We now have confirmation from space that a new island has formed off the coast of Pakistan. Yesterday, NASA sent their Earth Observing-1(EO-1) satellite to check on the situation, and it took the picture on the right above (and below). The island is most likely a pile of mud from the ocean floor that erupted as a mud volcano shortly after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck northwestern Pakistan.

The image on the left was taken by the Landsat 8 satellite on April 17. The region has seen mud volcanoes in the past, including one spied by satellites in 2011. The volcanoes form when mud and or water is squeezed out of the sediment on the ocean floor, which may have been caused by the earthquake in this most recent instance.

*Images: NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using EO-1 ALI data from the NASA EO-1 team. *