Here's How To Build In Island From Scratch, According To Nature

The steps are very easy, actually: you take a volcano, put it underwater and multiply that by about a million.Show more

It might sound like a joke, but reality is that the ocean floor is riddled with volcanoes. There are millions of them underwater, each with the potential to create an island.

If you are curious of the big bang that is happening beneath the Earth’s crust, forget, Kilimanjaro. Forget Etna. What you really have to to is don a wetsuit and take a deep dive somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, where thousands of these underwater volcanoes are still active. They don’t have the spectacularity of their above-ground cousins, but they sure pack a punch.

Science believes that these submarine volcanoes erupt in shorter bursts over longer periods of time. Their cycles can last from around two weeks, to a span of over thousands of years, steadily releasing their magma. Thanks to a technological advance that has been gracing us with its service since 1990, scientist are able to sonically listen in on these underwater eruptions and track when they happen.

Today these eruptions help understand the extent of their contribution to global warming and climate change, since they also spew carbon dioxide, just like their counterparts above water. In the case of the underwater volcanoes, the CO2 gets trapped underwater and is released in the atmosphere much later. Still in the early stages of development, these studies help unveil a new side of volcanic activity, one that could only have been guessed before.