Free Republic

University of Wyoming scientists have found evidence of continental collisions in Wyoming's Teton Range, similar to those in the Himalayas, dating to as early as 2.68 billion years ago. The research, published Jan. 22 in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, shows that plate tectonics were operating in what is now western Wyoming long before the collisions that created the Himalayas starting 40 million years ago. In fact, the remnants of tectonic activity in old rocks exposed in the Tetons point to the world's earliest known continent-continent collision, says Professor Carol Frost of UW's Department of Geology and Geophysics, lead...

The January 30, 2016 M 7.2 earthquake beneath the Kamchatka Peninsula of Russia occurred as the result of oblique-normal faulting at a depth of 180 km. At the location of this earthquake, the Pacific plate is moving towards the west-northwest with respect to the North America and Eurasia plates at a rate of approximately 77 mm/yr. Note that some authors divide this region into several microplates that together define the relative motions between the larger Pacific, North America and Eurasia plates; these include the Okhotsk and Amur microplates that are respectively part of North America and Eurasia. The depth and...

Around 720-640 million years ago, much of the Earth's surface was covered in ice during a glaciation that lasted millions of years. Explosive underwater volcanoes were a major feature of this 'Snowball Earth', according to new research led by the University of Southampton. Many aspects of this extreme glaciation remain uncertain, but it is widely thought that the breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia resulted in increased river discharge into the ocean. This changed ocean chemistry and reduced atmospheric CO2 levels, which increased global ice coverage and propelled Earth into severe icehouse conditions. Because the land surface was then largely covered...

Earthquakes in Idaho's panhandle are usually caused by the Earth's crust pulling apart. So why were earthquakes on 24 April pushing the crust together? Last April, a swarm of earthquakes shook the ground near Sandpoint, Idaho. Unused to shaking, Sandpoint’s residents took notice. So did local media, widely reporting on the events. But it wasn’t the size or location of the earthquakes that surprised scientists. Sandpoint lies along the Lewis and Clark Fault Zone, and previous earthquakes in the region were caused when the Earth’s crust pulled apart, which geologists call extension. But the earthquakes that struck on 24 April...

As I walked into the department this bright brisk morning, coffee cheerily in hand, the live global seismogram display in the atrium caught my eye with an alarming event that had just happened during my bike ride into work. *gasp* that looks bad *gasp* that looks bad BIG earthquake, somewhere in the vicinity of Central/Southern Asia. Indeed, an earthquake deep (>200 km) beneath the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan had shaken a huge swath of Central and South Asia. The great depth of the earthquake meant less extreme shaking at the epicenter (nobody lives closer than 212 km from the...

By meticulously examining sediments in China's Yellow River, a Swedish-Chinese research group are showing that the history of tectonic and climate evolution on Earth may need to be rewritten. (Snip) Weathering of this eroded material also constitutes a further mechanism that may explain the reduced levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide at the beginning of the Ice Age. The researchers' next step will be to compare terrestrial and marine records of erosion to gauge how far sediment storage on land has impacted the marine record.

traveling to the deepest hole in the world, amsterdam based artist lotte geeven has recorded ‘the sound of the earth’. the mysterious location is on the czech border, where the hole is over 9 kilometres deep. the journey down was helped by a team of seismologists, geophysicists and engineers, with a series of sound installations made based on the adventure.

une 17, 2013 — A new subduction zone forming off the coast of Portugal heralds the beginning of a cycle that will see the Atlantic Ocean close as continental Europe moves closer to America. Share This: 143 Published in Geology, new research led by Monash University geologists has detected the first evidence that a passive margin in the Atlantic ocean is becoming active. Subduction zones, such as the one beginning near Iberia, are areas where one of the tectonic plates that cover Earth's surface dives beneath another plate into the mantle -- the layer just below the crust. Lead author...

It's long been held that North America's rugged and mountainous west was formed by the movement of the undersea Farallon plate, and that the process was roughly similar to the way groceries pile up at the end of a supermarket conveyor belt. Now however, a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature argues that the process involved not just one but several plates that remain hidden deep within in the Earth's mantle. Scientists at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the British Columbia Geological Survey used earthquake shockwaves, or seismic tomography, to create a three-dimensional map of these massive plate...

First… it’s important to understand that this is the most profound disagreement in all of science in a century and a half… and, even so, it is the tip of the iceberg, the ramifications of this disagreement will change everything we know in science, top to bottom. To begin with basic stuff. All science knows… The earth has two crusts. One…the mostly basalt lower crust or the oceanic crust which is 2 – 4 miles deeper down than the higher upper continental crust. This lower crust, essentially covers the Earth. It … this crust is being made daily at rift...

A new model of the Earth, 20 years in the making, describes a dynamic three-dimensional puzzle of planetary proportions. Created by University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Chuck DeMets and longtime collaborators Richard Gordon of Rice University and Donald Argus of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the model offers a precise description of the relative movements of 25 interlocking tectonic plates that account for 97 percent of the Earth's surface. "This model can be used to predict the movement of one plate relative to any other plate on the Earth's surface," explains DeMets. "Plate tectonics describes almost everything about how the Earth's surface...

The Great Rift Valley extends some 4,000 miles southward from Syria north of Israel, through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Ethiopia, and all the way to Mozambique in southeast Africa. It harbors a giant fault, which has been under investigation as a model for sea floor spreading. A recent geologic event rent a gaping crack through the desert of Ethiopia, causing safety concerns for locals. These crustal plate motions may foreshadow rifting events further north in the Great Rift Valley...

It's a classic image from every youngster's science textbook: a cutaway image of Earth's interior. The brown crust is paper-thin; the warm mantle orange, the seething liquid of the outer core yellow, and at the center the core, a ball of solid, red-hot iron. Now a new theory aims to rewrite it all by proposing the seemingly impossible: Earth has not one but two inner cores. The idea stems from an ancient, cataclysmic collision that scientists believe occurred when a Mars-sized object hit Earth about 4.45 billion years ago. The young Earth was still so hot that it was mostly...

The article link goes to the article with the comparative images from space. The image below is the full-size picture at quarter-size; click for full-size. At some point in the future I'm sure there will be an expedition to get pictures on the ground, but this is a pretty inhospitable location. The new lava flow is the very dark area spreading northward from the white volcanic peak (Dalaffilla). The article has a labeled image showing where the apparent eruptive fissure was located.

The Red Sea is parting again, but this time Moses doesn’t have a hand in it. Satellite images show that the Arabian tectonic plate and the African plate are moving away from each other, stretching the Earth's crust and widening the southern end of the Red Sea, scientists reported in this week's issue of journal Nature. Last September, a series of earthquakes started splitting the planet's surface along a 37-mile section of the East African Rift in Afar, Ethiopia. Using the images gathered by the European Space Agency's Envisat radar satellite, researchers looked at satellite data before and after these...

Sumatra quake pushed Phuket 32cm southwest and moved Bangkok: expertPhuket shifted 32 centimetres to the south-west and Bangkok moved nine centimetres as a result of the Sumatra earthquake that caused the devastating tsunami two months ago, a Chulalongkorn University lecturer said yesterday. Dr Itthi Trisirisattayawong, head of the Faculty of Engineering’s Survey Engineering Department, said the positions of Phuket and Bangkok were measured and compared with data recorded in October. He said the measurements were carried out using GPS (global positioning system) receivers installed at Phuket’s Promthep Cape and at the Faculty of Engineering. The land position measurements were carried...

China and India both know about underground UFO base in the Himalayan border area deep into the tectonic platesKongka La is the low ridge pass in the Himalayas (the blue oval in the map). It is in the disputed India-China border area in Ladakh. In the map the red zone is the disputed area still under Chinese control in the Aksai Chin area. The Chinese held northeastern part is known as Aksai Chin and Indian South West is known as Ladakh. This was where Indian and Chinese army fought major war in 1962. The area is one of the least...

But Indonesia failed to heed him; Utah isn't listening either, he says PROVO — Brigham Young University geology professor Ron Harris has had trouble sleeping since the earthquake he predicted seven years ago killed an estimated 150,000 people along the rim of the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26. Research by Harris indicated an earthquake with a magnitude of at least 8.0 was due in the ocean west of Sumatra and would cause a devastating tsunami. He published the research in an Indonesian journal and pleaded with the government there to prepare, but little was done. "It might not have made...

The NASA Earth Observatory has a facinating look at the mechanics of what happened in this horrific disaster which took place in SE Asia. The PDF shows why it is critical that a tsunami warning system is emplaced in the Indian ocean such as that which is in the Pacific. The area has five converging tectonic plates, the Eurasia plate, Australian plate, India plate, Sunda plate and the Burma microplate. The India Plate and the Burma Microplate meet along the Sunda trench to the west of Sumatra. On the 26th, the India Plate subducted, i.e. slipped underneath, the Burma Plate,...