Hotspot (geology)

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In geology, a hotspot is a location on the Earth's surface that has experienced active volcanism for a long period of time. J. Tuzo Wilson came up with the idea in 1963 that volcanic chains like the Hawaiian Islands result from the slow movement of a tectonic plate across a "fixed" hot spot deep beneath the surface of the planet. Hotspots were thought to be caused by a narrow stream of hot mantle convecting up from the mantle-core boundary called a mantle plume [1], the latest geological evidence is pointing to upper-mantle convection as a cause[2][3][4]. This in turn has re-raised the antipodal pair impact hypothesis, the idea that pairs of opposite hot spots may result from the impact of a large meteor.[5] Geologists have identified some 40-50 such hotspots around the globe, with Hawaii, Réunion, Yellowstone, Galápagos, and Iceland overlying the most currently active.