The Impact Hypothesis
In addition to these processes, impact events such as ones that created the Addams (crater) on Venus and the Sudbury Igneous Complex in Canada are known to have caused melting and volcanism. In the impact hypothesis, it is proposed that hotspot volcanism can be triggered by certain large-body oceanic impacts which are able to penetrate the thinner oceanic lithosphere, and flood basalt volcanism can be triggered by converging seismic energy focused at the antipodal point opposite major impact sites. Impact-induced volcanism has not been adequately studied and comprises a separate causal category of terrestrial volcanism with implications for the study of hotspots and plate tectonics.
Read more about this topic: Mantle Plume
Famous quotes containing the words impact and/or hypothesis:
“Too many existing classrooms for young children have this overriding goal: To get the children ready for first grade. This goal is unworthy. It is hurtful. This goal has had the most distorting impact on five-year-olds. It causes kindergartens to be merely the handmaidens of first grade.... Kindergarten teachers cannot look at their own children and plan for their present needs as five-year-olds.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Oversimplified, Mercier’s Hypothesis would run like this: “Wit is always absurd and true, humor absurd and untrue.””
—Vivian Mercier (b. 1919)