Fourth Location: Sturge Island (Balleny Islands)

Well, I'm in a weird place now.

Guess where I am... Antartica! Well, not really the main continent. I'm on one of those islands around it called Sturge Island (67°27'40.33"S 164°42'3.78"E), and man, I thought Mt. Everest was cold. This place is torture! It was also really hard for me to get here because the only airline that went to Antartica was this really shady one called Antartic Airlines... Sturge Island is southeast of Australia and is located in the Southern Ocean. And sadly, this island is uninhabited by people. But thankfully, there are penguins!

Sturge Island

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joe_ruffles/4725777350/

Sturge Island is one of three islands in the Balleny Island group and is the biggest of the three. The other two islands, Young and Buckle, are northwest of Sturge and form a mini Hawaii. I also discovered that these islands are close to a divergent boundary! Finally! But how these islands relate to the boundary is a little more complicated. As said in my previous posts, a divergent boundary is when two plates move apart and leave a gap in the middle. Molten rock from the mantle then flows within this gap to form new, young rock. These areas are called hotspots. The nearby divergent boundary created a hotspot called the Balleny Hotspot. As molten rock flowed into the hotspot, it hardened and created the Balleny Islands. Because the islands are right on top of a hotspot, the molten rock under the rocks constantly heats them up and generates volcanic activity.

Not the hotspot in the middle of the Mid-ocean ridge.

http://gomyclass.com/geology10/files/lecshare1/html/web_data/file50.htm

Wait a second, couldn't all of this information be used to prove that divergent boundaries exist? This is perfect for Jimmy! Then, out of the corner of my eye, I finally saw Jimmy Lin! He achieved his dream of finding proof of a divergent boundary and can finally go home. We are going to go back to Seattle on that sketchy airline, and I will have to end this series of blog posts. It was interesting to learn so much about plate tectonics as I was looking for Jimmy. This was really a trip worth going on!

Goodbye! Jerry Wu.