Earth Story.S01E04.Journey To The Centre Of The Earth BBC.1998.AAC.720p.mp4
At about the 30 minute mark of this episode of the “Earth Story” series, Aubrey Manning covers the subject of mantle plumes. He moves from the “hot spot” that created the Hawaiian Islands to the Deccan Traps in northern India, where a mantle plume covered with lava an area the size of the United States to a depth of over 1,500 feet. Vincent Courtillot, the French geophysicist he speaks to, says that this volcanic activity could have taken place over less than a million years, based on the only two magnetic reversals he detected in the lava deposits. So, the earth changing event that created the Deccan Traps over 60 million years ago could have led to the extinction of dinosaurs.
Under the Yellowstone / Snake River Plain system in Wyoming, the subduction plate acts as a slab to block any mantle plume from coming to the surface. Should that slab be cracked by tectonic activity, that could open a pathway for basaltic lava to the surface. The area around the Yellowstone caldera has not been active but, 900 miles to the south, northern Oklahoma has suddenly become an earthquake zone thanks to fracking operations that have caused the fracturing of underground fault lines. All it takes is one newly created fault line to zipper north to Yellowstone Park and create a break in the massive slab formation under the park. Then all hell could literally break loose, which is what a mantle plume head is when its lava reaches the Earth’s surface.
There is no bug on my 720p upload and I have included subtitles.
Post time: Jun-24-2017