A gaping hole in a dying tectonic plate beneath the ocean along the West Coast of the United States may be wreaking havoc at Earth's surface, but not in a way most people might expect. The researchers in the new study aren't the first to suggest that the Michigan-size Juan de Fuca (pronounced "wahn de fyoo-kuh") plate has a tear. But thanks to a new, detailed dataset, they're the first to say so with certainty. The Juan de Fuca plate is long, stretching about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) along the Pacific Northwest coast, from Vancouver Island, Canada, to Cape Mendocino,...