Tamu Massif

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The Tamu Massif is a gigantic, inactive submarine volcano in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, about 1,600 kilometers east of Japan. It is part of the Shatsky Rise, a chain of seamounts, which was created by a series of undersea volcanic eruptions millions of years before 130 to 145, and occupies an area of 300,000 km ². The largest active volcano on earth, the Hawaiian Mauna Loa, on the other hand has an area of ​​about 5,000 km ². The Tamu Massif could be the single largest volcano on Earth in its size comparable to the largest known volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons on Mars. As the investigation of core samples showed that were obtained by the research vessel JOIDES Resolution, comes the great mass of basalt which forms the Tamu Massif, from a single source near the center of the massif.