"Hot Rock" Found Under New England: Rutgers Scientist Levin on LIVE

"Hot Rock" Found Under New England: Rutgers Scientist Levin on LIVE

Rutgers University Professor and Geophysicist Vadim Levin appeared on GoLocal LIVE to discuss his latest findings -- that a mass of mass of warm rock is rising, slowly, beneath New England. 

“The upwelling we detected is like a hot air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England,” said Levin. “It is not Yellowstone (National Park)-like, but it’s a distant relative in the sense that something relatively small – no more than a couple hundred miles across – is happening.”

According to Rutgers, the study, which tapped seismic data through the National Science Foundation’s EarthScope program, was published online this week in Geology. Study co-authors include Yiran Li and Peter Skryzalin, who did their research through Rutgers’ Aresty Research Assistant Program, and researchers at Yale University.

“Our study challenges the established notion of how the continents on which we live behave,” said Levin. "It challenges the textbook concepts taught in introductory geology classes.”