More Aloha

The islands that comprise the state of Hawai’i are part of an extensive archipelago of volcanic islands—most of them well below sea level and most of them dormant---that stretches from the Big Island of Hawaii north and west to the Aleution Islands, another volcanic archipelago that stretches westward from Alaska to Asia.

Radiometric dates of basalts show that Hawaii’s islands grow older to the northwest; the big Island, the southernmost island in the chain, is the youngest (and indeed is still growing through active volcanic flows).

The Big Island is also the largest of the islands, thus it’s name, and the older islands are smaller.

The Big Island is the only currently volcanically active island; the older islands are not.

These three different lines of observation led geologists to formulate the hot spot theory.

Illustration from here.