TECTONICS

News About Tectonic Forces

504 articles

Which forces control the elevation of mountains?
Jun 03, 2022 (SPX)
A Beaumont number between 0.4 and 0.5 means that the mountains are in a so-called flux steady state in which the controlling factors of mountain growth are tect...
Puzzling features deep in Earth's interior illuminated by high resolution imaging
May 20, 2022 (SPX)
The enigmatic area of rock, which is located almost directly beneath the Hawaiian Islands, is one of several ultra-low velocity zones - so-called because earthq...
Tungsten isotopes in seawater provide insights into the co-evolution of Earth's mantle and continents
May 18, 2022 (SPX)
In order to investigate how the Earth's mantle developed in the early Earth period, the short-lived 182Hafnium-182Tungsten isotope system has been in the focus ...
An underwater frontier
May 18, 2022 (SPX)
All these processes are due to plate tectonics, the glide of solid rock "plates" over viscous mantle softened by primordial heat leftover from planet Earth's fo...
Sampling the deep graveyard of Earth's earliest crust
Apr 29, 2022 (SPX)
This finding is unexpected because the plate tectonic regime of our planet progressively recycles crustal material via large-scale mantle convection at much sma...
Earliest geochemical evidence of plate tectonics found
Apr 22, 2022 (SPX)
These rare time capsules from Earth's youth point to a transition around 3.8 billion years ago from a long-lived, stable rock surface to the active processes th...
Seafloor spreading has been slowing down
Apr 15, 2022 (SPX)
New oceanic crust forms continuously along rifts thousands of miles long on the seafloor, driven by plate tectonics. As subduction pulls old crust down, rifts o...
A surprisingly soft mineral may control how Earth recycles rocks
Mar 10, 2022 (SPX)
As that crust goes deeper into the Earth, some of the minerals in the rocks change under the high temperatures and pressures of the mantle. New research from Un...
New study in earth science frontiers explains the driving force behind continental drift
Mar 01, 2022 (SPX)
Specifically, none of the multiple hypotheses put forth can reasonably account for the formation of numerous linear ridges with continental fragments floating i...
Ridgecrest shows how earthquakes damage Earth's crust
Feb 25, 2022 (SPX)
The earthquake zone - which belongs to a network of faults called the Eastern California Shear Zone - is sparsely populated and arid, without much in the way of...
Explosive fossil fruit found buried beneath ancient Indian lava flows
Feb 18, 2022 (SPX)
In a recent study, scientists excavating the fossilized remains of plant material wedged between layers of volcanic rock describe a new plant species based on t...
Advanced computer simulations shed intriguing new light on magma deep below Earth's surface
Feb 15, 2022 (SPX)
The study showed water-rich (hydrous) magmas (extremely hot liquid rocks) formed in the Earth's mantle - the layer beneath its crust - are more buoyant and flui...
Study: As tectonic plates pull apart, what drives the formation of rifts?
Feb 09, 2022 (SPX)
A study in the journal Geology explores these questions and sheds new light on how this process works. Past research has pointed to magma as a key driver in rif...
Geoscience expert to study why continents break apart where magma is missing
Jan 10, 2022 (SPX)
Africa itself is slowly separating into several large and small tectonic blocks along the diverging East African Rift System, which includes Madagascar - the lo...
Study combines climatic, tectonic models to explain Andean conundrum
Dec 15, 2021 (SPX)
The study, led by former University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign graduate student Jiashun Hu, Illinois geology professor Lijun Liu and California Institute of T...
Recycling of tectonic plates a key driver of Earth's oxygen budget
Dec 02, 2021 (SPX)
"This cycle is a really a big deal," said Esteban Gazel, associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences in Cornell's College of Engineering, and co-lead ...
'Mantle wind' blows through slab window beneath Panama
Nov 23, 2021 (SPX)
This interdisciplinary team used helium isotopes and other geochemical data from fluids and rocks to show that volcanic material is sourced from the Galapagos p...
Fate of sinking tectonic plates is revealed
Nov 12, 2021 (SPX)
The question has long puzzled scientists because conventional wisdom said that sinking tectonic plates must remain intact to keep pulling on the portion behind ...
Land ahoy: study shows the first continents bobbed to the surface more than 3 billion years ago
Nov 09, 2021 (SPX)
The emergence of the continents was a pivotal moment in the history of life on Earth, not least because they are the humble abode of most humans. But it's still...
Deep recycling of supracrustal materials at 3200 million years ago
Sep 07, 2021 (SPX)
The Kaapvaal Craton and specifically the Barberton granitoid-greenstone terrain (BGGT) provide a robust rock-based benchmark for early Earth studies because of ...
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