Massive rock raft found floating off New Zealand

If you can bond/glue it together.
you could have a floting Inland! how cool would that be.
build a home on it. may get a bit sea sick!
you would need sails on it and Engine.

reply to post by Curious and Concerned


yeah I can't see what all the fuss is about, just the sheer size of the "float" I guess. There was similar thing a few years ago up near Samoa.
Pumice is not rare in NZ as you mention, back in the 1970's it was mined and used in lightweight concrete for commercial flat roof screeds, I come across them occasionally in my work re-roofing, they absorb water like crazy and hard to get dried out. We did one at the old Colgate factory in Petone a few years back, the engineer estimated the screed was holding 15 tons of moisture from a leak that had been ongoing for 5 years, the screed was 12" thick at the highest point, we had to drill holes in the main structural concrete roof slab to drain it out, took 6 months before it was down to 18% moisture content.
You can buy pumice concrete statues here too, Easter Island heads seemed to be the craze a couple of years ago.
I bet if I went down to our beach on the West Coast North Island I could come back with more "rocks" than that guy in the picture hadin his hand , they are all over the place.
Good for getting rubbing stains off your skin too, and callouses

Nasa have now found the eruption that most likely created this raft, and it was not Monowai. The eruption occurred in July in the Kermadecs; the Havre Seamount.
pacific.scoop.co.nz...

www.wired.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

...which makes 3 eruptions for the New Zealand region in recent history.

reply to post by latitude39


well done
geez they were way off with the original location eh.

from the Wiki article

Seismologists discovered a cluster of earthquakes (ranging in magnitude between 3.0 and 4.8) that began on July 17, 2012 and ended on July 18, 2012

well I didn't notice those, must be secret USGS data they used , I'll have to go back and check.
Geonet NZ don't really cover that far up, although their search map does include that area.

off the East Cape of the North Island has been getting hammered for about a month now with quakes, just off to the east of the East Cape Ridge, a lot further south than the Havre seamount, if subduction theory is right then this and the 3 eruptions are probably part of the same thing. Map of that on here goo.gl...
Makes you wonder how many earthquakes are going on further up the EC Ridge thatw e never hear about.

Thanks And actually I can't count can I... I hadn't included Monowai in my counting - so that is actually x4 eruptions in the last month...

Originally posted by muzzy...if subduction theory is right then this and the 3 eruptions are probably part of the same thing. Map of that on here goo.gl...
Makes you wonder how many earthquakes are going on further up the EC Ridge thatw e never hear about.

Awesome - I love the question everything approach "if subduction theory is right"! It is so rare these days. I guess this ruins NZ's carbon footprint eh.

Officially as you probably know the volcanologists are saying Tongariro and White Island eruptions are probably unrelated. But four within 2000km certainly makes you think.

July 17-18 Havre Seamount
Aug 3 Monowai Seamount (very little info online?)
Aug 5 White Island
Aug 6 Tongariro

ATS, you never cease to amaze me!!

Back in 2012, the raft – composed of pumice rock – covered some 400 square kilometres (154 square miles) of the south-west Pacific Ocean, but months later satellites recorded it dispersing over an area twice the size of New Zealand itself.

Under the surface, the sheer scale of the rocky aftermath took scientists aback when they inspected the site in 2015, at depths as low as 1,220 metres (4,000 feet).

...

The caldera, which spans nearly 4.5 kilometres (about 3 miles), discharged lava from some 14 vents in a "massive rupture of the volcanic edifice", producing not just pumice rock, but ash, lava domes, and seafloor lava flows.

It may have been (thankfully) buried under an ocean of water, but for a sense of scale, think roughly 1.5 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens – or 10 times the size of the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland.

The researchers say that of the material erupted, three-quarters or more floated to the surface and drifted away – tonnes of it washing up onto shorelines an ocean away.

sciencealert.com, Jan. 15, 2018 - We All Nearly Missed The Largest Underwater Volcano Eruption Ever Recorded. (w/tomography pic of Havre Seamount)

A few years later, investigations complete, data sorted and within that sigma delta they look for, a big report on the event that happened. Of course, ATS had a thread on it!

The entire thing was almost missed! A passenger captured a photo of a "sea slick" that turned out to be a pumice raft. A couple of robot subs surveying the area initially threw the scientists for a loop! They found van-sized boulders of pumice on the sea floor. If this was even close to surface it would have been huge! Lava, ash, pumice boulders, and gasses spewing out 4,000 feet below the surface... how cool is that?!

There have been stories of islands forming and then disappearing over the years. I wonder how many could have been from this?

Interesting story. The changes in weight distribution are going to make it a bumpy ride, i'd bet.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
There have been stories of islands forming and then disappearing over the years. I wonder how many could have been from this?

That was one of my favorite TV shows! The ending... not so much. There were so many different directions they could have gone with it! I miss Hurley!!

lol.

I was looking for an update on the Papua New Guinea volcano and saw this story. I thought I remember reading it here (2012 is about right!). Sure enough. Figured a review of events with the newly published paper was needed. I think that doing all the science leg-work needs to be remembered as speculation can lead to all kinds of ideas (even if I do favor the idea of alien megastructures being built around stars!).

Real science takes time.

www.metabunk.org...
Clam down the world is fine .
The ring of fire has never went to sleep lol the eruptions just change locations as the pressure builds or decreasing in different places .

Unless earth gets hit by a BIG rock and sets every thing off at once or unless earth gets nuked we will be fine .
Unless one of the cauldrons go off like yellow stone .
they are the only ones that can cause world wide destruction and even then it would not really be world wide mostly The US with colder winters for a few years anywhere else .

Tropical or subtropic area will hardly notice even Florida will be ok after all by now the gators have lived through Yellowstone 40 times or so .

has China clamed it yet?