The largest volcano on Earth, known as the Tamu Massif, is sitting under the Pacific Ocean about 1,000 miles east of Japan, according to a new study by geoscientists at the University of Houston.
If planetary scale is still too small to catch your attention, it bears mentioning that the Tamu Massif also ranks among the largest volcanic structures identified to date in the Solar System.
That’s right, “Solar System.”
William Sager, a professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston, identified the volcano, which covers an area about the size of the state of New Mexico.
In the most recent issue of Nature Geoscience, Sager shows that the Tamu Massif structure, which formed around 145 million years ago, forms a single volcano rather than a series of smaller volcanoes.
The terrifically large Tamu Massif remained hidden until now because it sits under more than a mile of salt water in the middle of nowhere.
“We knew it was a big volcanic something,” William Sager, the Houston team’s lead researcher, told The Verge. “The problem is we really don’t know what’s out there. We can’t see the structure very clearly.”
Based on seismic data gathered from drilling samples and sound wave readings taken above the volcano on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, Sager determined that the volcano’s lava originated from a one central spot.
“What we saw surprised us,” Sager said. “Before this we weren’t sure that we had single volcanoes that could grow to this size. Now we do.”