Dr Malahoff at the press briefing when he showed a video of the bottom of the caldera recorded by the submarine's camera. It could be fifty thousand years before the young Volcano reaches the top, said Dr Malahoff. In the meantime, Loihi had much to learn about how the world functions, builds and breaks, creates and destroys in its most mysterious world.
He foretold that the profound area would be ripped apart by "all sorts of pain " that researchers want to investigate. 12 October 1996, Saturday An Science Times Tuesday report about Loihi, an underwater volcano near Hawaii, misspelled the area. It' about 8 by 15 mile. Five, not 13 by 25 mile.
Additionally the volcanic area was shown incorrectly in a caption. It' been about 6 by 13 mile.