Does it threaten a megatsunami?

A long, long time ago, 73,000 years to be exact, the eastern face of a volcano collapsed in Cape Verde.This caused a wave of gigantic proportions, which rose to 170 meters high and then crashed with enormous force in a nearby island.

This megatsunami , as it was baptized in the journal Science Advances , is the largest one with a geological record.

They say it can happen again

This is stated by Ricardo Ramalho , a geophysicist at the University of Bristol, although he clarifies that it cannot be known exactly when or where.

The problem is the young oceanic volcanoes-such as those found in the Canary Islands or the Azores, or Hawaii-that have very high altitudes and steep walls; the scientist believes that the potential disaster is there, if it happens again with certainty it will originate in these volcanoes.

The flanks of some of the oceanic volcanoes collapse periodically, causing huge amounts of rock they slide down and the water moves below; This is how tsunamis form.

In 2011, a team of European geologists registered traces of moderate tsunamis that would have hit the island of Santiago, in the archipelago of Cape Verde, in front of Senegal.This study dated the evidence in About 100,000 years ago, when Fogo , an oceanic volcano, gradually collapsed at a distance of 55km.

Ramalho, who in 2007 had done a doctoral research in The island of Santiago, discovered there a mysterious trail of rocks scattered on a large plateau, 200 meters above sea level.He realized that so that these rocks, coming from the cliffs, were extracted and pushed to the site where were, it would require a much bigger wave than the one suggested by the team in 2011.

Does it threaten a megatsunami?

Cape Verde

So he and his team took samples of the rocks and noticed what They had the same composition as those on the edges of the plateau.That, and chaotic debris, including marine fossils, confirmed that there had been a megatsunami, since the necessary power of a wave to drag the largest stone would have to have been at least 170 meters high.

Precise date

Collaborators at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University (New York), made measurements of the isotope concentrations of helium in rock debris.

When solar cosmic rays hit certain minerals, such as olivine , helium-3 is produced.When measuring the amount of helium-3 in the exposed rock surfaces since the megatsunami occurred, you can tell when it happened.So, the researchers calculated that this megatsunami happened, more or less, 73,000 years .

Is there a real danger that we will see the disaster?

As mentioned at the beginning of our article, the Azores, the Canary Islands or Hawaii would be the most logical places.

Ramalho thinks that the Canary Islands, specifically, are the most vulnerable to experience collapses on their slopes, because they have young volcanoes , active and very steep.

Does it threaten a megatsunami?

The megatsunami will happen.However, it is not likely that we will suffer, since this type of event occurs every 100,000 years.At least 25,000 years of tranquility remain.We can breathe relieved.

Read also about another very famous volcano and the worst eruption in history, the Krakatoa.

Images: Ben Salter, Douglas Sprott, fabcom, Julien Lagarde, Sergio Machado BRA sileiro, Pablo Fernandez

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