A NASA satellite has spotted a newly formed island off the coast of Japan that experienced a fiery birth at the end of October.
The joint NASA/ US Geological Survey Satellites The Landsat-9 satellite saw the island rise from the sea off the coast of Iwo Jima Island, part of the Volcano Islands archipelago in southern Japan, on November 3.
The island formed 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) south of Tokyo between 12:20 and 12:35 local time on October 30 when hot magma fell into the ocean and exploded, creating chunks of rock several feet long and more than 160 feet (50 metres) in the air, According to the University of Tokyo.
“According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, the eruption appears to have started on October 21, 2023,” researchers from the University of Tokyo wrote. “The location of this eruption is approximately the same as that of the 2022 eruption, and is thought to indicate the resumption of magma activity on Iwo Jima.”
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Underwater explosions shattered the ocean surface at two blast sites on the southern tip of Iwo Jima, and rocks accumulated to the north of these explosions. This growing pile of rubble eventually formed a 330-foot (100 m) wide island, about a half-mile (1 km) from Iwo Jima, and sat in discolored water filled with highly porous rock called pumice.
An extremely light rock, pumice is created when lava with a very high percentage of water and gases is degassed from a volcano. As gas bubbles escape this lava, they become “foamy,” cooling and solidifying into a bubble-filled rock.
Landsat-9 I saw the island from its position 438 miles (705 kilometers) above Land On November 3, this image was compared with observations of the area collected by the same satellite on October 18, in which the island was not present.
The birth of the island was witnessed much closer to home when an aircraft owned by the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun marked the early stages of an underwater volcanic eruption in the southern part of the Izu-Ogasawara arc – an oceanic trench in the western Pacific Ocean.
The site of the new island has been a hotbed of underwater steam and lava eruptions in recent years, researchers from Toyko University said, adding that this is one of the fastest rising caldera volcanoes – a large depression formed when a volcano erupts and collapses. – In the world.