Mantle Structures Revealed by Floating MERMAIDs (IMAGE)
Caption
Floating seismometers dubbed MERMAIDs -- Mobile Earthquake Recording in Marine Areas by Independent Divers -- reveal that Galapagos volcanoes are fed by a mantle plume reaching 1,900 km deep. By letting their nine MERMAIDs float freely for two years, an international team of researchers created an artificial network of oceanic seismometers that could fill in one of the blank areas on the global geologic map, where otherwise no seismic information is available.
Hot mantle rock slows down seismic waves. This plot shows (in percent) how much slower the wave travels in a cross-section cutting along the longitude 91 degrees west. The plot extends all the way to the core of the Earth (2,890 km, or about 1,800 miles), and ranges from 20 degrees south latitude to 20 degrees north. The reddish colors show where the waves slow down. Galápagos is near the equator, from which a broad plume-like structure near 1 degree north latitude descends to a depth of 1,900 km (about 1,200 miles).
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Courtesy of the researchers
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