Like a pig at a luau, the Hawaiian Islands get roasted from below. But — like novice cooks — scientists aren’t sure what kind of heat it takes to really get things cooking.
A new analysis questions the prevailing theory that the islands were formed in sequence by volcanic activity as the Pacific plate drifted over a thin, hot plume rising from deep inside the Earth. Instead, a shallower pocket of abnormally hot rocks could be powering the vacation spot’s famous volcanoes, researchers from MIT and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., report in the May 27 Science.
Other scientists don’t think the hot plume is done for. “This result, like many results, isn’t the final word,” says Cecily Wolfe, a seismologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.