Underground column of Molten Rock found at Yellowstone

http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/plume-fueling-yellowstone-volcanic-activity-0508/

Yellowstone Detectives Find Underground Column of Molten Rock

Sep 7, 2010 5:15 PM ET

By Lynne Peeples, OurAmazingPlanet Contributor

A plume of molten rock rising from deep beneath Yellowstone National Park is probably what is  fueling the region's volcanic activity, as well as tectonic plate oddities across the Pacific Northwest, new research suggests.
Building on a growing body of evidence, Mathias Obrebski of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues created the most convincing picture to date of a Yellowstone mantle plume — one that extends from about 621 miles (1,000 kilometers) below the surface of the Earth.

 

Debates have long been waged over whether erupting and shaking in the area over the last few millions of years — and a track marked out by a chain of volcanic calderas along the Yellowstone Snake River Plain in Idaho — could be the work of a column of hot rock rising up from deep within the Earth's mantle. The mantle is the layer of hot, viscous rock beneath the planet's crust.
The very existence of such mantle plumes is doubted by some scientists.
"They are extraordinary features, in size and in the fact that they travel upward through the whole mantle in solid form," said Vic Camp of San Diego State University, who was not involved in the new study. "It's a really simple idea to explain a number of different phenomena on Earth. But the simple idea was very difficult to test."
"Chemical and physical volcanology evidence suggested a plume, but this is the first seismic proof," Camp told OurAmazingPlanet. end quote:

This information fits directly into the following article and the ones embedded in it as internet buttons.
Yellowstone Supervolcano bigger than originally th...