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“A significant fraction of Earth’s volcanism happens at places like Axial,” said Rubin, referring to the mid-oceanic ridges, which collectively represent a spine of volcanism stretching about 40,000 miles around the world.

But it won’t be a breeze to finish this work. Years of processing and analysis lies ahead.

“There really is both a science and an art to processing and interpreting seismic data,” said Jackie Caplan-Auerbach, a seismologist and volcanologist at Western Washington University. Compared with 2D profiles, “3D seismic data is an order of magnitude more challenging.”