Interstellar Asteroids and Large Igneous Provinces (LIP)
Interstellar asteroid impacts created both the Deccan Traps and the Siberian traps. An interstellar asteroid can easily punch through the crust and detonate in the mantle releasing millions of megatons of thermal energy. The Empire’s arguments about pressure release melting are both deceptive and irrelevant.
After the Impact flare subsides the impact site will now produce a vast amount of molten rock which defines a Large Igneous Province (LIP).
Because of thermal and mechanical expansion (detonation), the impact point and the surrounding area may rise a kilometer in height. This rise in height explains why the impact point is not buried by its own flood basalts. It can be usually detected as a ring dike complex. Any rapid emplacement of a huge volume of magma on the Earth’s surface is a strong indicator for an interstellar impact. Magma production from subduction or tectonic processes rarely produce events covering vast areas. Super volcanoes are usually impact plume related.
After the impact flare has subsided the impact site produces a massive fountain of very high temperature rock having the viscosity of water. In the case of the Siberian impact, early magma production might have exceeded a hundred cubic kilometers per day or about 4 Amazon river equivalents of water thin magma.
The flood basalt immediate production (within one million years of the impact) will dwarf any later magma production by the resulting “mantle” plume.
This can be observed in the Columbia River Basalts after the impact which produced the Yellowstone plume. The impact point appears to be in north eastern Oregon in or near the Wallowa and Blue mountains.
The impact point which produced the Siberian Traps appears to be the Norilsk structure. The Deccan Traps have at least one impact site in the Singhbhum, the Simlipal Impact Ring Complex.