The Solar System's Largest Volcano Hidden Under the Pacific Ocean

A research team from the US and China discovered that the Tamu Massif volcano in the Pacific Ocean has an area as large as Japan and South Korea combined.

Map of Tamu Massif volcano created using underwater bathymetry. Photo: Wikipedia.

In a study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, an international team of Chinese and American researchers concluded that the world's largest volcano is even larger than previously thought. They called the volcano's birth one of the most amazing events in Earth's history and a miracle of creation due to its rarity.

According to the South China Morning Post, Tamu Massif, a dormant shield volcano that formed 145 million years ago during the late Jurassic period, lies two kilometres below sea level, between Japan and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. Although the classification of Tamu Massif as a single volcano is controversial, the mountain was first discovered in September 2013 by a team led by William Sager, a marine geophysicist in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston in the US.

After analyzing more seismic data and mapping the volcano’s underlying structure, Sager’s team realized they may have underestimated the volcano’s true size. They calculated the entire Shatsky Rise, a plateau that rose under the ocean after Tamu Massif erupted, to be 533,000 square kilometers.

Previously, scientists thought the volcano was about the size of Japan in terms of land mass. The new estimate puts it as large as Japan and South Korea combined. They also think Tamu Massif is much smaller than Olympus Mons on Mars, which is considered the largest volcano in the Solar System. Tamu Massif is 4 kilometers tall, while Olympus Mons is 22 kilometers tall.

In new research from the Institute of Oceanography in Guangzhou, China, the surface area of ​​Tamu Massif is 80% larger than Olympus Mons.

"Tamu Massif creates a much larger dome. It is more massive than any other volcano we know in the solar system in terms of surface area," said Dr. Zhang Jinchang, the lead scientist of the new study.

Volcanoes of this size are extremely rare. Scientists previously thought that volcanoes of this type did not exist. The largest active volcano today is Mauna Loa in Hawaii, USA, with a base of about 5,000 km2, only 1/100th the size of Tamu Massif.

Tamu Massif became inactive at the beginning of the Cretaceous period, a geological period that ended 100 million years ago, meaning it “died” just a few million years after it was formed. But Zhang insists the mountain will not be revived.

Zhang's research shows that the Mohorovicic discontinuity (Moho for short), the boundary between the Earth's crust and mantle, slopes down more than 30 kilometers above the foot of the Tamu Massif, forming an impenetrable barrier between magma deposits and the ocean floor.

According to VNE