TECTONICS

News About Tectonic Forces

504 articles

New study describes 200 million years of geological evolution
Dec 06, 2016 (SPX)
Tectonic plates, big sections of Earth's crust and blocks underneath them, are constantly moving. The areas where these sections meet and interact are called fa...
Subduction zone geometry offers a mega-earthquake risk indicator
Nov 29, 2016 (SPX)
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 suc...
Researchers find biggest exposed fault on Earth
Nov 29, 2016 (SPX)
Geologists have for the first time seen and documented the Banda Detachment fault in eastern Indonesia and worked out how it formed. Lead researcher Dr Jonathan...
Fault curvature may control where big quakes occur
Nov 25, 2016 (SPX)
Major earthquakes - magnitude 8.5 and stronger - occur where faults are mostly flat, say University of Oregon and French geologists. Curvier faults, they report...
Scientists reconstruct formation of the southern Appalachians
Nov 22, 2016 (SPX)
Around 300 million years ago, the landmass that is now North America collided with Gondwana, a supercontinent comprised of present-day Africa and South America....
Rip in crust drives undersea volcanism, says study
Nov 16, 2016 (SPX)
Scientists analyzing a volcanic eruption at a mid-ocean ridge under the Pacific have come up with a somewhat contrarian explanation for what initiated it. Many ...
SLU geologists discover how a tectonic plate sank
Nov 16, 2016 (SPX)
In a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Saint Louis University researchers report new information about conditions that c...
Entire Himalayan arc can produce large earthquakes
Nov 02, 2016 (SPX)
The main fault at the foot of the Himalayan mountains can likely generate destructive, major earthquakes along its entire 2,400-kilometer (1,500-mile) length, a...
Keep an automatic eye on seismic zones
Nov 01, 2016 (ESA)
The Copernicus Sentinel-1 twin radar satellites combined with cloud computing are monitoring Europe's earthquake zones by searching for ground shifts as small a...
Italy quake was new shock, typical of region: experts
Oct 27, 2016 (AFP)
The powerful tremors which shook central Italy on Wednesday were the product of a new earthquake rather than aftershocks from one that devastated the town of Am...
Earthquake series cause uplift variations at continental margins
Oct 21, 2016 (SPX)
A new mechanism may explain how great earthquakes with magnitudes larger than M7 are linked to coastal uplift in many regions worldwide. This has important impl...
Case of the missing continental crust solved: It sank
Oct 07, 2016 (SPX)
How do you make half the mass of two continents disappear? To answer the question you first need to discover that it's missing. That's what a trio of University...
Earthquakes can penetrate deeper than previously thought
Oct 07, 2016 (UPI)
Scientists have found evidence of seismic activity at depths of 15 miles beneath Earth's surface, proof that earthquakes can penetrate much deeper than previous...
Geologic imaging technique measures strength of Earth's outer shell
Oct 04, 2016 (SPX)
An advanced imaging technique used to map Earth's outer shell also can provide a measure of strength, finding weak spots and magma upwellings that could point t...
A terrible rift
Oct 04, 2016 (SPX)
When Doug Wiens approached Minnesota farmers to ask permission to install a seismometer on their land, he often got a puzzled look. "You could tell they were th...
Seismic 'CT scans' reveal deep earth dynamics
Sep 28, 2016 (SPX)
A new look 100 miles beneath a massive tectonic plate as it dives under North America has helped clarify the subduction process that generates earthquakes, volc...
World's oldest rock offers insights into early continental crust formation
Sep 19, 2016 (UPI)
How did Earth's earliest continental crust form? The world's oldest rock offers new clues, but raises more questions than answers. Scientists at the University ...
Earthquakes can trigger near-instantaneous aftershocks on different faults
Sep 12, 2016 (SPX)
According to a new study by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, a large earthquake on one fault can tri...
Geomagnetic field reveals recent history of oceanic plates
Sep 12, 2016 (UPI)
New research has revealed the movements of the ocean's tectonic plates during the Cretaceous normal superchron. Until now, the movements of oceanic plates durin...
Some islands started in diamond-bearing regions under continents, geochemists say
Sep 07, 2016 (SPX)
The raw materials of some volcanic islands are shaped by some of the same processes that form diamonds deep under the continents, according to a new study. The ...
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