The Nov. 12 earthquake wasn’t centered on any known major faults in the Earth’s crust. In its wake, scientists will collect data to add detail to what they know about seismic activity in the area.
The new map was created using data from rocks found in locations including Madagascar.
Alan Collins
You would not recognise Earth if you saw it 500 million years ago - the lands, oceans, climate and life were all very different. Scientists now have a new map of the deep history of Earth.
A scale model of one of the two LAGEOS satellites.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Australia is always on the move thanks to continental drift which means the mapped coordinates of any place can get out of line with any GPS locating system. So what’s the plan to fix it?
Residents walk through rubble in central Italy.
Reuters/Remo Casilli
Australia is surrounded by ocean, so is not immune to the effects of tsunamis. But how significant is the risk?
Satellite image of California’s San Andreas fault, where two continental plates come together.
NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team
Fifty years on from a groundbreaking paper, geophysicists have progressed from believing continents never moved to thinking that every movement may leave a lasting memory on our planet.
Some of the Earth’s fault lines between tectonic plates in the East Asia region.
Shutterstock /Mopic
When two major earthquakes occur within days of each other thousands of kilometres apart, it can look like they’re connected. But are they? Here’s what the science says.
The Earth’s surface is in a constant state of motion, before, during and after earthquakes.
Shutterstock/Natee K Jindakum
The earth around you might seem static but it’s constantly in motion. We need to track this motion in fine detail if we’re to keep our GPS networks up to date.
Many marine reptiles like this nothosaur went extinct at the end of the Triassic, one of five major mass extinction events on Earth.
Brian Choo
A fall in vital trace elements in our oceans could be one of the driving forces behind a number of mass extinction events during Earth’s history.
Piton de la Fournaise or “Peak of the Furnace” on Reunion Island is one of the world’s most active volcanoes, shown erupting in August 2015.
AAP/NewZulu/Vincent Dunogué
What happens beneath the surface before a volcano erupts? Can we predict when one will blow? And how can typhoons and melting glaciers contribute to big eruptions?
The cycles of nutrients into the oceans following the building of mountains may have been a prime driver of evolutionary change.
John Long, Flinders University
For seismologists, there’s much to be learned after a major earthquake, as aftershocks help them map out the fault with high precision. More data now can prepare a region for its next big one.
Volcanism, driven by plate tectonics, built Earth’s atmosphere to make a habitable planet.
Simon Redfern/University of Cambridge
How is it that Earth developed an atmosphere that made the development of life possible? A study published in the journal Nature Geoscience links the origins of Earth’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere to the…
How many continents can you count on one hand?
Chones
From the 1950s until recently, we thought we had a clear idea of how continents form. Most people will have heard of plate tectonics: moving pieces on the surface of the planet that collide, pull away…
Over time, Earth’s plates went from static to dynamic.
Modestas Jonauskas/Flickr
Plate tectonics – the large-scale movement of Earth’s lithosphere or outer layers – started around three billion years ago, but how those movements started was a bit of a mystery – until today. With colleagues…
New evidence is shedding light on the processes that formed Earth’s oldest rock and mineral record – processes that influenced the early evolution of life. Over the past 30 years our knowledge of the earliest…