'Ghost' island in Pakistan

A new island has just appeared in the clear blue waters of Pakistan, but no one wants to go for a vacation, because it will be immediately hidden, only exists for a few months.

The mud island has not yet appeared in satellite images in February 2010 (left),
but it appears in the picture taken on January 11 (right).Photo: NASA.

Many Pakistani fishermen reported to officials about the emergence of a new mud volcano in the Arabian Sea at the end of November. The American Earth Observing - 1 captured a photo of it on January 11. It didn't appear when the satellite photographed the Arabian Sea in February last year, National Geographic reported.

The US Aerospace Agency (NASA) said that mud volcanoes used to appear in the Arabian Sea before. Most of them disappear within a few months. In fact, the picture taken by the US satellite on January 11 shows that sediment is escaping from the mud volcano. That shows that the island will soon melt.

About three kilometers from the coast, Pakistan's offshore mud volcano is between 30 and 60 meters high - James R. Hein, a scientist from the US Geological Bureau - said.

The mud on the volcanic surface is relatively cold, but quite mushy. Hein said, very few mud volcanoes popped out of the sea.

A land-based mud volcano in Azerbaijan.Photo: catastrophemap.com.

Mud volcanoes - can appear on land or under the sea - formed when the silt, silt or clay layers are compressed upward by geological tectonic activity or the formation of hydrocarbon gases.

The mud volcanoes in Pakistan are created by tectonic activity. The Arabian strata is sinking beneath the Eurasian continent and pushing sediments upward, creating coastal plains and continental shelf slopes.

Beneath the plains, the sinking process of Arabian tectonic plates also causes the stone to melt into lava. Heat from lava heats groundwater and hydrocarbon gases at the top. Because water and gases warm up, they dissolve more easily and form acid. When groundwater becomes acid, they dissolve the upper rock layers into a form of mud. Thanks to cracks in the ocean floor, mud escapes at low speed.

Most mud volcanoes are only a few centimeters high, but some land volcanoes in Pakistan can reach a height of 100 meters.