So , it turns out that there ’s a stigma - new supervolcano come along under New Hampshire , Vermont , and Massachusetts – at least , that ’s what theheadlinesare saying all of a sudden .

Turns out that ( surprise surprisal ) this is n’t true , and this is found off astudythat was put out late last year , one that explicitly said that we should not bear a new Yellowstone - esque caldera ( a heavy crater pull up stakes by a volcanic explosion ) anytime soon , or even in the future tense . Here ’s what ’s really happening .

A heat glow beneath those three states , first detect back in the seventies , was long thought to be the afterglow of a dead , once - upwelling plumage of mantle textile termed the “ Great Meteor ” . Using fresh seismic undulation to see what textile domiciliate down below , apaperin 2016concludedthat there ’s an active , independent upwelling of very raging rock select home properly now .

Although the so - called North Appalachian Anomaly ( NAA ) was already known about , its high temperature and independence from the Great Meteor came as a surprisal . The generator suspected , then , that one day , millions of years from now , there would bebaby volcanoesof some variety graze up in the northeastern United States .

In late-2017 , Rutgers University – whose researchers co - author that 2016 paper – used two year ’ Charles Frederick Worth of data fromEarthScope , a massive array of seismal instruments , to better constrain what was beneath New England . They zeroed in on those elevated temperature in the upper mantle , and their data suggested a ballooning - like bod , characteristic of the top of a mantle feather .

It ’s narrow , slowly - moving , and free-base on the want of open activeness – volcanism or deformation – it ’s likely to be geologically young . Eventually , this could precede to an eruption at the Earth’s surface in perhaps 50 million years , but it ’s a small plume compared to others , so we should n’t expect anything supervolcanic .

In fact , it may be so small that it will never wield to make volcanoes at the control surface . So – what ’s with the supervolcano chicanery then ? It ’s clearly broken volcanologists ’ brains on social sensitive :

Supervolcanoes aredefinedby the United States Geological Survey ( USGS ) as those that have at some point erupt more than 1,000 three-dimensional km ( 240 cubic naut mi ) of impertinent volcaniclastic textile in a sudden and violent way . When they do so , they leave a huge volcanic crater known as a caldera .

Yellowstone , which has erupted catastrophically three fourth dimension in the retiring 2.1 million years – and no , it is n’t about to break out and toss off everyone;seehere – can be called a supervolcano as two of those eructation produce the need amount of material .

Yellowstone ’s igneous past and geologically active present is fuel by an upwelling feather of solid mantle material . As it pass on the crust , it loosen up , which causes it to melt . The crust melts to a considerable grade , plenty of magma is generated , and voila , you have a ample volcano .

This warmth signature , by the way , is termed a hotspot .

Mantle plume and upwellings happen all over the planet . They can hap along diverging plate boundary ( hello , Iceland ! ) , and in the middle of oceanic and continental plate . make a plume does n’t mean you ’re going to get a supervolcano ; you could get a serial of cuticle vent , like over in Hawaii , whose Kilauea has beenstealing the spotlightfor calendar month now .

With that in judgment , it ’s not clear how some news outlets areso surea supervolcano is look in the northeastern United States . This becomes especially baffling when the study ’s hint generator – Prof. Vadim Levin , a geophysicist at Rutgers – intelligibly ruled that hypothesis out .

The upwelling “ is not Yellowstone ( National Park)-like , but it ’s a distant relative in the sense that something comparatively small – no more than a pair hundred miles across – is happening,”he said .

Here ’s the affair : what ’s bump under New England is far cool than any cockamamy supervolcano geological formation . This part of the world was long think to be geologically passive , one full-grown meh in terms of tectonic natural process .

Now there ’s a fortune that a somewhatfiery futureawaits it because something down below has just , geologically speak , start to take conformation , and we do n’t cognize why . As ever , Earth is n’t quite what we thought it was – it ’s more puzzling and dynamical than we ’d yet dreamed .