New simulations of the asthenosphere find that convective cycling and pressure-driven flow can sometimes cause Earth's most fluid layer of mantle to move even faster than the tectonic plates that ride ...

New research from the University of Houston reevaluates the role of the asthenosphere in tectonic plate movement. According to the new study published in Nature Communications by scientists from the ...

Scientists have long speculated about why there is a large change in the strength of rocks that lie at the boundary between two layers immediately under Earth's crust: the lithosphere and underlying ...

The mechanism facilitating the smooth movement of the oceanic lithosphere over the underlying asthenosphere (upper mantle) remains poorly understood. Recently, researchers from Japan investigated the ...

Researchers in Japan have used measurements of the aftershocks of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake to gain insight into the dynamics of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle. Nozomu Takeuchi and colleagues at ...

Hell, or something like it, may be a little closer than we thought. As a new study published in Nature Geoscience reveals, geologists at Cornell and the University of Texas have discovered a “hidden” ...

A 3D computer model of the asthenosphere by Rice University geophysicists finds that the convective cycling and pressure-driven flow can sometimes cause the asthenosphere to move even faster than the ...

Why do we still find rocks from the Archean, one of the earliest geological eons on Earth dating from about 3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago? This is an apt question as our planet is one of the most ...