Posted on 07/13/2011 12:12:54 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
A string of a dozen volcanoes, at least several of them active, has been found beneath the frigid seas near Antarctica, the first such discovery in that region.
Some of the peaks tower nearly 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) above the ocean floor — nearly tall enough to break the water's surface.
"That's a big volcano. That's a very big volcano. If that was on land it would be quite remarkable," said Philip Leat, a vulcanologist with the British Antarctic Survey who led a seafloor mapping expedition to the region in 2007 and 2010.
The group of 12 underwater mountains lies south of the South Sandwich Islands — desolate, ice-covered volcanoes that rise above the southern Atlantic Ocean about halfway between South America and South Africa and erupted as recently as 2008. It's the first time such a large number of undersea volcanoes has been found together in the Antarctic region.
Leat said the survey team was somewhat surprised by the find.
"We knew there were other volcanoes in the area, but we didn't go trying to find volcanoes," Leat told OurAmazingPlanet. "We just went because there was a big blank area on the map and we had no idea what was there; we just wanted to fill in the seafloor."
Seafloor surprise
The team did so, thanks to ship-borne seafloor mapping technology, and not without a few hair-raising adventures.
Leat said the images of the seafloor appear before your eyes on screens as the ship moves through the water. "So it's very exciting," he said. "You go along and suddenly you see the bottom start to rise up underneath you, and you don't know how shallow it's going to get."
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
here’s another volcanic eruption..ongoing for a month in Africa’s Rift Valley...that doesn’t get press for various reasons. Only time MSM mentioned it, and mis-identified it, was when it inconvenienced Hitlery & Huma.
A LOT of SO^2 from it; NASA said the MOST it had ever detected from space.
The link gives an (almost) daily update of the activity, casualties, inaction, etc. from Day 1 to today.
There was FR thread when it happened, but not a mention since that I know of.
OH Man. Man has caused so much damage to this planet it’s a wonder there is anything left of it, worthwhile. I don’t think Man can do one darn thing to change the way this planet has been planned. When things get a little thick, we have forest fires, begun with lightening. When things get a little out of whack, we have floods. We have the sun and the moon, we have hot weather and cold weather. We have planet plates come together which trigger earthquakes and sometimes tidal waves. Man who thinks he can make the difference the way this world was made, must be Mad. There is only ONE and He made this just the way He wanted it. There ain’t nuthin Man can do about it, so enjoy what He has given us and quit blaming the human race for changing it, He planned the changes in the planets time, not Man’s.
Whew!
Good thing we elected Obama and the ocean levels have begun to fall as a result. Or we might never have found these mountains. Now that he helped us find them... we just pass a bill to regulate their output... right?
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And here I thought that everything was known.
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