#seismic-waves

#seismic-waves

These faults can act like railroad tracks controlling the future direction the tectonic plate moves in. It may also mean plates can rotate one way more easily than another, as there is less tectonic resistance for the plate to turn in one direction - away from the fault - than the other.

'Due to its extent and location it is clear that this is in fact the same magma reservoir as in the previous eruption,' geophysicist Professor Seama Nobukazu said.

Land is one of those things that can disappear even as you see it. It falls away beneath you, becoming merely the ground under your feet, because you're thinking about where you're going, or a place slowly blurring out of focus from the airplane window. Land is a primal word, primordial even, like lava. And it is a loaded word if, say, you're Indigenous or descend from a people whose land was taken from them.

Thursday's earthquake had an unusually strong effect because it occurred just a tenth of a mile below the surface, making it the shallowest quake recorded in South Carolina so far in 2026, according to state data.

Remembering the life and work of the geologist George Poulett Scrope, and salmon stories in this week's pick from the Nature archive.

A team of geologists has found for the first time evidence that two ancient, continent-sized, ultrahot structures hidden beneath the Earth have shaped the planet's magnetic field for the past 265 million years. These two masses, known as large low-shear-velocity provinces (LLSVPs), are part of the catalog of the planet's most enormous and enigmatic objects. Current estimates calculate that each one is comparable in size to the African continent, although they remain buried at a depth of 2,900 kilometers.

Although Kansas has no active volcanoes, the region marks the southern reach of the Midcontinent Rift System, a massive tectonic event that nearly split North America apart in Earth's distant past. When magma forced its way through the crust during that period, it left behind hardened igneous rock and deep fractures that remain buried thousands of feet underground.