Mondo Knows Facts
Hawaii sits over a fixed mantle hotspot
The Pacific plate slides across a plume, leaving a trail of volcanic islands A hotspot is a column of unusually hot rock rising from deep in the mantle. The plate moves over it while the plume stays roughly put, so volcanoes form, drift away and erode. The ages of the Hawaiian islands increase toward the northwest along the chain, which supports the idea. It sits in Mondo's science collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: geology, volcanoes, islands
Hawaii sits over a fixed mantle hotspot: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The Pacific plate slides across a plume, leaving a trail of volcanic islands. The figure is taken from USGS, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a science fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Science shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.