Latest Lithosphere Stories

There are very few places in the world where dynamic activity taking place beneath Earth's surface goes undetected.Volcanoes, earthquakes, and even the sudden uplifting or sinking of the ground are all visible results of restlessness far below, but according to research by Arizona State University (ASU) seismologists, dynamic activity deep beneath us isn't always expressed on the surface.The Great Basin in the western United States is a desert region largely devoid of major surface changes....

The Dead Sea lies in a basin structure situated below the sea level. This deep subsidence is a result of a tectonic concurrence between processes in the upper lithosphere that led to subsiding and a compensating upward flow of rocks in the deeper layers of the lithosphere.This is a result presented by A. Petrunin and A. Sobolev from the GFZ - German Research Centre for Geosciences in the current issue of "PHYSICS OF THE EARTH AND PLANETARY INTERIORS" (Vol. 171, S. 387 - 399). In a...

A U.S.-led international team of scientists says it has, for the first time, recorded a geological event that is considered key in shaping the Earth's crust. Led by Purdue University Professor Eric Calais, the researchers said they measured ground displacements as two African tectonic plates moved apart and molten rock pushed its way toward the surface during the first so-called dyking event ever recorded within the planet's continental crust. Calais said the event left a wall of magma 6...

Diamonds from Brazil have provided the answers to a question that Earth scientists have been trying to understand for many years: how is oceanic crust that has been subducted deep into the Earth recycled back into volcanic rocks? A team of researchers, led by the University of Bristol, working alongside colleagues at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory, have gained a deeper insight into how the Earth recycles itself in the deep earth tectonic cycle way beyond the depths that can be accessed by...

Two new studies by a University of Rochester researcher show that mountain ranges rise to their height in as little as two million years--several times faster than geologists have always thought. Each of the findings came from two pioneering methods of measuring ancient mountain elevations, and the results are in tight agreement. The research papers, appearing in today's issue of Science and next week's issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters, mean scientists will have to re-evaluate...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. "” Earth's cool, rigid upper layer, known as the lithosphere, rides on top of its warmer, more pliable neighbor, the asthenosphere, as a series of massive plates. Plates continuously shift and break, triggering earthquakes, sparking volcanic eruptions, sculpting mountains and carving trenches under the sea.But what, exactly, divides the lithosphere and the asthenosphere? In the latest issue of Nature, a trio of geophysicists from Brown University and the Massachusetts...

Could Earth have had an even more violent infancy than previously imagined? New isotope data suggest that the Earth not only had a very violent beginning but also point to new information about our planet's chemical evolution.New and precise measurements of a neodymium isotope ratio (142Nd/144Nd) led Maud Boyet and Rick Carlson of Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism to the discovery that all terrestrial rocks have an excess of 142Nd compared to the expected building...

Could Earth have had an even more violent infancy than previously imagined? New isotope data suggest that the Earth not only had a very violent beginning but also point to new information about our planet's chemical evolution. New and precise measurements of a neodymium isotope ratio (142Nd/144Nd) led Maud Boyet and Rick Carlson of Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism to the discovery that all terrestrial rocks have an excess of 142Nd compared to the expected building...