https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The seafloor plays an important ecological and societal role. Understanding the processes that shape this environment will help guide conservation policy and decision-making about underwater infrastructure and geohazards. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-qa-technology-seafloor.html Earth Sciences Wed, 22 Jul 2026 15:40:01 EDT news703943237 Located in Sicily, Mount Etna is Europe's most active volcano. Yet its origin remains largely enigmatic, as no existing geological model fully explains how it formed. In a new study, scientists from the University of Lausanne (UNIL) shed light on these mechanisms and reveal why Mount Etna may in fact be unique in the world. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-mount-etna-volcano-kilometer-deep.html Earth Sciences Mon, 13 Apr 2026 13:40:05 EDT news695301122 Earth's "gold kitchen" lies deep beneath the seafloor. Island arcs, whose volcanoes form above subduction zones where one oceanic plate sinks beneath another, are often particularly rich in gold. The reasons for this have long been debated. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-subduction-zones-earth-gold-kitchens.html Earth Sciences Wed, 01 Apr 2026 16:20:01 EDT news694263001 The giant planet Jupiter has nearly 100 known moons, yet none have captured the interest and imagination of astronomers and space scientists quite like Europa, an ice-shrouded world that is thought to possess a vast ocean of liquid salt water. For decades, scientists have wondered whether that ocean could harbor the right conditions for life, placing Europa near the top of the list of solar system bodies to explore. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-jupiter-moon-europa-lacks-undersea.html Astrobiology Tue, 06 Jan 2026 11:00:01 EST news686910397 By 2100, Australian and global coral reef communities will be slow to recover, less complex, and dominated by fleshy algae, as high carbon dioxide changes ocean chemistry. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-volcanic-fate-coral-acidic-seas.html Ecology Mon, 24 Nov 2025 09:07:04 EST news683197621 Buried deep in Greenland's ice sheet lies a puzzling chemical signature that has sparked intense scientific debate. A sharp spike in platinum concentrations, discovered in an ice core (a cylinder of ice drilled out of ice sheets and glaciers) and dated to around 12,800 years ago, has provided support for a hypothesis that Earth was struck by an exotic meteorite or comet at that time. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-volcano-meteorite-evidence-puzzling-discovery.html Earth Sciences Fri, 19 Sep 2025 12:37:04 EDT news677504221 A mysterious and highly active undersea volcano off the Pacific Coast could erupt by the end of this year, scientists say. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-mysterious-highly-undersea-volcano-california.html Earth Sciences Wed, 21 May 2025 07:01:14 EDT news667029666 An international team of scientists co-led by Dr. Steffen Kutterolf from GEOMAR Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research Kiel has found evidence of a historical submarine eruption of the Kameni volcano on Santorini for the first time. In their paper, published today in the journal Nature Geoscience, they describe newly discovered pumice and ash deposits that support historical records of an underwater eruption in 726 CE. https://phys.org/news/2024-03-scientific-drilling-unravels-historical-mystery.html Earth Sciences Mon, 25 Mar 2024 13:53:04 EDT news630593582 The Greek archipelago of Santorini consists of the remains of a powerful volcano. Members of the international IODP expedition "Hellenic Arc Volcanic Field" have now found evidence of one of the largest eruptions ever recorded in the southern Aegean Arc. https://phys.org/news/2024-01-evidence-largest-explosive-eruptions-aegean.html Earth Sciences Mon, 15 Jan 2024 11:17:33 EST news624539851 The January 15, 2022, eruption of Hunga Volcano in Tonga continues to break records. According to a new study, the eruption created a "supercharged" thunderstorm that produced the most intense lightning ever recorded. There were nearly 200,000 lightning flashes in the volcanic plume throughout the eruption, peaking at more than 2,600 flashes every minute, the researchers found. https://phys.org/news/2023-06-tonga-hunga-eruption-intense-lightning.html Earth Sciences Tue, 20 Jun 2023 15:28:07 EDT news606493680 Underwater volcanoes on the Earth's crust are active contributors of many different elements to the oceanic environment. Hence, they play an important role in biogeochemical and chemosynthetic cycles of the ocean. Although there have been many studies on high-temperature hydrothermal systems in the mid-ocean ridge—a series of underwater volcanoes that trace the edges of the different oceanic plates—there is little information on low-temperature hydrothermal systems in other volcanoes, such as "petit-spot" volcanoes. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-petit-spot-volcanoes-involve-deepest-submarine.html Earth Sciences Thu, 01 Jun 2023 05:00:01 EDT news604760659 An international team has used satellite- and ground-based ionospheric observations to demonstrate that an air pressure wave triggered by volcanic eruptions could produce an equatorial plasma bubble (EPB) in the ionosphere, severely disrupting satellite-based communications. Their findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports. https://phys.org/news/2023-05-eruption-tonga-underwater-volcano-disrupt.html Earth Sciences Mon, 22 May 2023 07:05:59 EDT news603957955 The 2022 eruption of a submarine volcano in Tonga was more powerful than the largest U.S. nuclear explosion, according to a new study led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-tongan-volcanic-eruption-largest-natural.html Earth Sciences Fri, 14 Apr 2023 14:00:03 EDT news600683996 Material left on the seafloor by bronze-age underwater volcanic eruptions is helping researchers better understand the size, hazards and climate impact of their parent eruptions, according to new research from the University of British Columbia. https://phys.org/news/2023-04-re-evaluates-hazards-climate-impacts-massive.html Earth Sciences Tue, 11 Apr 2023 11:00:03 EDT news600425721 Nearly 100 million years ago, the Earth experienced an extreme environmental disruption that choked oxygen from the oceans and led to elevated marine extinction levels that affected the entire globe. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-malformed-seashells-ancient-sediment-clues.html Earth Sciences Thu, 19 Jan 2023 11:00:04 EST news593333500 Using a novel imaging technique for volcanoes that produces high-resolution pictures of seismic wave properties, a new study reveals a large, previously undetected body of mobile magma underneath Kolumbo, an active submarine volcano near Santorini, Greece. The presence of the magma chamber increases the chances of a future eruption, prompting the researchers to recommend real-time hazard monitoring stations near other active submarine volcanoes to improve estimations of when an eruption might be likely to occur. https://phys.org/news/2023-01-magma-chamber-mediterranean-volcano.html Earth Sciences Thu, 12 Jan 2023 17:12:24 EST news592765938 Hawaii's Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano in the world, has erupted for the first time in nearly 40 years, US authorities said, spewing lava and ash Monday as emergency crews went on alert. https://phys.org/news/2022-11-hawaii-volcano-world-largest-erupts.html Environment Mon, 28 Nov 2022 10:08:45 EST news588852519 In January 2022, the largest submarine volcanic eruption of this century led to a dramatic phytoplankton bloom north of the island of Tongatapu, in the Kingdom of Tonga. A team of scientists from the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa and Oregon State University revealed in a recently published study that the bloom of microscopic marine life covered an area nearly 40 times the size of the island of O'ahu, Hawai'i within just 48 hours after the eruption. https://phys.org/news/2022-10-tonga-volcano-eruption-life-rapid.html Environment Wed, 12 Oct 2022 04:27:49 EDT news584767663 The ocean floor is famously less explored than the surface of Mars. And when our team of scientists recently mapped the seabed, and ancient sediments beneath, we discovered what looks like an asteroid impact crater. https://phys.org/news/2022-08-mystery-crater-potentially-relative-dinosaur-killing.html Planetary Sciences Sat, 20 Aug 2022 10:30:01 EDT news580051286 During another time in which Earth warmed rapidly in conjunction with a spike in atmospheric carbon similar to our modern climate, seawater temperature and chemical changes decimated an important piece of the food web in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to new research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ancient-modern-global-hot-tiny.html Environment Wed, 09 Mar 2022 15:27:02 EST news566062016 The presence of pink pumice in the giant pumice raft of the 2012 Havre eruption that drifted across the southwest Pacific Ocean has led researchers to recognize the immense power of underwater volcanic eruptions. https://phys.org/news/2022-02-pink-pumice-key-revealing-explosive.html Earth Sciences Tue, 08 Feb 2022 16:40:07 EST news563560803 Two University of Wyoming researchers are part of the first-ever mapping of magnetic stripes—one of the foundations of plate tectonics—within the lower gabbroic section of fast-spreading oceanic crust. https://phys.org/news/2021-09-magnetic-stripes-fast-ocean-crust.html Earth Sciences Thu, 23 Sep 2021 13:05:27 EDT news551621119 Between July 4 and July 6, 2019, a sequence of powerful earthquakes rumbled near Ridgecrest, California, triggering more than 10,000 aftershocks over a six-week period. Seeing an opportunity, researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech flew instruments attached to high-altitude balloons over the region in hopes of making the first balloon-borne detection of a naturally occurring earthquake. Their goal: To test the technology for future applications at Venus, where balloons equipped with science instruments could float above the planet's exceedingly inhospitable surface. https://phys.org/news/2021-06-nasa-balloon-california-earthquakenext-venus.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 21 Jun 2021 13:31:40 EDT news543501086 Hydrothermally-active submarine volcanoes account for much of Earth's volcanism and are mineral-rich biological hotspots, yet very little is known about the dynamics of microbial diversity in these systems. This week in PNAS, Reysenbach and colleagues, show that at one such volcano, Brothers submarine arc volcano, NE of New Zealand, the geological history and subsurface hydrothermal fluid paths testify to the complexity of microbial composition on the seafloor, and also provide insights into how past and present subsurface processes could be imprinted in the microbial diversity. https://phys.org/news/2020-11-deep-sea-volcanoes-windows-subsurface.html Earth Sciences Mon, 30 Nov 2020 15:00:03 EST news525969852 Most volcanic eruptions take place unseen at the bottom of the world's oceans. In recent years, oceanography has shown that this submarine volcanism not only deposits lava but also ejects large amounts of volcanic ash. https://phys.org/news/2020-06-volcanoes-deep-sea.html Earth Sciences Mon, 29 Jun 2020 12:29:14 EDT news512652550 A new submarine volcano was formed off the island of Mayotte in the Indian Ocean in 2018. This was shown by an oceanographic campaign in May 2019. Now, an international team led by the scientist Simone Cesca from the German GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ is illuminating the processes deep inside the Earth before and during the formation of the new volcano. It is akin to detecting a new type of signal from the Earth's interior that indicates a dramatic movement of molten rocks before the eruption. With their specially developed seismological methods, the researchers are reconstructing the partial emptying of one of the deepest and largest active magma reservoirs ever discovered in the upper mantle. The study is published in the journal Nature Geoscience. https://phys.org/news/2020-01-formation-huge-underwater-volcano-offshore.html Earth Sciences Mon, 06 Jan 2020 11:00:12 EST news497518266 A team of researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Alaska has found that they could estimate the size of bubbles that form from underwater volcanoes by listening to infrasound produced by bubble formation. In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the group describes their study of the infrasound that was produced by an undersea volcano eruption near an Aleutian island and what they learned from it. https://phys.org/news/2019-10-infrasound-underwater-volcano-erupting-formation.html Earth Sciences Mon, 21 Oct 2019 11:00:23 EDT news490867478 New insights into animal patterns around extinct submarine volcanoes could inform measures used to protect marine ecosystems from human activities, such as trawling and deep-sea mining. These insights have been published today in Nature Scientific Reports, and show that the structure of marine life communities depends on depth and small-scale features on the sea floor. https://phys.org/news/2018-03-insights-biodiversity-hotspots-potential-deep-sea.html Environment Thu, 08 Mar 2018 08:14:54 EST news439719275 New research, published today in Nature Scientific Reports, not only implies a link between catastrophic volcanic eruptions and landslides, but also suggests that landslides are the trigger. https://phys.org/news/2018-01-large-volcanic-island-flank-collapses.html Earth Sciences Fri, 19 Jan 2018 08:06:18 EST news435571567 In late December 2014, a submarine volcano in the South Pacific Kingdom of Tonga erupted, sending a violent stream of steam, ash and rock into the air. The ash plumes rose as high as 30,000 feet (9 kilometers) into the sky, diverting flights. When the ash finally settled in January 2015, a newborn island with a 400-foot (120-meter) summit nestled between two older islands - visible to satellites in space. https://phys.org/news/2017-12-nasa-tongan-island-tuff-persist.html Earth Sciences Mon, 11 Dec 2017 11:49:17 EST news432215346