It’s official, the Philippines has the earth’s largest known caldera.
In a recently-published study, titled “Benham Rise unveiled: Morphology and structure of an Eocene large igneous province in the West Philippine Basin,” a group of marine geophysicists found the seismically active underwater region in the Philippine Sea.
A ‘caldera’ is a large crater-like feature formed after a volcano eruption, according to National Geographic. When a volcano erupts, magma is expelled forcefully from within the magma chamber underneath the volcano. Because the structural support that the magma chamber had provided the volcano disappears, it causes the sides and top of the volcano to collapse inward. Calderas often vary in size ranging from 1 to 100 kilometers in diameter.
