Fingerprinting Slow Earthquakes 23
CarnegieScience writes "The most powerful earthquakes happen at the junction of two converging tectonic plates, where one plate is sliding (or subducting) beneath the other. Now a team of researchers, led by Teh-Ru Alex Song of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, has found that an anomalous layer at the top of a subducting plate coincides with the locations of slow earthquakes and non-volcanic tremors. The presence of such a layer in similar settings elsewhere could point to other regions of slow quakes."
Re:Paging all geologists (Score:5, Informative)
Hawaii, Where All the Action Is (Score:2, Informative)
The Pacific Ocean is geologically much more new and deeper than the Atlantic side, which has a much more gradual slope on the continental shelf / continental slope / continental rise subduction system between continents. So we know the Atlantic is older.
Another fun (dynamic) map showing some actual geologic and volcanic activity:
http://oss.zentu.net/?q=node/118 [zentu.net]
Re:Hawaii, Where All the Action Is (Score:3, Informative)
The reason the Pacific Ocean floor is newer is because it's still actively growing quickly as the surrounding plates move away. So while the Atlantic is newer than the Pacific, the *floor* of the Pacific is generally newer than the floor of the Atlantic.
So, in a sense, the parent was correct, but only in a limited sense.