[Rockhounds] Hawaii's Moving Hot Spot

[Pmodreski at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/3/2008 4:47:22 AM Mountain Standard Time,  
DicksWi at northville.k12.mi.us writes:

Kitty  (or anyone else for that matter......)
I have skimmed thru  the link you provided for information on Lo'ihi
but can't find reference to  the moving hot spot.
As an educator I'd like to have/read the article or  any scientific
data/findings reporting on the moving hot  spot.



Hi, here's a reply from "anyone else", I'm interested in this too,
 
I don't think the matter of the moving hot spot has anything to do with  
Loihi, that was just an aside from Kitty about interesting stuff about Hawaiian  
volcanism...
 
I did a little Googling and came up with a good National Geographic article  
about the "moving hot spot" research.  Here's the link,
 
_http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0814_030814_hotspot.html_ 
(http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/08/0814_030814_hotspot.html) 
which says in part,
 
"A recent discovery that the so-called "fixed" hot spot, which created the  
Hawaiian Islands, actually drifted southward between 81 and 47 million years 
ago  is causing geologists to revise their descriptions of the interior workings 
of  the Earth. 
 
"...they create strings of seamounts and volcanic islands that are believed  
to tell the story of how the overlying plates moved over time.  
"A well-known example of this phenomenon is the Hawaii-Emperor Seamount chain 
 that stretches some 3,000 miles (5,800 kilometers) along the floor of the  
Pacific Ocean from the Big Island of Hawaii to Alaska's Aleutian Trench.  
"At the end of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the chain turns sharply  
northward and becomes the Emperor Seamounts, which stretch to their intersection 
 with the Aleutian Trench at the Kamchatka Peninsula in Siberia.  
According to most researchers, this sharp bend represents a rapid change in  
direction of the Pacific Plate as it passed over the fixed hot spot 47 million 
 years ago.  
"Tarduno and colleagues found that the hot spot actually crept southward at a 
 rate of about 1.6 inches (40 millimeters) per year between 81 and 47 million 
 years ago. 
 
"The new findings were published late last month on Science Express,  the 
online research journal of the American Association for the Advancement of  
Science, and will be published in an upcoming issue of the print journal  Science. 
" 
So, the "moving hot spot" is based on studies of old seamounts far west of  
Hawaii itself, and the motion took place between 81 and 47 millions years ago;  
they are concluding that the "spot" (the inferred mantle magma plume) was 
moving  then, and is more stationary now, as the Pacific plate moves over it. 
Pete



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