Abstract
If ocean floor hot spring activity is to continue long enough to produce a large massive sulphide deposit, heat must be stripped by the circulating water from a store within the ocean crust. We argue here that this heat store can only be a magma chamber, and that production of a large sulphide deposit requires very rapid crystallization of large volumes of magma (∼1 km3 per 100 yr for several hundred years). The effects of such rapid solidification should be apparent in the gabbroic components of ophiolite complexes, as well as in plutons in other environments where large high temperature massive sulphides are formed.
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Cann, J., Strens, M. Black smokers fuelled by freezing magma. Nature 298, 147–149 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/298147a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/298147a0
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