A volcano off the coast of the US is expected to erupt imminently and could trigger a whopping 10,000 earthquakes all at once.
The volcano in question is situated nearly a mile under the sea on a geological hot spot and is showing signs that an eruption could happen anytime.
Known as Axial Seamount, it is located off the coast of Oregon in an area where two tectonic plates are constantly separating, resulting in a steady build-up of pressure.
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Speaking to CNN, William Wilcock, who studies the volcano and is a marine geophysicist and professor at the University of Washington School of Oceanography, said: “At the moment, there are a couple hundred earthquakes a day, but that’s still a lot less than we saw before the previous eruption.
“I would say it was going to erupt sometime later [this year] or early 2026, but it could be tomorrow, because it’s completely unpredictable.”
The last eruption of this volcano took place in April 2015 and it was studied by a team from the university.
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During the eruption, the team noted 10,000 small earthquakes occurred within 24 hours.
Debbie Kelley, who is the director of the Regional Cabled Array, said: “It’s not a very explosive event. You won’t see the ash clouds above water, anything like that.
“It’s like if you put a mile of seawater on top of Kilauea … you may see some fountaining, but that’s it.”
She added: “The magma’s pretty close to the surface. It’s about a mile beneath the surface, which is very shallow compared with a lot of land volcanoes, where it may be eight miles (12.9 kilometers) deep.”
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This means that we don’t need to panic just yet as the eruption is expected to have a very minimal impact on people, making it an ideal eruption for close human observation and there are even plans to livestream the event.
Interestingly, observations of the volcano’s most recent eruptions, which occurred in 1998, 2011 and 2015, all took place at the start of the year between January and April.
This is when the Earth is moving aaway from the sun.
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Wilcock added: “I don’t think we fully understand why that is, but it may be related to the [gravitational] forces from the moon influencing the volcano.”
According to Kelley, the moon’s gravitational pull that moves the ocean tides is what actually causes these pressure variations under the waves.