The geysers of Yellowstone National Park owe their existence to the "Yellowstone hotspot", a region of molten rock buried deep beneath Yellowstone, geologists have found, but how hot is this "hotspot," and what's causing it?
In an effort to find out, Derek Schutt of Colorado State University and Ken Dueker of the University of Wyoming took the hotspot's temperature. They published results in the August, 2008, issue of the journal Geology.
"Yellowstone is located atop of one of the few large volcanic hotspots on Earth," said Schutt. "But though the hot material is a volcanic plume, it's cooler than others of its kind, such as one in Hawaii."