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Rejoice island hoppers you’ve got a new spot to hop!
Hey guys Julia here for news
The new island off the coast of Tonga, a group of polynesian islands in the Pacific, is just
a baby, barely a month old.
It’s thought that the island formed when an underwater volcano exploded then expanded.
The new cone-shaped landmass is about a mile long and according to locals from a nearby
island, the surface is still warm and smells of sulfur.
So I wouldn’t go visiting just yet.
But how often are new lands formed?
Well surprisingly, pretty often.
Usually through a process like volcanic activity, and it happens often around what’s called
“The Ring of Fire”.
This ring is a hot bed of volcanoes and seismic activity, with over 75% of all active volcanoes
and nearly 90% of all earthquakes happening around this region.
This volatile zone is the result of plate tectonics.
It’s where the Pacific Plate meets the North American Plate and other smaller plates.
As the plates slip and slide over and under each other, the Earth rumbles and sometimes
volcanos erupt to relieve the pressure.
Sometimes when volcanoes erupt they can build islands.
Some islands come and go.
But some stick around.
To build a lasting island, a volcano must build up faster than waves can erode it.
Lava that solidifies on land is pretty strong and given enough time, like millions of years,
islands could become habitable, like the Hawaiian islands.
While other processes like erosion, glacial retreat and other mechanisms can form islands
too, most of the more recent islands were formed by volcanic activity, like the one
off the coast of Tonga and like another recently found in 2013 near Japan.
The island is small, only 660 feet in diameter and sits over 600 miles south of Tokyo.
It’s near another uninhabited island in the Bonin Island chain.
This chain sits on top of the Ring of Fire, so there’s a chance it could produce more
islands.
But the Ring of Fire doesn’t have monopoly over creating new lands.
A rift line off the coast of Yemen created a few new islands too.
The Zubair islands sit on top of an underwater volcano in the Red Sea.
In 2011 and 2012 a mound of lava and ash about 2,000 feet across piled up during an eruption.
In 2013 a new found island, YaYa, was discovered off the coast of Northern Russia by a helicopter
crew.
Researchers think the island might not be new per se, it may have first appeared in
the 20th century.
It formed when another, larger ice island melted.
It’s called YaYa, because in Russia Ya means I, and when the helicopter crew first say
the island they yelled “I, I discovered it”.
The discovery of the tiny, sandy island might have expanded the economic exclusive zone
by a few hundred square miles.
Unfortunately the last island on our list is here for a short time.
It’s sinking back into the water.
It’s already sunk at least 10 feet since it appeared a few years ago.
Zalzala Koh is a tiny piece of land, about 300 feet across, that popped up off the coast
of Pakistan after a 7.7 magnitude Earthquake in 2013.
On September 26, 2013, NASA’s Earth Observing-1 satellite captured images of that new island.
The surface is a mixture of mud, sand, and rock.
Some scientists think it’s a “mud volcano” which forms when the earth pushes out a mud
like substance made from a slurry of dirt, water, and gases.
Unlike volcanic islands, it’s pretty unstable so if you want to visit, you gotta go soon.
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Alright guys does this make you want to go island hopping?
Any hot spots we missed?
Let us know in the comments below.
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