Scientists have thought for a while now that Hawaii was formed from a mantle plume, "an upwelling of hot material from deep within the earth", but not all scientists have agreed on this theory. Shear waves (S-waves) travel more slowly through higher temperature areas of the mantle. Scientists can use seismographs from earthquakes with a magnitude of 5.5 or more to put together 3-D pictures of the mantle, and they have. In the past, the only thing that was holding scientists back was that they couldn't find a way to put seismographs in the ocean surrounding Hawaii, but now they've managed to put some on the seafloor surrounding Hawaii and using the data from these seismographs, scientists have found that there is a very large mantle plume under Hawaii that extends 900+ miles into the mantle. This new evidence has got supporters of the plume theory very excited and naysayers are cautiously beginning to agree with the theory. More analysis will have to be done to truly prove the theory, but this has definately helped the theory.
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