How old is hawaii islands

So the answer to how old is Hawaii, is that the age is different for each Hawaiian island. Here are the approximate ages of the largest and youngest Hawaiian islands, all on the eastern end of the chain.

The name of the state is the same as the name of the largest island, Hawaii. The island with the most population is Oahu, which is the third-largest island. Maui is the second-largest island and has the second-largest population.

Why do eruptions only occur on the Big Island, and none of the others? The video tells the story. The Hawaiian Islands offer a fascinating natural laboratory to test young earth and old earth models, including the reliability of radiometric dating. Both models have clear expectations that can be compared with what we actually find in nature.

The hot spot heats and expands the crust, eventually melting conduits to the surface and building a volcano on the seafloor. As the crust moves, the source of lava is cut off from the older volcano and a new one begins to form.

Away from the hot spot, the crust shrinks, making the island sink — a process called subsidence. The islands also begin to erode, and reefs grow up around the edge, building up layers to stay where sunlight still reaches. According to the old earth model, this process has been going on for a very long time, maybe sometimes slower or faster, but spread over many millions of years.

These different models lead to very different expectations in terms of the degree of erosion from one island to the next, the degree of subsidence, reef thickness and fossils, and what should be expected when rocks from each island are radiometrically dated.

In this view, the hot spot began some time after the beginning of the flood, and was extremely active, bursting to the surface and forming one volcano after the other in rapid sequence. With most of the islands formed at nearly the same time, the crust should have cooled at about the same rate, so each island should have experienced about the same amount of subsidence.

Each island should also have experienced about the same amount of erosion and growth of reefs around the edges. And if we looked closely at the fossil reef organisms, we should find the same kinds on all the islands since they all were forming at about the same time in the ocean.

Radiometric dating of rocks from many of these islands and seamounts indicate steadily increasing ages up to about 80 million years.

Islands formed over millions of years lead to very different expectations. Slow movement of the crust over millions of years should result in large differences in the degree of erosion, the amount of subsidence, reef thickness, and reef fossils.

At the Big Island of Hawaii we see what an actively growing volcanic island looks like, followed by more and more eroded islands.

Navy on the condition that they restore the island. Age: 1. The island is sparsely populated and its only notable town is the Lanai City. It is known as The Pineapple Isle because of its history as the home of the Dole Food Company, which is known for its canned pineapples. Although Captain James Cook first spotted Maui in , he was not able to land on the island.

The island was formed by two volcanoes over 1. It was one of the first islands inhabited by the Polynesian settlers from Marquesas, Tahiti, and the surrounding Pacific islands. For over a century, from — , Kalawao and Kalaupapa were were sites of a leper colony. Age: 3. The island was the birthplace of the Hawaiian monarchy prior to its conquest by American colonists in In the Canadian geologist J.

He suggested that the islands formed as the crust of the Pacific Ocean floor moved over a source of heat positioned beneath the crust see Figure 4. This hot spot, as it came to be known, produced lava that erupted through the crust onto the ocean floor. Eventually these erupting volcanoes grew large enough to rise above sea level and form islands see Figure 5.

As the. Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed. Hypothesis: A testable statement about the natural world that can be used to build more complex inferences and explanations.

Theory: In science, a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses. The Hawaiian-Emperor volcanic chain stretches from the Big Island of Hawaii to Kure Atoll and then continues underwater as a series of seamounts.

The islands currently above water are shown in solid black, with the populated chain of major islands located between Hawaii and Kauai at the bottom right. The lines that encircle the islands and seamounts indicate the 1-kilometer and 2-kilometer depth contours.

Map adapted from David A. Clague and G. Decker, T. Wright, and P. Stauffer, eds. Geological Survey Professional Paper , In J. Tuzo Wilson proposed that the Hawaiian islands formed when the crust of the Pacific Ocean floor moved over a source of heat arising from within the earth. Diagram adapted from J. Meanwhile, a new island was forming so that over time a chain of islands was produced extending away from the hot spot. As the islands continued to move toward the northwest, away from the hot spot, they were eroded by the wind, rain, and waves and eventually sank below sea level to become seamounts.

Once this hypothesis was proposed, scientists began searching for evidence to test it. For example, the hypothesis predicts that the more northwesterly seamounts and islands should be older than the islands to the southeast. Geologists can measure the age of volcanic rocks by measuring the quantities of argon gas in those rocks. Immediately after lava cools, it contains no argon because the gas is expelled from the molten rock. But volcanic rocks also contain a radioactive.