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| The massif is the light blue (indicating shallow bathymetry) object located about centrally between Southern Japan and the Emperor Island Chain. You can see Mauna Loa at the end of the Hawaiian Chain (bottom right) for comparison) |
Twenty years. That's a flipping long time to work out whether a volcano's a volcano or more than one volcano. But geologists have come to conclusion, yes, after 20 years since it was first discovered, that Tamu Massif is one giant, British Isle sized, single vent, shield volcano in the Pacific Ocean, 1000 miles East of Japan.
A staggering 119,000 square miles in area, 2.2 miles high and extends down 18 miles into the Earth, this beauty erupted 144 million years ago and dwarfs Earth's current largest active volcano Mauna Loa. It's so gigantic it's almost on the scale of Olympus Mons on Mars (fun fact below about that volcano). That actually surprised me because I recall Prof. Brian Cox discussing at length in Wonders of the Universe that a massive volcano like Olympus Mons could not support itself on planet Earth because our gravity is too great. Presumably there's a decent explanation!
In other news, international collaboration has meant extensive monitoring of a volcano very few people have heard of.
Mount Paektu (no I've not heard of it either by that or any of it's other, many names) straddles the border of China and North Korea. It's last '1000 year event' in 940 AD was on a scale that was only matched by the Tambora eruption of 1815 AD (which was scientifically termed 'super-colossal' in case you weren't fully aware). Actually, the last explosive event at Mount Paektu occurred in 1903. With a recurrence cycle of about 100 years and recent increased seismic activity naturally volcanologists are concerned.
But it's a proud day for science triumphing over politics for the greater good with volcanologists from the UK, US and North Korea working together. (See full article for details).
Fun fact about Olympus Mons:
Mars was, prior to the space age, the only other celestial body besides the Earth and Moon in close enough proximity to us to be mapped.
As a result a bit of creative naming and a lot of mythology surrounds Mars and its features; Olympus Mons being one of them. It was first identified as a bright spot 20 degrees North of the Martian Equator and was dubbed Nix Olympica. This feature's name was artistically translated as 'the Olympian Snows' by Isaac Asimov in an essay of the same name (it's probably more like 'Olympic snow' but the former is, granted, a more aesthetically pleasing phrase). It was photography from Mariner 9 in 1971 that revealed there was no snow on Nix Olympica, but instead it was one, gigantic, volcano. Perhaps a more impressive thing! Soon after this discovery the volcano was renamed Olympus Mons. A fitting name for the biggest volcano discovered in the Solar System.
References:
Tamu Massif map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/EmperorSeamounts.jpg
Telegraph article on Tamu Massif:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10291350/Worlds-largest-volcano-discovered-on-Pacific-floor.html
BBC article on Mount Paektu: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23981001
Wikipedia article on Mount Paektu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Paektu
Definition of the Volcano Explosivity Index scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VEI
Asimov, I., 1976, The Planet That Wasn't: The Olympian Snows, Sphere Books Ltd.
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