TECTONICS

News About Tectonic Forces

504 articles

Geologists raise the speed limit for how fast continental crust can form
Oct 07, 2020 (SPX)
Scientists have thought that the Earth's mountain ranges are formed through this process over many millions of years. But MIT geologists have now found that the...
The age of the Earth's inner core revised
Aug 24, 2020 (SPX)
The results place the core at the younger end of an age spectrum that usually runs from about 1.3 billion to 4.5 billion years, but they also make it a good bit...
New scenario for the India-Asia collision dynamics
Aug 03, 2020 (SPX)
The lower Sangdanlin Formation contains the first Asian detritus, and thus determines the collision age. Paleomagnetic and rock magnetic analyses reveal that th...
Is the Earth's transition zone deforming like the upper mantle
Aug 03, 2020 (SPX)
hrough a combination of previous seismological and mineral physics studies, it is well known that the Earth's mantle is divided (mineralogically) into two major...
New Curtin research uncovers the two 'faces' of the Earth
Jul 03, 2020 (SPX)
The research, published in the leading Journal Nature Geoscience, examined the chemical and isotopic 'make-up' of rocks sourced from thousands of kilometres bel...
MagLab geochemists solve mystery of Earth's vanishing crust
Jun 26, 2020 (SPX)
But much of what happens below that layer remains a mystery, including the fate of sections of crust that vanish back into the Earth. Now, a team of geochemists...
Geologists shed light on the tibetan plateau origin puzzle
Jun 21, 2020 (SPX)
As theses plates move, they come close to each other and collide, or drift away from or slide past the other, causing tension or rupture along their boundaries....
The Kerguelen oceanic plateau sheds light on the formation of continents
Jun 21, 2020 (SPX)
From a geological point of view, it is the Earth's outermost layer that distinguishes the continents from the oceans: oceanic crust, which is relatively thin, i...
Geoscientists create deeper look at processes below Earth's surface with 3D images
Jun 18, 2020 (SPX)
In a study published April 29 in Nature Communications, the UT Dallas research team described how it created images of mantle flows in a subduction region under...
Scientists detect unexpected widespread structures near Earth's core
Jun 15, 2020 (SPX)
Scientists are unsure of the composition of these structures, and previous studies have provided only a limited view of them. Better understanding their shape a...
Which factors control the height of mountains?
Jun 15, 2020 (SPX)
This is a fundamentally new and important finding for the earth sciences. The researchers report on it in the scientific journal Nature. The highest mountain ra...
Remixed mantle suggests early start of plate tectonics
Jun 15, 2020 (SPX)
Published in Nature's Scientific Reports, researchers from Curtin University's Earth Dynamics Research Group re-analysed global data to detect sudden changes in...
Why the Victoria Plate in Africa rotates
Jun 10, 2020 (SPX)
Previous hypotheses suggested that this rotation is driven by the interaction of a mantle plume - an upward flow of hot rock within the Earth's mantle - with th...
Australia's ancient geology controls the pathways of modern earthquakes
Jun 05, 2020 (SPX)
The unusually long and smooth rupture produced by this earthquake initially puzzled scientists as Australia's typically strong ancient cratons tend to host shor...
Oxygen-excess oxides in Earth's mid-mantle facilitate the ascent of deep oxygen
May 28, 2020 (SPX)
It contains ferric iron as in hematite (Fe2O3) which is the most oxidized form of iron on the Earth's surface, but this new phase holds more oxygen than hematit...
Yale finds a much earlier birth date for tectonic plates
May 28, 2020 (SPX)
Tectonic plates are large slabs of rock embedded in the Earth's crust and upper mantle, the next layer down. The interactions of these plates shape all modern l...
The lower mantle can be oxidized in the presence of water
May 25, 2020 (SPX)
"One of the major lower mantle compositions, ferropericlase (Mg,Fe)O, turns into a pyrite-type structure upon meeting water. This intriguing chemical reaction o...
Caves tell us that Australia's mountains are still growing
May 21, 2020 (SPX)
The University of Melbourne study reveals that parts of the Eastern Highlands of Victoria, including popular skiing destinations such as Mt Baw Baw and Mt Bulle...
Probing materials at deep-Earth conditions to decipher Earth's evolutionary tale
May 19, 2020 (SPX)
"We're still trying to piece together how the Earth actually started to form, how it transformed from a molten planet to one with living creatures walking aroun...
Earth's inner core - growing mountains or shifting ground
May 13, 2020 (SPX)
The new study by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Geologists do ...
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