A mysterious ‘hot blob’ is moving towards New York City, leaving scientists puzzled. UK scientists have found a massive ‘blob’ of rock under the Appalachian mountains, and it is headed towards the Big Apple, a study published in the journal Geology claimed.
“This thermal upwelling has long been a puzzling feature of North American geology,” Tom Gernon, the study’s lead author and Professor of Earth Science at the University of Southampton, said.
What is this mysterious ‘hot blob’?
The ‘hot blob’ is officially called Northern Appalachian Anomaly (NAA), and lies 125 feet deep underground and extends 220 miles across New England.
This was originally thought to have formed 180 million years ago, when North America had broken away from Africa. Now, new research suggests that it appeared only 80 million years back, when the precursor landmasses to Canada and Greenland were splitting apart.
“It lies beneath part of the continent that’s been tectonically quiet for 180 million years, so the idea that it was just a leftover from when the landmass broke apart never quite stacked up,” Gernon added.
The team, in a study published in the Nature journal, detailed how molten mantle molasses get created when the hot rock, sitting just outside the earth’s core, rises to fill cracks in the crust caused by land rifts.
Once it cools, the material sinks or ‘drips’, which causes a ripple effect along lower surfaces of continents. This has been called ‘mantle waves’.
What scientists know about the ‘hot blob’
Scientists were able to replicate the formation of a hot blob, 1120 miles northeast of the Appalachians, using a combination of direct geological observations, model plate tectonics and geodynamics, and computer simulations.
The blob seems to be moving at a speed of 12 miles every million years. At this rate, it would take the blob 10 to 15 million years to reach New York City.
The simulation further showed that the blob might have helped raise the Appalachians. This explains how the mountain range has remained so high, despite erosion over 20 million years.
“Heat at the base of a continent can weaken and remove part of its dense root, making the continent lighter and more buoyant, like a hot air balloon rising after dropping its ballast,” Gernon said, adding, “This would have caused the ancient mountains to be further uplifted over the past million years.”
As per the study, this blob might also be the reason why rare volcanic eruptions bring diamonds to the surface.
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