You think Maryland is big?

Imagine a volcano ten times bigger.

CNN reports the world largest volcano was found underwater about 1,000 miles off of the coast of Japan earlier this month. Named Tamu Massif, the volcano covers about 120,000 square miles which is about the size of New Mexico and trumps the former “largest volcano” on the planet Mauna Loa by about 118,000 square miles.

“The size of New Mexico, wow, thats huge,” said Gary Martin, Sophomore.

Will Sager and a team of scientist from the University of Houston; however he named the volcano “Tamu” which stands for Texas A&M University, where Sager formerly taught. Sager specializes in Earth History and plate tectonics and has been on 38 research cruises and was the chief scientist on 17 of them. Sager has been studying this volcano for 20 years now.

The word “massif” is French for massive and that is an understatement. The volcano, scientist believe, has been inactive for a long time now. A volcano that size would make for quite the explosion.

Scientists were shocked that no one has come across this “massive” volcano for 145 million years.

Sager also stated in an interview with CNN that the discovery could give clues to how these huge volcanoes are formed, saying “it’s different from any other submarine volcano on this earth.”

Chemistry teacher at North Harford, Mrs. Dana Wilson says shes not surprised about discovery, “well there is a huge plate boundary over there by Japan.”

Out sizing the second largest volcano on our planet by over 98%, volcanos more this big are found elsewhere in the universe.PBS.org explains that Mars’s volcano Olympus Mons, which can be seen from the backyard on a clear night, only outweighs Tamu by 25% in mass and doesn’t even stretch as wide as Tamu.

Sager knows he found a huge volcano, but he also believes there might be another big find out there somewhere. “There may be larger volcanoes, because there are bigger igneous features out there such as the Ontong Java Plateau, but we don’t know if these features are one volcano or complexes of volcanoes” said Sager in an interview with daily mail of the UK.