The 'Eye of Sauron' underwater volcano

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 The 'Eye of Sauron' underwater volcano


Science usually brings us many joys. From finding vaccines to diseases that could kill us, such as COVID-19, although it is not the first and will not be the last; to the discovery of animals that seem to be taken from movies. Now, a new discovery in the seabed brings us a volcano similar to the Eye of Sauron. Yes, the one that appears in The Lord of the Rings. In addition, Sauron also appears in The Hobbit and The Silmarillion. All are books by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The 'Eye of Sauron' underwater volcano



The discovery came as a surprise to the team exploring Australia's Indian Ocean territories aboard the CSIRO ocean research vessel RV Investigator. And that's when the underwater volcano in the shape of the Eye of Sauron appeared 280 kilometers off Christmas Island. The discovery was slow because they had to pass a multibeam sonar at 3,100 meters through the area below the ship to see the whole thing.

The underwater volcano shaped like the 'Eye of Sauron'.
The underwater volcano is "a giant oval-shaped depression, called a caldera, 6.2 km by 4.8 km wide," Tim O'Hara, senior curator of marine invertebrates at Museums Victoria, explains in The Conversation. "It is surrounded by a 300-meter-high rim (resembling Sauron's eyelids), and has a cone-shaped peak of 300," he adds.

What's more, the volcano was not alone in the depths of the ocean. A smaller sea mountain "covered with numerous volcanic cones" also appeared on the map. A little further south of the Eye of Sauron, there was also a "larger, flat-topped" seamount, O'Hara says. They decided to stick with the Lord of the Rings designations and are now called Barad-dûr ("Dark Fortress") and Ered Lithui ("Ash Mountains"), respectively.

The Karme group of seamounts formed more than 100 million years ago.


These three new geological features are part of the Karma group of seamounts. Geologists estimate that they may have formed more than 100 million years ago. At that time Australia was much closer to Antarctica than it is today.


The 'Eye of Sauron' underwater volcano



How it was formed


But how did the Eye of Sauron form? O'Hara dares to explain how this peculiar caldera could have formed. "A caldera forms when a volcano collapses. The molten magma at the base of the volcano moves upward, leaving empty chambers. The thin solid crust on the surface of the dome then collapses, creating a large crater-like structure. Often, a small new peak begins to form in the center as the volcano continues to spew magma," he says. And this is what may have shaped this peculiar underwater volcano.

In short, this submarine volcano and the two nearby mountains already have a name. And not just any name, but a very geeky one. In the end, literature or cinema can also be good places to be inspired to name our reality. The new underwater volcano named Eye of Sauron near Christmas Island is a great example of how science draws from other areas.


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