Violent submarine volcano off the coast of Baja, California!!! M5.5 and M4.4 now, right in volcano !!!

Hi Luis...great find...very interesting:)
5 stars

Is jy Afrikaans?

Scientists find dome of ‘violent’ submarine volcano off the coast of Baja, California

Posted on December 14, 2012

December 14, 2012 – CALIFORNIA – Scientists have discovered one of the world’s weirdest volcanoes on the seafloor near the tip of Baja, Mexico. The petite dome — about 165 feet tall (50 meters) and 4,000 feet long by 1,640 feet wide (1,200 m by 500 m) — lies along the Alarcón Rise, a seafloor-spreading center. Tectonic forces are tearing the Earth’s crust apart at the spreading center, creating a long rift where magma oozes toward the surface, cools and forms new ocean crust. Circling the planet like baseball seams, seafloor-spreading centers (also called mid-ocean ridges) produce copious amounts of basalt, a low-silica content lava rock that makes up the ocean crust. But samples from the newly discovered volcano are strangely rhyolite lava, and have the highest silica content (up to 77 percent) of any rocks collected from a mid-ocean ridge, said Brian Dreyer, a geochemist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The results were presented last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Researchers with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) discovered the volcano this spring, during a three-month expedition to the Gulf of California, the warm stretch of water that separates Baja from mainland Mexico. A remote-control vehicle explored the volcano, which is 7,800 feet (2,375 m) below the surface, and brought samples back to the ship. “When we picked up the rocks and got them back on the ship, we immediately noticed that they were very low density, and they were very light, glassy and gray. They were not the usual dark, black, shiny basalts,” Dreyer told OurAmazingPlanet. “So we immediately knew that something was unusual.” The volcano is primarily rhyolite and a silicic lava called dacite, said MBARI geologist Jennifer Paduan. “To find this along a mid-ocean ridge is a total surprise,” she told OurAmazingPlanet. Boulders and blocks the size of cars and small houses littered the steep slopes of the dome, the robot’s video camera showed. Of more concern is the evidence for explosive volcanism, which is typical of rhyolite volcanoes, Paduan said. “It’s only 100 kilometers [60 miles] from land. When the sun is setting, you can see Cabo,” she said. Both the Baja Peninsula and mainland Mexico near Alarcón Rise have cities and luxury resorts. The Gulf of California is also home to endangered sea life. Rhyolite lava carries more gas and volatiles (things that are likely to cause explosions) than basalt, and when magma meets water, it vaporizes instantly, driving an even more explosive eruption. “There’s definitely explosive deposits there, and that is of extreme concern, given that the ridge is so close to land and the tsunami potential of a big explosion there,” Paduan said. “We don’t know how explosive, and that is something we are definitely trying to figure out.” Rhyolites have been found on spreading centers, but only above hot spots, such as in Iceland and the Galapagos Islands, Dreyer said. Hot spots are plumes that bring magma to the surface from deep within Earth’s mantle. There is no hot spot under the Alarcón Rise, he said. Rhyolite lava typically occurs only on continents, such as in Mount St. Helen’s growing dome in Washington. One possible explanation for the bizarre composition of the Alarcón dome is that continental crust snuck into the molten rock below — the spreading center is young, and continental crust lies close by. But tests of different isotopes (versions of elements with differing numbers of neutrons in the cores) in the lava samples revealed no evidence of contamination by continental crust, Dreyer said. –OAP

connection only to regional tectonics with subduction zone...

thought you guys knew about this, i saw this 2 weeks ago when that 6.4 EQ hit off the coast of california and the topic of this volcano under the ocean came up after i posted a video. yea it is pretty interesting that this thing is there and only discovered recently, i wonder what would happen if she popped off, tsunami perhaps? keep a close eye on this one folks. could wake up and become a nightmare situation for the folks on the coast.

About 2 years ago I predicted that something was up in that area, and now they finally realize there is something going on there. Dang it. I should have copyrighted my old words. That was they couldn't say anything without paying me big money. The gulf of California has been active now for about 3 years, and so many different quakes in that area should have started raising eyebrows, yet for some reason no one paid attention when it first started makes me wonder why I am the only one that started looking into it back then.

About 2 years ago I predicted that something was up in that area, and now they finally realize there is something going on there. Dang it. I should have copyrighted my old words. That was they couldn't say anything without paying me big money. The gulf of California has been active now for about 3 years, and so many different quakes in that area should have started raising eyebrows, yet for some reason no one paid attention when it first started makes me wonder why I am the only one that started looking into it back then.

Type: Earthquake
37 minutes ago
Magnitude: 5.5
DateTime: Sunday January 13 2013, 16:28:29 UTC
Region: Gulf of California
Depth: 10 km
Source: USGS Feed [link to quakes.globalincidentmap.com]

This big quake right in the volcano only 10Km depth... i think the fault is opening and magma is going up... what do you think?

interesting.

This big quake right in the volcano only 10Km depth... i think the fault is opening and magma is going up... what do you think?

can this be a precursor sign of a big eruption or a big quake more in the north?

to keep this front and center.