Questions tagged [islands]

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Guessing region of the world from coastline / border shape: geographic insights for Worldle game

The game Worldle (https://worldle.teuteuf.fr/) is related to the recent craze in online once-a-day puzzles like Wordle. You are shown the outline of a country and get six guesses. For each wrong guess,...
  • 113
12 votes
4 answers
4k views

How plausible is it that "a portion of the ocean's floor" could suddenly be "thrown up to the surface" as described in this Lovecraft story?

This question came to me after reading H.P. Lovecraft's "Dagon"- the protagonist has fallen asleep drifting on the ocean in a small boat. He wakes up one morning to discover he's been ...
  • 121
4 votes
1 answer
80 views

For how long can mid-oceanic islands be volcanically active?

The island of St Helena in the South Atlantic was volcanically active for 5 million years, or maybe longer. Is this period of time unusual - which other mid-oceanic islands were active for as long as ...
  • 171
8 votes
1 answer
2k views

Do these islands exist or are they technical artifacts?

I am using data in a GIS application that shows some land or islands in areas where I would not expect such, or at least have never heard that there are islands. How to find these in Google Earth? Do ...
2 votes
0 answers
59 views

Bouvet Island volcano [closed]

In this remote island (the most remote!) there is a volcano that wikipedia report as inactive, but from google maps there seems to be some ash in the sky. Are there some ongoing eruption?
  • 161
6 votes
1 answer
87 views

How do long, thin, island chains such as North Carolina's outer banks, form?

I can't think of a possible explanation, there's no volcanic activity in the area, and it gets destroyed every time a hurricane passes through. How did it get there?
1 vote
1 answer
55 views

How are tall cays formed?

From reading about Cays on Wikipedia it seems they are formed from coral reefs covered with sand or gravel. There are however some cays scattered around the world which are hundreds of feet off of ...
  • 121
3 votes
2 answers
118 views

Is Mississippi and parts of Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky one giant island? [closed]

Apologies if this is a poorly written question, I'm writing this on my phone. I noticed that there were a lot of rather long rivers in the region in question, and I began to wonder just how connected ...
1 vote
1 answer
314 views

How does fertile soil reach newborn volcanic islands?

When a volcanic island first surfaces, I assume no vegetation can grow, as it probably only consists of volcanic rock. How would a volcanic island like Iceland that is far from any continent grow to ...
0 votes
0 answers
91 views

What initiates the plumes which create oceanic hot spots? [duplicate]

What causes the large and very long lasting magma plumes which rise up from the mantle and create a hot spot such as the ones which built the island chains of Hawaii and Galapagos? The volcanic ...
7 votes
4 answers
5k views

Is Australia the largest island?

I had participated in a quiz recently and one of the questions was 'which is the largest island in the world?'. I wrote Australia as the answer remembering that it was the 5th largest country in the ...