Contiental Drift: The Case of Hawaiian Islands

The claim is “How does the age of the Hawaiian Islands affect the distance from the hotspot?” Scientists believe that continetal drift may have been involved. This proof of contiental drift, has several aspects that could be investigated. Scientists believe that million of years ago every single continent were connected but over a long period of time the continents started to drift which is when countries gradually move. 

“Continental drift was a revolutionary scientific theory developed in the years 1908-1912 by Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), a German meteorologist, climatologist, and geophysicist, that put forth the hypothesis that the continents had all originally been a part of one enormous landmass”. The theory has been around since 1880 but was often denied but recently more and more evidence is suggesting that this may have been a possible thing in the past. These continents started to move because the tectonic plates underneath the earth's surface. These are what the continents sit on and if these plates collide they may created mountains or volcanos which then may create a hotspot. Tectonic plates move because the convection currents underneath them shoot out and settle on land this constantly happens. Subsequently the research question to be investigated is as follows: How does the age of the Hawaiian Islands affect the distance from the hotspot?

Background Research

Hot spots are extremely hot areas inside the mantle. A hot spot is an extremely hot area inside the mantle, It is so hot that it starts to melt the rocks and then make magma. Once the magma is made it breaks through the crust and creates actives volcanoes. When oceanic volcanoes move away from hot spots they eventually cool and they can create small islands and bits of land. Compared to contiental volcanoes they move away and once again cool but become extinct. One of the most common active hot spots is in Hawaii; “ The Hawaiian hot spot has been active at least 70 million year”.

Analysis & Interpretation

When volcanoes age, islands start to get pushed and move away from other continents . The island Necker is the oldest, it is 10 000 30 years old. Necker has also moved the farthest from a hot spot at 1200km. Compared to the youngest volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii which is only 375 thousand years old. Mauna kea is also the volcano that has been pushed the least. It has roughly only been pushed 190 kilometres. The island that has been around for 5.1million years Kauai is in the middle between Mauan kea and Necker in age. Kauai has moved around 575 kilometres. This shows us that the older the volcano the more a volcano moves and gets pushed away.

Evaluation

The data collected for the research was published over 10 years ago. This may affect our data since it was made so long ago meaning that possibly the distance may be wrong and inaccurate. Since there's no way to know how the data was collected there is a chance it could of been estimated or extremely inaccurate. Even though the data was quite old the data was from reliable sources. For example for this research were used a book published in 1987 and the two main authors who wrote it were Brent Dalrymple and David Clauge. Both of these authors are researchs and Brent Dalrymble is a American Geologist.

Conclusion

In conclusion the claim proposition is correct and this is constantly supported throughout the report. You can see this because the information always has the same trend which is the older the continent the more it has moved away from a hotspot. This confirms the research question. The data provided is quite old and may have been slightly inaccurate so in order to get much better results you should look for the most recent data possible giving you the best result. Overall the claim is true and continents move further away from hotspots the older they get.