Sandwiched between tectonic plates are layers of material that show up as thin shadows on seismic tomography, a kind of CT scan of the Earth. For years, scientists assumed the anomalies were signs of highly pressurized water squeezed into densely packed rock and that the fluid acted as a kind of hair-trigger on earthquake faults.… Continue Reading Are Deep Fluids Behind the Largest Earthquakes? ‘Not So Fast!’ Says UT Graduate Student
New Study Reveals Layers of Textured Mantle ‘Frozen’ into North American Plate
The North American plate is a medley of geological parts that protrude into Earth’s mantle like tree branches frozen into the surface of an iced-over lake. Research from The University of Texas at Austin has proposed a new method to map these ‘frozen-in’ layers of the tectonic plate and reveal how it interacts with the… Continue Reading New Study Reveals Layers of Textured Mantle ‘Frozen’ into North American Plate