Now researchers report the first \u201cghost plume\u201d with no evidence of surface volcanism, hiding beneath Oman\u2019s eastern deserts. <\/p>\n Lead author Simone Pilia<\/a> of King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals analyzed thousands of earthquake<\/a> signals and named the buried column the Dani plume after his son.<\/p>\n Oman\u2019s mantle plume rises but does not erupt<\/p>\n Typical plumes reach the surface and build features like Hawaii or Yellowstone, but Oman shows no fresh lava fields. That absence makes the Dani plume a ghost: hot enough to soften rock, not hot enough to punch through a thick continental lid.<\/p>\n \u201cThe more we gathered evidence, the more we were convinced that it is a plume,\u201d said Pilia. His team traced the column to a depth of at least 410\u202fmiles (660 kilometers), where seismic waves slowed in a neat cylinder about 125\u202fmiles (200 kilometers) wide.\u00a0<\/p>\n Independent checks found the mantle transition zone warped downward at a depth of 255 miles (410\u202fkilometers) and lifted again at 410 miles (660\u202fkilometers), giving a classic thermal fingerprint of rising material<\/a>.<\/p>\n Earthquake waves reveal hidden mantle plume<\/p>\n The hunt relied on seismic tomography<\/a>, Earth\u2019s version of a CT scan, which turns quake vibrations into 3\u2011D velocity maps. A temperature rise of about 200\u202f\u00b0F (93 \u00b0C) can drop shear\u2011wave speeds by roughly three\u202fpercent.<\/p>\n In Oman, shear speeds fell by that amount inside the column, implying an excess temperature of roughly 200\u2013500\u202f\u00b0F (93\u2013260\u202f\u00b0C). That is warm enough to soften peridotite yet still below the melting threshold under 130\u2011mile\u2011thick (209-kilometer-thick) lithosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n Saskia\u202fGoes of Imperial College London<\/a>, who was not involved in the work, reviewed the data and called the detection \u201cplausible,\u201d noting that narrow columns are notoriously hard to image.<\/p>\n Oman\u2019s land lifts without any volcano<\/p>\n Even without lava, surface clues do exist. Eastern Oman\u2019s Salma Plateau<\/a> is puzzlingly high, topping 6,500\u202ffeet (1,980 meters), despite little crustal shortening.<\/p>\n GPS and shoreline studies show the coast is still inching upward at under 0.04\u202finches (0.1 centimeters) per year. Dynamic support from hot, buoyant mantle at depth offers the simplest explanation for this.<\/p>\n Similar uplift blankets the Yellowstone<\/a> area, where the well\u2011known plume feeds long\u2011lived volcanic and hydrothermal activity in the American West. Oman\u2019s quieter rise suggests plumes can lift crust even when they stay bottled deep below solid rock.<\/p>\n Hidden plume may have shifted India\u2019s path<\/p>\n Geological reconstructions hint that the Dani plume slid under the Indian Plate about 40\u202fmillion years ago, coinciding with a subtle eastward bend in India\u2019s path. Pilia\u2019s group argues that viscous drag from the plume\u2019s flow nudged the plate like a hidden hand.<\/p>\n Torque calculations in the study show that a conduit around 125\u202fmiles (201 kilometers) wide, moving a few cubic miles of hot rock per year, could supply the needed force. No other nearby tectonic event<\/a> explains the timing as neatly.<\/p>\n If a single, amagmatic<\/a> plume can steer continents, multiple hidden plumes may have quietly shaped plate motions through Earth\u2019s past.<\/p>\n Why hidden plumes matter<\/p>\n The Dani plume also carries implications for Earth\u2019s heat budget. If many columns like it bypass slow mantle convection, more heat than expected streams straight from the core, potentially shortening estimates of how long the inner dynamo can continue to run.<\/p>\n Future arrays of ocean\u2011bottom seismometers and satellite gravity missions could uncover other silent plumes under thick cratons or old ocean basins, refining models that tie deep\u2011Earth processes to surface hazards and resource formation.<\/p>\n The new findings suggest the Dani plume may trace its roots to the same deep reservoir as the Afar plume, which is located beneath the Horn of Africa. <\/p>\n Seismic imaging from the DETOX\u2011P3 global tomography model reveals that both plumes could be branches of a broader low\u2011velocity structure at the core\u2011mantle boundary<\/a>, which stretches thousands of miles across the lower mantle.<\/p>\n This tree\u2011like formation supports growing theories that mantle plumes may not rise as isolated columns but as parts of interconnected superplume networks<\/a>. <\/p>\n If so, hotspots like Afar, Yellowstone, and now Oman might share common origins, linking surface activity across continents to single, deep\u2011Earth sources.<\/p>\n Traditional methods for detecting mantle plumes rely heavily on surface volcanism, which may overlook features hidden under thick continental crust. <\/p>\n The Dani plume shows that relying on lava flows and volcanic rocks alone can miss major drivers of Earth\u2019s internal dynamics.<\/p>\n Instead, combining seismic tomography, plate motion analysis, and topographic signals opens new paths for identifying ghost plumes. <\/p>\n This interdisciplinary approach could help researchers locate more hidden structures in places that were once thought plume-free, thus reshaping how we map the heat flow from Earth\u2019s core to its surface.<\/p>\n The study is published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earth leaks roughly 47 terawatts of heat into space, a trickle compared with the Sun\u2019s input yet vital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":911181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-911180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116448651215174839","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/911181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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