Earth Is Quietly Tearing Apart Beneath the Pacific Northwest
Earth is tearing apart beneath the Pacific Northwest
Seismic imaging beneath Cascadia reveals a subduction zone breaking into pieces, not shutting down at once. Researchers found faults tearing the sinking Juan de Fuca plate, including a 75-kilometer rip and a slab section dropped about five kilometers. The piecewise breakup may explain ancient microplates and slab windows, though it does not change Cascadia's earthquake hazard on human timescales.
Rather than shutting down all at once, the plate is ripping apart piece by piece, creating smaller microplates and new boundaries. So instead of a big train wreck, it's like watching a train slowly derail, one car at a time.
- tracerbulletx
I feel like it's kind of misleading to say "earth is tearing its self apart" when talking about a subduction zone. Yeah I mean the subducting plate faulting as its pulled down is breaking.. but its still a compressive collision. If you crammed two things together and one of the things cracked, saying its tearing its self apart would be a real.. stretch.
- jschveibinz
Nic Zentner is a great lecturer on the unique geology of the Pacific Northwest. He has a lot of interesting material on YT. Here is the link to his academic webpage:
https://www.cwu.edu/about/directory/geological-sciences/nico...
- ucyo
This is such a nice topic for visualisations, but not a single drawing or visual explanation. That’s unfortunate. The main pic is impressive but without context it’s disappointing a bit