There’s a molten blob the size of Maine slowly crawling its way under the Eastern United States, and scientists aren’t entirely sure what it wants. What they do know is that it’s moving—toward New York.
This underground mass, formally known as the Northern Appalachian Anomaly, is made of abnormally hot rock deep beneath the Earth’s crust. It stretches 220 miles wide and sits about 125 miles down, oozing southwest at a glacial pace of 12 miles per million years.
So, it’s taking its time, but it’s definitely not sitting still.
“This thermal upwelling has long been a puzzling feature of North American geology,” said study lead Tom Gernon, a geoscientist at the University of Southampton. For a while, researchers figured it was just leftover magma from when North America split off from Africa 180 million years ago. However, that timeline didn’t align. This event appears to have occurred more recently, approximately 80 million years ago, when Greenland and Canada separated.
Massive Mystery Blob Is Shaping Mountains and Creeping Toward Manhattan
To map its movements, scientists used seismic tomography, which is essentially an MRI for tectonic plates. Their simulations showed the blob has been pushing its way inland like subterranean lava lamp sludge.
That pressure may be why the Appalachian Mountains are still standing tall despite millions of years of erosion. The hot rock beneath them acts like a jack, lifting the crust up from below.
As the blob moves, it could also help explain rare volcanic activity or how diamonds reach the surface. Another blob—this one under Greenland—might even be affecting how ice sheets melt from below. Basically, these underground heat zones are reshaping the land long after the continents themselves stopped drifting.
Eventually, the blob will drift past the Appalachians, and without that thermal lift, the mountains will start to slump. Erosion will pick up the slack, wearing away the elevation that’s been stubbornly hanging on. There won’t be a collapse. Just a slow unwinding of a process that started millions of years ago.
Until then, the land holds shape because of a force no one can see. It’s not ancient debris or leftover heat. It’s a living system, still moving, still pressing upward. If you thought the ground was settled, think again. The continent is still sorting itself out.
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