Is a hot spot and a mantle plume the same thing?

A hot spot is an area on Earth that exists over a mantle plume. A mantle plume is an area under the rocky outer layer of Earth, called the crust, where magma is hotter than surrounding magma.

How are mantle plumes and hot spots related?

A mantle plume is an upwelling of abnormally hot rock within the Earth’s mantle. As the heads of mantle plumes can partly melt when they reach shallow depths, they are thought to be the cause of volcanic centers known as hotspots and probably also to have caused flood basalts.

What is a mantle hot spot?

A hot spot is a region deep within the Earth’s mantle from which heat rises through the process of convection. This heat facilitates the melting of rock. The melted rock, known as magma, often pushes through cracks in the crust to form volcanoes. Instead it occurs at abnormally hot centers known as mantle plumes.

How do mantle plumes and hotspots create a volcano?

A volcanic “hotspot” is an area in the mantle from which heat rises as a thermal plume from deep in the Earth. High heat and lower pressure at the base of the lithosphere (tectonic plate) facilitates melting of the rock. This melt, called magma, rises through cracks and erupts to form volcanoes.

Do hot spots move?

Hotspots are places where plumes of hot, buoyant rock from deep in the Earth’s mantle plow to the surface in the middle of a tectonic plate. They move because of the convection in the mantle that also pushes around the plates above (convection is the same process that happens in boiling water).

What is a hot spot name at least one present day example of a hot spot?

Examples include the Hawaii, Iceland and Yellowstone hotspots. A hotspot’s position on the Earth’s surface is independent of tectonic plate boundaries, and so hotspots may create a chain of volcanoes as the plates move above them.

Why do mantle plumes move?

the mantle plume, driven by heat exchange across the core-mantle boundary carrying heat upward in a narrow, rising column, and postulated to be independent of plate motions.

What is an example of a hot spot volcano?

Often the hot spot creates a chain of volcanoes, as a plate moves across a relatively stationary mantle plume. The best example of a hot spot volcanic chain is the Hawaiian Islands. The submarine volcano, Lo’ihi, lies 18 miles off the southeast coast of Hawai’i.

What does hot spot mean?

Hotspot: A hotspot is a physical location where people can access the Internet, typically using Wi-Fi, via a wireless local area network (WLAN) with a router connected to an Internet service provider.

How fast do hot spots move?

They compared the rates of movement of 56 hotspots, grouped by tectonic plate, to a global average. On average, they moved about 0.1 inch (3 millimeters) per year, much less than the 1.3 inches (33 millimeters) or so found by other studies.

What are hot spots and what are mantle plumes?

Anyway, by the early 1970s, the plate tectonic theory and the presence of hot spots was generally accepted. In 1971, W. Jason Morgan suggested a more important role for hot spots. He proposed that hot spots result from hot, narrow plumes of material that rise from deep within the mantle.

Where does the Hawaiian hot spot plume come from?

The origin of the Hawaiian Hot Spot plume magmas is the Earth’s deep mantle, in contrast to the mid-ocean ridge magmas that come from the shallow mantle. Analysis of the chemical composition of the lavas gives important clues about the source and dynamics of the hot spot plume.

What’s the difference between a hotspot and a plume?

A “hotspot” is more of a mysterious thing and describes a heat anomaly in the Earth’s crust and does not speculate as to the origin of the heat. However, a “plume” has a more specific definition.

How does the hot mantle affect the Earth?

As the hot mantle plume reaches the base of the lithosphere, it spreads laterally. The laterally spreading of the hot mantle helped to move the Earth’s rigid outer plates.