Oh, the science-cause-the-Bible’s-miracles crowd is going to love this.

A powerful volcano erupted under the icesheet of West Antarctica around 2,000 years ago and it might still be active today, a finding that prompts questions about ice loss from the white continent, British scientists report on Sunday.
The explosive event — rated “severe” to “cataclysmic” on an international scale of volcanic force — punched a massive breach in the icesheet and spat out a plume some 12,000 metres (eight miles) into the sky, they calculate.

Most of Antarctica is seismically stable. But its western part lies on a rift in Earth’s crust that gives rise to occasional volcanism and geothermal heat, occurring on the Antarctic coastal margins.
This is the first evidence for an eruption under the ice sheet itself — the slab of frozen water, hundreds of metres (feet) thick in places, that holds most of the world’s stock of fresh water.
Reporting in the journal Nature Geoscience, the investigators from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) describe the finding as “unique.”
It extends the range of known volcanism in Antarctica by some 500 kilometres (300 miles) and raises the question whether this or other sub-glacial volcanoes may have melted so much ice that global sea levels were affected, they say.

Note that this volcano was 2,000 years ago, not the 5,000 years ago the Bible suggests was the timing of Noah’s flood, but the Bible does suggest the lood was caused by both rising AND falling water, so my guess you’re going to see some biblical literalists jumping all over this story.

More from Beliefnet and our partners
Close Ad