The Eighth Wonder of the World in New Zealand: Seismic studies confirm the new Hochstetter paradigm

Abstract

The most famous tourist attractions in the southern hemisphere, in the nineteenth century were the Pink and White Terraces—New Zealand’s lost Eighth Wonder of the World. They were assumed lost in an1886 eruption. The unpublished 2018 data from passive seismic stations across the Lake Rotomahana overflow in the Taupō Volcanic Zone are examined for evidence of acoustic interfaces that may be traced to Te Tarata, the White Terraces, the stations were coincidentally placed over the reported course of the Kaiwaka Channel buried in the 1886 Tarawera eruption. There was no seismic evidence of the Channel at the reported altitude under either the Smith-Keam or Hochstetter paradigms. This absence is strong empirical negative evidence that the Kaiwaka Channel did not flow beneath today’s Lake Rotomahana overflow, as has been assumed since 1886 under the Smith-Keam paradigm. Unlike the seismic and GPR Black Terrace Crater and Te Tuhi’s Stream (aka Black Terrace Stream) bed evidence obtained by the same 2018 survey—there is no evidence of a pre-1886 eruption paleochannel beneath today’s overflow saddle at the lake and at the Kaiwaka altitude under the 1886 Smith-Keam paradigm or the contemporary Hochstetter paradigm, the latter based upon Hochstetter’s unique terrestrial survey of the Rotomahana Basin. The study reports strong empirical evidence contradicting the assumed Kaiwaka location and with it, the assumed locations of old Lake Rotomahana and the Pink and White Terraces. The Smith-Keam paradigm is thereby confounded. The seismic data provide concomitant empirical evidence for the Rotomahana altimetry and topography reported by Bunn and Nolden, who locate the Kaiwaka Channel 440 m west of the seismic stations. The Pink and White Terraces can no longer be assumed destroyed. They may yet be explored and recovered.