Energy & Environment

To speed up magma, add water

| The Source
Kilo Moana
The team aboard the research vessel Kilo Moana retrieves an ocean-bottom seismograph that has floated to the surface after receiving a command to release the heavy metal plate that holds it to the bottom. The data from these seismographs was used to construct images of the mantle featured in the online Feb. 2 issue of Nature.

Water dragged into Earth’s interior helps melt rock, but near the Tonga trench there’s the least magma where there’s the most water. What is going on?

It was a bit like making a CT scan of a patient’s head and finding he had very little brain or making a PET scan of a dead fish and seeing hot spots of oxygen consumption. Scientists making seismic images of the mantle beneath a famous geological site saw the least magma where they expected to see the most.

Read the full story in The Source: To speed up magma, add water

Read the full published article in Nature