As previously stated, Hawaii is a chain of islands but, how were they formed?

Would you believe me if I told you all those 137 islands are created by the same volcano? Well, believe me, they are.

Hawaii is one of the very few cases on Earth. The islands sit on top of what is called a hotspot. As most people know, The planet has tectonic plates, and Hawaii is right above the Pacific Plate that keeps slowly moving northwest. The hotspot though, is a stationary point connected to the center of the earth that constantly keeps erupting. The constant eruptions create layers upon layers until the island emerges on sea surface. So, as the years pass (millions, mind you) the plate moves and the hotspot keeps creating new islands. Basically just like chocolate bonbons are produced on a machine dropping the chocolate on a conveyor belt... but upside-down, haha! This explains why the only ative volcanoes are on the big island. In some million years, the volcano will be on the new island that is forming right now as I write: Lo'ihi.  The fact that the island of Hawai'i is still growing makes it the youngest island on the archipelago; the oldest is Kauai.

The main island is constantly erupting. Its last eruption lasted more than 30 years! Hawaiian volcanoes are called shield volcanoes because they look like lying shields. They are "smooth" compared to the sharp conic volcanoes we're used to. This and the fact that the lava is very fluid in Hawaii, makes it much easier for the inhabitants as it travels gently all the way to the ocean in a very slow river. It is a popular attraction to watch the lava flows pouring to the sea at the south of the island.

By now you're probably frowning your eyebrows and thinking "No, that's I lie, I saw on the news the volcano spewing lava into the sky!!" Let me explain.

As I said, the Hawaiian eruptions are calm and don't usually harm anyone. This was a particular case where the Halema'uma'u crater - a second crater inside the bigger crater of Kilauea Volcano (actually a Caldera, which is what it's called when a vulcanic cone that collapses and doesn't erupt anymore) collapsed and the lava that was slowly rising was pressured underground and ran all over to the Pu'u 'O'o crater, 22.5 km away from Halema'uma'u crater and came out with huge amounts of pressure, rising higher than the Statue of Liberty. Contrary to popular belief and general social media panic, it didn't destroy all the island and make thousands of people evacuate it. It affected an area of roughly 50 km, and we can obviously see the island is much bigger than that. So don't panic and cancel your trip to Hawaii. There are literally lots of other places on the same island you can visit, let alone the other islands.The eruption started in May and it entered a hiatus state in September. It may keep flowing lava normaly, or explode again. No one knows. And uou probably looked at the TV and thought "Why on Earth would they build a house in the slopes of the most active volcano in the world?!" For the same reason I explained above, Hawaiian volcanoes are usually gentle and what happened this year was a rare case. Many grow up in Pahoa knowing the deadly eruptions might be a possible scenario but it always seems so unreal due to the frequent calm lava flows. Most Kanaka Maoli or native Hawaiians, accept it. They believe the fire goddess Pele was angry and spewed all that lava. That's why on TV news footage, we see flowers and other natural gifts standing in the lava's path. They believe an offering could calm down the Goddess who is believed to have quite a temper!