Gigantic Underwater Avalanche Recorded

Scientists have recorded a huge underwater avalanche that occurred in Monterey Canyon off the coast of California in January. They had used instruments to track the large flow of sediment that rushed down the slope.

Dan Parsons, a professor of process sedimentology at the University of Hull, U.K., said that these flows, called turbidity currents, are some of the most powerful flows on Earth. He explained that rivers are the only other mechanism that transports comparable volumes of sediment across the globe. On the other hand, even though they have hundreds of thousands of measurements from rivers, they only have a small handful of measurements from turbidity currents -- often for short periods of time and at only one position within a system.

'Smart boulders' record huge underwater avalanche: Scientists have had a remarkable close-up encounter with a… https://t.co/58MN1StL06 pic.twitter.com/ZHrfwKMtMY

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The underwater avalanche, in which the mass of sand and rock kept moving for over 50 km, skidded from a point less than 300 meters below the surface of the sea with a depth of more than 1,800 meters. It descent with as speed of more than 8 meters per second, according to BBC News.

The instruments used by the researchers look like Mars landers. These include the Benthic Event Detector (BED). MBARI's Professor Charlie Paul described it as "smart boulder." He explained that the BED is a 44 cm sphere and has an electronic package entombed within it. It gauges pressure and orientation and will record how it moves down the canyon floor. They use the BEDs to detect the progression of the turbidity current as it rolls over one BED after another.

The force of these huge flows of sediments has been known to disjoin some underwater cables that lift telecommunications around the world. Scientists could discover more about how the turbidity currents are causing and they work through these instruments, according to Age Times.