{"id":67196,"date":"2026-09-20T08:09:31","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T22:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=67196"},"modified":"2026-09-20T08:09:31","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T22:09:31","slug":"the-massive-radioactive-hot-spot-beneath-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=67196","title":{"rendered":"The MASSIVE Radioactive Hot Spot Beneath Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Radioactive<\/p>\n

Beneath central Australia lies one of the strangest geothermal anomalies on the continent: a massive region of unusually hot crust stretching from northeastern South Australia into western Queensland. In parts of this underground heat zone, temperatures at depths of around 4 to 5 kilometres can approach 250\u00b0C, despite there being no active volcano, obvious magma chamber or Yellowstone-style mantle plume beneath the Australian outback.<\/p>\n

In this video, we explore the massive radioactive hot spot beneath Australia and investigate what is actually heating the continent from below. The answer appears to involve ancient Australian continental crust enriched in uranium, thorium and potassium, radioactive elements that have been producing radiogenic heat for more than a billion years. Huge episodes of Proterozoic felsic magmatism and crustal reworking concentrated these heat-producing elements into granites and other silica-rich rocks across parts of Australia.<\/p>\n

Click to view the video:\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fj6y-WPbKcI<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beneath central Australia lies one of the strangest geothermal anomalies on the continent: a massive region of unusually hot crust stretching from northeastern South Australia into western Queensland. In parts of this underground heat zone, temperatures at depths of around 4 to 5 kilometres can approach 250\u00b0C, despite there being no active volcano, obvious magma … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The MASSIVE Radioactive Hot Spot Beneath Australia”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67198,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67196\/revisions\/67198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}