Tag: Plate
Cold plates and hot melts
The movements of Earth’s tectonic plates shape the face of our planet. The sinking of one plate beneath another, known as subduction, causes volcanism...
“Lost continent” found under Mauritius
Scientists have confirmed the existence of a "lost continent" under the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius that was left-over by the break-up of the...
Scientists reconstruct what the Gibraltar Arc was like 9 million years...
A team of Andalusian scientists, led by the University of Granada (UGR), has been able to reconstruct for the first time what the Gibraltar...
Southern Italy: Earthquake hazard due to active plate boundary
Tectonically, the Mediterranean is extremely active and thus threatened by natural catastrophes. This is underpinned by the recent earthquakes in Central Italy. Over the...
Heat from earth’s core could be underlying force in plate tectonics
For decades, scientists have theorized that the movement of Earth's tectonic plates is driven largely by negative buoyancy created as they cool. New research,...
Release of water shakes Pacific Plate at depth
Tonga is a seismologists' paradise, and not just because of the white-sand beaches. The subduction zone off the east coast of the archipelago racks...
Where’s the center of North America? Geographer’s new method finds a...
Where is the geographic center of a state, country or a continent?
It's a question fraught with uncertainty. Do you include water in your calculation?...
Geologists publish new details about evolution of East African Rift Valley
Researchers in the College of Arts and Sciences have published new details about the evolution of the East African Rift (EAR) Valley, one of...
Satellites help discover a jet stream in the Earth’s core
A jet stream within the Earth's molten iron core has been discovered by scientists using the latest satellite data that helps create an 'x-ray'...
Above and beyond megathrusts
In the Nankai subduction zone, Japan, non-volcanic deep tremors occur down-dip of the megathrust seismogenic zone, and are observed to coincide temporally with short-term...
Plate tectonics shift?
Plate tectonics, the idea that the surface of the Earth is made up of plates that move apart and come back together, has been...
Why are there volcanoes on an island that isn’t near any...
Madagascar, the big island off the east coast of Africa with the lemurs and baobabs, is thought to be sitting in the middle of...
Subduction zone geometry: Mega-earthquake risk indicator
Mega-earthquakes (with a magnitude greater than 8.5) mainly occur on subduction faults where one tectonic plate passes under another. But the probability of such...
Modelling Gondwana break-up
Gondwana break-up changed the global continental configuration, leading to the opening of major oceanic gateways, shifts in the climate system and significant impacts on...
Geologists discover how a tectonic plate sank
In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Saint Louis University researchers report new information about conditions that can...
Australian continent shifts with the seasons, study finds
Australia shifts and tilts back and forth by several millimeters each year because of changes to Earth's center of mass, according to a new...
Earthquake series cause uplift variations at continental margins
A new mechanism may explain how great earthquakes with magnitudes larger than M7 are linked to coastal uplift in many regions worldwide. This has...
Case of Earth’s missing continental crust solved: It sank
How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer that question, you first need to discover that it's missing.
That's what...
New fault discovered in earthquake-prone Southern California region
A swarm of nearly 200 small earthquakes that shook Southern California residents in the Salton Sea area last week raised concerns they might trigger...
How Nature’s ‘Dislocations’ Occur
Every material can bend and break. Through nearly a century's worth of research, scientists have had a pretty good understanding of how and why....
