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Researcher Ridge
Researcher Ridge is an underwater ridge in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. It appears to be a chain of seamounts named ''Gollum Seamount'', ''Vayda Seamount'', ''Bilbo Seamount'', ''Gandalf Seamount'', ''The Shire Seamount'', ''Pippin Seamount'', ''Merry Seamount'', ''Molodezhnaya Seamount'', ''Frodo Seamount'', ''Sam Seamount'' and ''Mount Doom Seamount'' that were likely formed by a hotspot. Names In 1974, the United States Board on Geographic Names formally approved the name Researcher Ridge in honor of , a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration oceanographic research ship which discovered the ridge in 1971. Vayda Seamount is named after a Russian research vessel, ''Vayda'', and the name of Molodezhnaya ( Russian for "Youth") Seamount refers to young scientists aboard ''Vayda''. The ridge′s other seamounts are named after characters and locations in the fantasy novel ''The Lord of the Rings''. Geography and geomorphology Researcher Ridge lies in the Atlantic Oce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Northern Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe and Asia from the " New World" of the Americas in the European perception of the World. The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, and North and South America to the west. As one component of the interconnected World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south (other definitions describe the Atlantic as extending southward to Antarctica). The Atlantic Ocean is divided in two parts, by the Equatorial Counter Current, with the North(ern) Atlantic Ocean and the South(ern) Atlantic Ocean split at about 8°N. Scientific exploration ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mantle Plume
A mantle plume is a proposed mechanism of convection within the Earth's mantle, hypothesized to explain anomalous volcanism. Because the plume head partially melts on reaching shallow depths, a plume is often invoked as the cause of volcanic hotspots, such as Hawaii or Iceland, and large igneous provinces such as the Deccan and Siberian Traps. Some such volcanic regions lie far from tectonic plate boundaries, while others represent unusually large-volume volcanism near plate boundaries. Concepts Mantle plumes were first proposed by J. Tuzo Wilson in 1963 and further developed by W. Jason Morgan in 1971 and 1972. A mantle plume is posited to exist where super-heated material forms ( nucleates) at the core-mantle boundary and rises through the Earth's mantle. Rather than a continuous stream, plumes should be viewed as a series of hot bubbles of material. Reaching the brittle upper Earth's crust they form diapirs. These diapirs are "hotspots" in the crust. In particular, the conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
