• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

A New Baby Island Has Just Been Born In The Pacific Ocean

September 22, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

A new island has sprung up in a patch of the southwest Pacific Ocean riddled with underwater volcanoes, according to NASA Earth Observatory. 

It began with the eruption of an underwater volcano found in the Central Tonga Islands on September 10 – and within just eleven hours, a landmass emerged from the watery depths, created by oozing lava that had been cooled by the ocean waters and solidified.

Advertisement

Over the following days, lava continued to pour and the newly formed island grew. The island was 170 meters (558 feet) in diameter on September 16 and eventually swelled to 182 meters over the following two days. 

By September 20, the island had grown to cover 24,000 square meters (6 acres) with an elevation of 10 meters (33 feet). 

Sallite image showing the newly formed island in the Pacific Ocean with a plume of steam stemming from it.

An annotated version of the new satellite image. Image credit: Landsat 9/NASA/NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin,

The formation of the new island was captured through imagery taken by the Landsat 9 satellite on September 14. In this natural-color image, we see a vast plume of steam and ash drift away from the volcano. You can also see a cloud of discolored water growing around the landmass, created by the presence of superheated and acidic seawater containing volcanic rock and sulfur.

Advertisement

The new island can be found southwest of Late Island, northeast of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai, and northwest of Mo‘unga‘one. This part of the Pacific is home to the Tonga-Kermadec subduction zone, an area where three tectonic plates are slowly crashing together. 

All of this tectonic activity has endowed this part of the Pacific with a seafloor ridge that has the highest density of underwater volcanoes in the world. 

Sadly, the infant island might not stick around for long. Weathering and erosion from waves and currents can quickly degrade the volcanic rock, meaning this newly formed island often disappears quickly. 

Advertisement

Some new islands, however, do manage to survive. In 2014, an underwater volcano in this part of the Pacific erupted and forged the sizable island of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai. Although merely a baby, the island has already fostered a thriving ecosystem, complete with pink flowering vegetation, nesting sooty tern birds, and barn owls – much to the surprise of scientists.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Toshiba says detailed talks on buyouts meaningful only after option review
  2. Australia PM Morrison says trade talks with EU will take time
  3. Bitcoin attempts recovery as Evergrande-led selloff eases
  4. Jordanian King Abdullah’s property abroad not a secret – palace

Source Link: A New Baby Island Has Just Been Born In The Pacific Ocean

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Adorable Video Proves Not All Gorillas Hate The Rain. It Might Even Win One A Mate
  • 5,000-Year-Old Rock Art May Show One Of Ancient Egypt’s First Rulers
  • Alzheimer’s-Linked Protein Levels “20 Times Higher” In Newborn Babies – What Does This Mean?
  • Americans Were Asked If They Thought Civil War Was Coming. The Results Were Unexpected
  • Voyager 1 & 2 Could Be Detected From Almost A Light-Year Away With Our Current Technology
  • Dams Have Nudged Earth’s Poles By Over 1 Meter In The Past 200 Years
  • This Sugar Could Be A Cure For Male Pattern Baldness – And It’s Been In Our Bodies All Along
  • “Cosmic Immigrants”: Daytime Star Seen In 1604 May Be An “Alien Type Ia Supernova”
  • Ancient Meteor Crater Thought To Be World’s Oldest May Be 800 Million Years Younger Than We Realized
  • Celestial Fish And Chips And A Solar Cataclysm Shortlisted For Astronomy Photographer Of The Year
  • Tortoises Have Feelings Too, Or At Least Moods
  • What Would Happen If You Threw A Paper Airplane Out Of The ISS? New Study Finds Out
  • Tonight Will Be The Perfect Time To Witness The Moon Illusion
  • This Long-Extinct Animal Once Possessed The Sharpest Teeth On Planet Earth
  • Southwestern US Has Been Experiencing Prolonged Droughts Since The 1980s, And Now We Know Why
  • Four New Species Of Blind “Dragon Pseudoscorpions” Discovered In South Korean Caves
  • Where Are You Most Likely To Spot UFOs? We Took A Peek Inside The US’s Biggest “Alien” Sighting Database
  • “Something Unknown Is At Work Here”: Unexpected Results From NASA Mission To Deflect Asteroid
  • Dangerous Radiation Awaits Astronauts On Mars – New Mission Could Work Out Just How Much
  • A 4.9 Million-Year-Old Ecosystem Of Interconnected Worlds Is Preserved In A Tennessee Sinkhole
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version