Particle 101: WA’s Volcano

2 months ago

When it was young, our authorities was hot. Volcanically hot.

So what happened?

It starts pinch a breakup

1.3 cardinal years agone – astir nan clip nan first fungi were evolving – nan stone that would go bluish Australia was pressed up against nan stone that would go bluish China.

Part of nan supercontinent Nuna, they floated connected nan Earth’s mantle – a 2900km-deep water of magma.

Driven by a burst of power from nan planet’s core, a basking plume formed beneath nan splitting continents.

An updraft of magma pushed against nan thin, cracked crust, forcing its measurement up and out.

Caption: Carried connected tides of magma, Australia and China drifted apart
Credit: Olierook et al, 2023 (CC BY 4.0)

Some magma reached nan aerial and flowed freely arsenic lava crossed nan surface.

Some deed groundwater and exploded, forming craters and geysers.

And immoderate cooled and hardened, threading nan crust pinch veins of volcanic rock.

Imagine modern-day Iceland, covered pinch fungi alternatively of frost, and you’ll person a beautiful bully thought of what nan Kimberley utilized to look like.

When nan magma couldn’t push up immoderate more, it pushed outwards, dragging our 2 young continents on pinch it. The supercontinent collapsed up, and nan hotspot cooled.

With thing to ray it up aliases push it around, nan rocks of nan Kimberley were still – fresh to beryllium shaped by a different benignant of flow.

A different benignant of hotspot

Despite its melodramatic origin, upwind and h2o person shaped astir of WA’s earthy treasures.

Erosion carved astonishing landscapes from Katter Kich (Wave Rock) to Purnululu (the Bungle Bungles).

It’s fixed america biologic treasures too. Those ancient rocks collapsed down into soils pinch almost nary nutrients, and to thrive here, autochthonal plants developed an unthinkable assortment of adaptations.

We whitethorn nary longer beryllium a geological hotspot, but we are a biodiversity hotspot.

It’s besides fixed america a acold much literal benignant of treasure.

As magma forced its measurement to nan surface, it collected rare, colourful diamonds formed heavy successful nan Earth’s crust and brought them to wrong a fewer kilometres of nan surface.

It was erosion that vanished nan occupation and brought nan aboveground person to them.

In 1985, those diamonds were found. Our ancient volcano became a different benignant of crater – nan Argyle Diamond Mine.

The Argyle Diamond Mine closed successful 2020. It produced 150,000kg of diamonds complete 35 years, making it 1 of nan largest gem sources successful nan world and nan only known root of pinkish and reddish diamonds.

Not bad for a volcano you didn’t cognize existed.

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