Tag Archive for 'Lithosphere'

An artistic conception of the early Earth. Image credit: Simone Marchi / NASA.

Study: Plate Tectonics is not a Requirement for Life to Originate on Earth-Like Planet

Jun 15, 2023 by News Staff

Plate tectonics is a fundamental factor in the sustained habitability of Earth, but its time of onset is unknown, with ages ranging from the Hadean to...

An artist’s concept of active volcanoes on Venus, depicting a subduction zone where the foreground crust plunges into the planet’s interior at the topographic trench. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Peter Rubin.

Venus’ Outer Shell is Shaping Planet’s Surface, Study Suggests

Feb 24, 2023 by News Staff

Earth has a hot core that heats the surrounding mantle, which carries that heat up to the planet’s lithosphere. The heat is then lost to space, cooling...

Hua et al. discovered a previously unknown layer of partly molten rock in a key region just below the tectonic plates. Image credit: Leonello Calvetti / Dreamstime.

Partially Molten Layer Detected Beneath Earth’s Tectonic Plates

Feb 7, 2023 by News Staff

The newly-detected molten rock layer is located about 150 km (93 miles) from the surface of our planet and is part of the asthenosphere, which sits under...

An artist’s rendition of an eggshell exoplanet. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Eggshell Exoplanets: Rocky Worlds with Ultra-Thin Brittle Lithospheres Could Theoretically Exist

Nov 11, 2021 by News Staff

The thickness of the brittle lithosphere — the outer portion of a planetary body that fails via fracturing — plays a key role in the geological...

Schematic view of the propagation of seismic waves in the Martian crust and seismic conversions at the base of the discontinuity, at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles). Image credit: IPGP.

NASA’s InSight Lander Provides New Information about Crust, Mantle and Core of Mars

Jul 26, 2021 by News Staff

According to new analyses of data from the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument deployed during NASA’s InSight mission, Mars likely...

$The largest crustal block Byrne et al. identified in the Venus lowlands: (A) Magellan radar image mosaic of the block; named landforms are shown; the black and white arrows mark impact craters and prominent lava flows, respectively; the approximate outline of the campus is marked by a dashed yellow line; (B) radar image (left) and structural sketch (right) of extensional faults curving into the main groove belt that delineates the southwestern margin of this campus, here with a right-lateral sense of slip; (C) sigmoidal, positive-relief landforms we interpret as right-lateral transpressive structures; (D) another example of sigmoidal, positive-relief ridges we regard as denoting right-lateral transpression, with a different strike from those structures in (C); in these and subsequent structural sketches, prominent extensional structures are in purple (with ball-and-bar symbols shown on example down-thrown blocks), and prominent shortening structures are in teal (with sawtooth symbols on example upper blocks); minor and/or poorly expressed fractures of various types are shown as thin, black lines; wrinkle ridges are generally not recorded; exemplar extensional and shortening landforms are marked with gold and red arrows, respectively; the radar look direction is from the left in (A), and from the right in (B-D). All images are in azimuthal equidistant projection, centered at 24.5°S, 146.5°E (A); 20.0°S, 138.3°E (B); 27.2°S, 141.1°E (C); and 18.0°S, 145.0°E (D). Image credit: Byrne et al., doi: 10.1073/pnas.2025919118.$

Planetary Scientists Find Evidence for Crustal Block Tectonics on Venus

Jun 22, 2021 by News Staff

Using data collected by the synthetic aperture radar on NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, a team of planetary researchers has identified a pattern of tectonic...

Diamond in kimberlite. Image credit: Parent Géry / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Study: Up To 2% of Earth’s Oldest Mantle Rocks are Made from Diamond

Jul 17, 2018 by News Staff

The ancient cores of Earth’s continents are called cratons. Shaped like inverted mountains, they can stretch as deep as 200 miles (320 km) through the...

An artist’s impression of a ‘Snowball Earth.’ Image credit: NASA.

‘Snowball Earth’ Resulted from Plate Tectonics, Geologists Say

May 8, 2018 by News Staff

A team of geologists at the University of Texas at Dallas and Austin has put forward an intriguing new hypothesis that links the dawn of plate tectonics...

Deposits of serpentinized rock such as this could be a previously overlooked source of free hydrogen gas. Image credit: NOAA Ocean Explorer.

Oceanic Lithosphere May Be Important, Previously Overlooked Source of Hydrogen Gas

Jul 20, 2016 by News Staff

According to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, rocks formed beneath the ocean floor by fast-spreading tectonic plates may...

The Cosgrove hotspot track. Image credit: Drew Whitehouse / NCI National Facility VizLab.

Cosgrove Track: Scientists Discover World’s Longest Chain of Continental Volcanoes

Sep 14, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of researchers has discovered the world’s longest known continental volcanic hotspot track — a 1,245 mile (2,000 km) long...