News articles tagged with 'plate'
Earthquakes: Water as a lubricant
— 2 Dec 2011 10:23 | Geology and palaeontologyGeophysicists from Potsdam have established a mode of action that can explain the irregular distribution of strong earthquakes at the San Andreas Fault in California. As the science…
NASA shows topography of tsunami-damaged Japan city
— 12 Mar 2011 15:05 | Geology and palaeontologyThe topography surrounding Sendai, Japan is clearly visible in this combined radar image and topographic view generated with data from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM)…
New Zealand earthquake damage illustrates risks posed by shallow crustal faults
— 23 Feb 2011 19:44 | Geology and palaeontologyThe terribly destructive earthquake that just hit Christchurch, New Zealand, was only a moderate 6.3 magnitude, but had certain characteristics that offer an important lesson to cities…
Novel ocean-crust mechanism could affect world's carbon budget
— 16 Nov 2010 12:27 | EnvironmentThe Earth is constantly manufacturing new crust, spewing molten magma up along undersea ridges at the boundaries of tectonic plates. The process is critical to the planet's metabolism,…
Mount Etna's mystery explained?
— 7 Oct 2010 15:33 | Geology and palaeontologyInternationally renowned geophysicist Dr Wouter Schellart has developed the first dynamic model to explain the mystery of the largest and most fascinating volcano in Europe, Mount Etna…
The biggest crash on Earth
— 17 Sep 2010 10:00 | Geology and palaeontologyDuring the collision of India with the Eurasian continent, the Indian plate is pushed about 500 kilometres under Tibet, reaching a depth of 250 kilometres. The result of this largest…
A tectonic zip
— 10 Sep 2010 11:55 | Geology and palaeontologyThe complex fracture pattern created by the earthquake in Concepcion (Chile) on 27 February 2010 was to a certain extent predictable. GPS observations from the years before the earthquake…
New view of tectonic plates
— 28 Aug 2010 09:43 | Geology and palaeontologyComputational scientists and geophysicists at the University of Texas at Austin and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed new computer algorithms that for…
North American continent is a layer cake, scientists discover
— 26 Aug 2010 08:19 | Geology and palaeontologyThe North American continent is not one thick, rigid slab, but a layer cake of ancient, 3 billion-year-old rock on top of much newer material probably less than 1 billion years old,…
Not 1, but 2 great earthquakes caused 2009 Samoa-Tonga tsunami disaster
— 19 Aug 2010 09:58 | Geology and palaeontologyScientists studying the massive earthquake that struck the South Pacific on September 29, 2009, have found that it actually involved two great earthquakes: an initial one with magnitude…