The Blob

[GunnyGene]

Good old movie, but this Blob is not coming from outer space. It's welling up under New England. :shock: Might be a problem in a couple million years. :wink:

Excerpt:

https://www.sciencealert.com/mysterious-blob-of-hot-rock-building-up-underneath-vermont-new-england

A Mysterious Blob of Hot Rock Is Building Up Under America's Northeast

Something is rising from the depths.
PETER DOCKRILL
18 DEC 2017

A vast mass of hot rock is welling up underneath Vermont and extending into other subterranean regions below New England, new research shows.

Scientists used a network of thousands of seismic measurement devices in the largest geological study of its kind, detecting the enormous blob upwelling under Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts – and possibly elsewhere.

"The upwelling we detected is like a hot air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England," says geophysicist Vadim Levin from Rutgers University – New Brunswick.

Since New England doesn't have any active volcanoes, the huge build-up is thought to be a geologically recent phenomenon, although in this case that means it could have slowly but steadily been growing for tens of millions of years.

As for whether the mass could one day erupt, that's the way these things go, the team says – although there's no point in panicking, since such an eventuality is still a long, long way off from happening.

"It will likely take millions of years for the upwelling to get where it's going," Levin explains.

"The next step is to try to understand how exactly it's happening."

The team analysed the blob using Earthscope – a multi-institutional network of instruments monitoring seismic movements rippling throughout the North American continent.

Buried in two years of data, the team zeroed in on New England, having previously identified a thermal anomaly that was hundreds of degrees Celsius hotter than its surroundings in the upper mantle about 200 kilometres (124.2 miles) below the surface, and measuring approximately 400 kilometres (248.5 miles) in diameter.

 

[Rei40c]

And we thought an asteroid would get us. The enemy was beneath our feet all along.

 

[Conservative]

From the thread title, I thought you were going to discuss Michael Moore.

 

[yooper1]

Well ya know , according to certain political and environmental groups out there, it is all of our fault. We caused it so we need to snuff out anything man made.

Not that the earth has been evolving, cooling and or warming on it's own for millions of years before us, but it just started happening because of us.

I knew that. It is on the news nightly.

 

[powder smoke]

From the thread title, I thought you were going to discuss Michael Moore.

hehehehe! Nice one! ps

 

[SR1911SHOOTER]

I am 83 years old, I do not worry about something I can do nothing about!
Blackie

 

[rugerguy211]

The Blob - Steve McQueen's first starring movie role.

 

[opos]

We got our own blob in San Diego...it's real and it could be a major danger one day...San Diego bay has long been the home of most of the Pacific fleet....we have many ship yards and many Navy ships home based here...also in the same bay are many commercial basins, etc....as a result of this over many years there is a huge "bubble" or blob of fuel, oil, and gasoline that just sort of sits under parts of Point Loma and San Diego bay....been there for a very long time and to date no problems...but we live in earthquake country and there have been several studies done about the potential dangers of this huge fuel bubble just sitting there...might be a serious problem one day and most folks that live here have no idea it's even there....I'm too old to care

 

[Rick Courtright]

....as a result of this over many years there is a huge "bubble" or blob of fuel, oil, and gasoline that just sort of sits under parts of Point Loma and San Diego bay....been there for a very long time and to date no problems...

Hi,

Growing up in San Diego in the '50s and '60s, it wasn't unusual to come home from the beach with tar on our feet from various sources that put it into the water. Then if FLOATED to shore, landed on the beaches and spread on kids' feet. "Cuz liquid petro products are less dense than water which makes them float" was the explanation we got back then of how it got on the beaches...

So now we jump a half century, and there's a blob of petro-waste UNDER the bay? What's supposed to be holding it down there in contrast to normal behavior? Something must have gotten by me, cuz what I read doesn't quite pass the sniff test here.

Rick C