Chinese scientists find the cause of Caroline Seamount close to the "mantle plume hypothesis"
Xinhua News Agency, Qingdao, March 12th (Reporter Zhang Xudong) The research team of the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences found that the formation of some basalts in the Caroline Seamount Uplift in the Western Pacific was earlier than that of the basalt chain on the east side of the Seamount Chain. Moreover, the isotopes of the two basalts are the same, indicating that the origin of this seamount is close to the "mantle plume hypothesis" which has never been proven.
Zhang Guoliang, a researcher at the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the Caroline Sea Mountain is close to the Yapu Trench and the world's deepest ditch, the Mariana Trench. It is an active area for submarine geological movements. The plane is only 38 meters. In 2015, the scientific research team he led relied on the "Science" scientific research ship to collect rocks from different parts of the Caroline Seamount uplift, and the samples obtained were mainly basalt.
"Basalt shows that the volcanic eruption was formed here, and there is a seamount chain on the east side of the seamount uplift, which led us to scientifically explore whether the origin of the Caroline seamount conforms to the 'mantle plume hypothesis.'" Zhang Guoliang said.
Nearly half a century ago, the scientific community proposed the "mantle plume hypothesis" to explain the ocean floor and the seamount chain at the bottom of the ocean. The "mantle plume hypothesis" believes that at the junction of the core and the mantle about 2800 kilometers from the surface, a phenomenon like a bomb explosion will occur, rising in the shape of a mushroom cloud, forming a large amount of magma. The ocean floor is the top of the "mushroom cloud", and The seamount chain is the tail of the "mushroom cloud". Due to plate drift, the order of the two is reflected on the ground as spatial connectivity.
However, most of the oceanic plateaus and sea-mountain chains on the earth exist alone, and there is no evidence to show that they are connected, so scientists have not been able to find evidence for the "mantle plume hypothesis."
The Guoliang Zhang team conducted chronology, petrology, mineralogy, and geochemistry research on the collected basalt samples. "We found that the Caroline seamount uplift did form earlier than the seamount chain, and the isotopes representing the rock 'genes' are very similar, which shows that the ocean floor plateau and the seamount chain of the Caroline seamount are likely to come from the same mantle plume and become The closest example to the 'mantle plume hypothesis' is currently, "he said.
The results of this research have recently been published online in the international geological journal "Chemical Geology".