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The underside in North America may be “dripping” to the cloak below. | Credit
The researchers say an old panel of the land buried deep under the Middle West absorbs huge pregnant women from the current North American shell in the scarf.
The pulling of the slab has created giant drops hanging from the bottom side of the continent to about 400 miles (640 km) in its depth cloakAccording to a new study. These drops are located under an area that extends from Michigan to Nebraska and Alabama, but its presence appears to affect the entire continent.
The cutting area looks like a large suppression, as rocks are pulled from all over North America horizontally before they are absorbed. As a result, large parts of North America lose materials from the bottom side of their crust, the researchers said.
“A very wide range suffers from some mitigation,” the author of the study Gonlin HuaThe geologist who conducted the research during the post -PhD fellowship at the University of Texas (UT) in Austin, said in A. statement. Hua, who is now a professor at the University of Science and Technology, said. China.
The researchers have found that the drops are caused by the descending force of the clouds of a piece of oceanic cortex that exploded from an ancient tectonic plate called Varalon’s plate.
Faralon’s painting and North American plate formed once Integration area Along the western coast of the continent, with the previous sliding below the last and recycling its materials in the scarf. The FARALLON board was divided due to the progress of the Pacific Panel About 20 million years agoAnd residue panels under the North American plate are slowly drifting.
One of these panels currently extends the border between the moving area and the lower metabolism, about 410 miles (660 km) under the Middle West. It is called “FARALLON SLAB” which was first photographed in the 1990s, this piece of the oceanic shell is responsible for a process known as “CRATONIC”, according to the new study, which was published on March 28 in the magazine Geological nature.
A planning drawing that shows how it can drip the ground crust and the upper cloak (known together as the rock cover) in the scarf due to the FARALLON board. | Credit: Hawa and others. Nature Geoscience (2025)
CRATONIC A mystery refers to the wearing of Cratons, which are areas of the continental crust of the land and the upper cloak that have often remained intact for billions of years. Despite its stability, Croston can Undering changesBut this has never noticed at work due to the huge geological temporal measures concerned, according to the study.
Now, for the first time, the researchers have documented an electronic thinning when it happened. This discovery was possible thanks to a broader project led by HUA to draw a map that lies under North America using high -resolution seismic imaging technology called “full wave reflection.” This technology uses different types of seismic waves to extract all available information about underground physical parameters.
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“This type of things is important if we want to understand how a planet has evolved for a long time,” a participant in the study Thorstan BakerA distinguished chair in geophysics in Austin Justin said in the statement. “Given the use of this complete wave method, we have a better representation of that important area between the deep scarf and shallow rock cover [crust and upper mantle]”
To test their results, the researchers simulated the effect of the FARALON board on the Craton above using a computer model. A intermittent area was formed when the slab was present, but it disappeared when the slab was absent, which confirms that – in theory, at least – it can welcomes a plate that is drowned across a large area down to the bottom Inside the Earth.
The researchers said that the cutting under the Middle West will not lead to changes on the surface any time soon, adding that it may stop even as the FARALLON plate is deeper in the lower scarf and its effect on Chaton’s fading.
The results can help collect the massive puzzle of how the Earth appears as they do today. “It helps us to understand how continents make, how to break them, and how to recycle them,” Baker said.
It was originally published on Livescience.com.
