Afrika møter vårt kontinent og skaper Europas største vulkan på Sicilia. Silikon og sirup er hjelpemidler når ny forskning skal forklare hvorfor Etna spyr ild, skriver forskning.no.
The 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, sciencedaily.com writes.
Expanding-Earth theory was the invention of Australian geologist Warren Carey. In the 1930s he was exploring the "continental drift" theory, which is familiar today but back then was widely thought a crazy scheme. Read Andrew Alden's blog at geology.about.com.
The Gondwana supercontinent underwent a 60-degree rotation across Earth's surface during the Early Cambrian period, according to new evidence uncovered by a team of Yale University geologists. Read more at sciencedaily.com.
The Chilean earthquake that struck on Feb. 27 changed the country’s landscape by raising the ground by more than 8 feet near the coast and sinking land farther inward, csmonitor.com writes.
Massive earthquakes that struck the town of New Madrid, Mo., in 1811 can be traced to the actions of the mighty Mississippi River thousands of years earlier, a new study in the journal Nature suggests, msnbc.msn.com writes.
— The Banda arc -- a gigantic 1,000km long, 180-degree curve in eastern Indonesia -- has puzzled geologists for many years, with much debate and controversy surrounding its complex origin and evolution. A solution to this enigma, resolving many of the previous problems, has finally been found. Read more at sciencedaily.com.
— A team of researchers including Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego geophysicist Dave Stegman has developed a new theory to explain the global motions of tectonic plates on the earth's surface, sciencedaily.com writes.
California's San Andreas fault is notorious for repeatedly generating major earthquakes and for being on the brink of producing the next "big one" in a heavily populated area. But the famously violent fault also has quieter sections, where rocks easily slide against each other without giving rise to damaging quakes, terradaily.com writes.
Africa is witnessing the birth of a new ocean, according to scientists at the Royal Society. Read more at bbc.co.uk.
Until recently, earthquake lights were folklore, but after lights were photographed in Japan during a month-long earthquake swarm in the mid-1960s, and other careful observations were made elsewhere in the world, earthquake specialists had something to chew on, about.com writes.
NASA has released the first-ever airborne radar images of the deformation in Earth's surface caused by a major earthquake -- the magnitude 7.2 temblor that rocked Mexico's state of Baja California and parts of the American Southwest on April 4, sciencedaily.com writes.
New research reveals that when two parts of the Earth's crust break apart, this does not always cause massive volcanic eruptions. The study, published June 16 in the journal Nature, explains why some parts of the world saw massive volcanic eruptions millions of years ago and others did not, sciencedaily.com writes.
Along the entire length of the mid-Atlantic ridge at only one place has a landmass arisen from the ocean depths. At that place is where what we know as Iceland is located. Read more at scientificblogging.com.
Geological investigations in the Himalayas have revealed evidence that when India and Asia collided some 90 million years ago, the continental crust of the Indian tectonic plate was forced down under the Asian plate, sciencedaily.com writes.
On August 15, 2007, a magnitude 8.0 earthquake struck in Central Peru. "After the earthquake, the plate interface slipped quite a bit," Avouac says. "But the aftershocks were tiny compared to the displacement. In other words, there was a lot of deformation, but most of it was aseismic", sciencedaily.com writes.
Forklarende video (på engelsk) om sammenhengen mellom jordskjelv, vulkaner og plategrenser fra montereyinstitute.org.
Kart: plater vs jordskjelv
Previously, the planet's hot interior was only known to have an appetite for ocean crust. Continental crust was thought to be too buoyant to be able to sink. But as we're seeing with India, that's not always true, discovery.com writes.
Geologer har tatt nye prøver som kan gjøre det lettere å plassere Afrika på kartet i tiden før åpningen av Sør-Atlanteren for 130 millioner år siden, skriver ngu.no.
Da Middelhavet ble fylt med vann for 5,3 millioner år siden, oppsto en flombølge av enorme dimensjoner, skriver nrk.no.
The existence of the supercontinent Pangea, which formed about 300 million years ago and broke up about 200 million years ago, is a cornerstone of plate tectonics, and processes resulting in its assembly and fragmentation have governed the evolution of Earth's crust for 500 million years, the sciencedaily.com says.
Skandinavia er i dag er del av Den eurasiske platen som strekker seg fra Svalbard til Spania i atlanterhavsområdet og helt bort til Himalaya (hvor den kolliderer med Den indiske platen) og Stillehavet. I Norge blir vi ikke plaget av store jordskjelv eller ødeleggende vulkanutbrudd.
Kraftig varmeproduksjon fra radioaktive granitter kan ha resultert i dannelsen av Oslo-riften for 300 millioner år siden, mener forsker Trond Slagstad. Nye data viser at temperaturen rundt granittene i jordskorpen kan ha økt med opp til 100 grader C i Oslo-området, skriver NGU.
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