Featured
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Research Highlight |
Seismic sleuths unmask the ‘earthquake’ that wasn’t
People in one Indian state flooded into the streets and onto a seismology app after predictions of a quake that never happened.
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Research Highlight |
So much ice is melting that Earth’s crust is moving
As the continents’ frozen burden dissipates, the ground deforms — not only in the immediate area, but also in far-flung locations.
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News |
Home seismometers provide crucial data on Haiti’s quake
A volunteer network helps to monitor aftershocks and illuminate the country’s earthquake hazards.
- Alexandra Witze
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News & Views |
Earthquakes triggered by underground fluid injection modelled for a tectonically active oil field
An analysis of the Val d’Agri oil field in Italy provides insight into how processes associated with wastewater disposal trigger earthquakes — and how such effects can be reduced to maintain the economic viability of mature oil fields.
- Mirko van der Baan
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News |
Water transformed into shiny, golden metal
Electrons from a droplet of sodium and potassium turn water into a metallic material that conducts electricity.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Article |
A process-based approach to understanding and managing triggered seismicity
A multidisciplinary method for managing triggered seismicity is developed using detailed subsurface information to calibrate geomechanical and earthquake source physics models, and is applied to the Val d’Agri oil field in seismically active southern Italy.
- Bradford H. Hager
- , James Dieterich
- & Andreas Plesch
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News |
China’s space station is preparing to host 1,000 scientific experiments
Researchers around the world are eagerly awaiting the completion of Tiangong, to study topics from dark matter and gravitational waves to the growth of cancer and pathogenic bacteria.
- Smriti Mallapaty
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Research Highlight |
Telecoms satellites’ new purpose: spying on Earth’s magnetic field
Clues to the forces generated by the planet’s core emerge from observations intended for satellite navigation.
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News & Views |
Fluid-rich extinct volcanoes cause small earthquakes beneath New Zealand
Imaging of a region where an oceanic tectonic plate descends below another plate reveals evidence that fluid-rich extinct volcanoes can help to lubricate the interface between plates — reducing the potential for large earthquakes.
- Catherine A. Rychert
- & Nicholas Harmon
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Article |
Fluid-rich subducting topography generates anomalous forearc porosity
Electromagnetic data collected at the northern Hikurangi Margin, New Zealand show that a seamount on the incoming plate allows more water to subduct, compared with normal, unfaulted oceanic lithosphere.
- Christine Chesley
- , Samer Naif
- & Dan Bassett
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Research Highlight |
A deep look into the physics of earthquake slip
Laboratory experiments provide a glimpse of what happens when rocks fail.
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News & Views |
Ancient continental blocks soldered from below
A study of melting in the mantle under northern Canada more than one billion years ago shows that the oldest blocks of continent not only break apart but can also be repaired by the gluing action of major melting episodes.
- Stephen Foley
- & Craig O’Neill
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Article |
Dynamics of large effusive eruptions driven by caldera collapse
A model for eruptions resulting in caldera collapse reconciles observations of quasi-periodic stick–slip events along annular faults and the large erupted volumes characteristic of such events, highlighting the role of topography-generated pressures.
- Alberto Roman
- & Paul Lundgren
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News & Views |
Oceanic fault zones reconstructed
Tectonic-plate material is generally thought to be neither created nor destroyed at plate boundaries called oceanic transform faults. An analysis of sea-floor topography suggests that this assumption is incorrect.
- Garrett Ito
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Article |
Extensional tectonics and two-stage crustal accretion at oceanic transform faults
Oceanic transform faults are systemically deeper than their associated fracture zones, owing to the plate boundary experiencing increasingly oblique shear at increasing depths below the seafloor.
- Ingo Grevemeyer
- , Lars H. Rüpke
- & Colin W. Devey
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Article |
Propagation of large earthquakes as self-healing pulses or mild cracks
Numerical simulations indicate that seismological observations of large megathrust earthquakes are better matched by crack-like ruptures on persistently weak faults than by self-healing pulse-like ruptures on stronger faults.
- Valère Lambert
- , Nadia Lapusta
- & Stephen Perry
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Article |
A thin mantle transition zone beneath the equatorial Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Data from ocean bottom seismometers show that the mantle transition zone beneath the equatorial Mid-Atlantic Ridge is thin and warm, which suggests more material transfer than previously thought.
- Matthew R. Agius
- , Catherine A. Rychert
- & J.-Michael Kendall
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News |
Surprise! First peek inside Mars reveals a crust with cake-like layers
NASA’s InSight mission yields the first data on the internal structure of a planet other than Earth.
- Alexandra Witze
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News & Views |
Melt mapped inside Earth’s mantle
An analysis of seismic data reveals the location and quantity of melted rock, known as melt, in Earth’s upper mantle. The results show how these factors are correlated with the movement of the planet’s tectonic plates.
- Laura Cobden
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Research Highlight |
Seismic sensors look skywards — and capture dazzling auroras
Earthquake-monitoring stations could also help to monitor the effects of incoming solar particles.
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Article |
Variable water input controls evolution of the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc
Serpentine subducted below the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc supplies water to the arc, controlling the location of seismicity, volcanic productivity and thickness of crust.
- George F. Cooper
- , Colin G. Macpherson
- & Marjorie Wilson
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Article |
Months-long thousand-kilometre-scale wobbling before great subduction earthquakes
Observed reversals in GNSS surface motions suggests greatly enhanced slab pull in the months preceding the great subduction earthquakes in Maule (Chile, 2010) and Tohoku-oki (Japan, 2011) of moment magnitudes 8.8 and 9.0.
- Jonathan R. Bedford
- , Marcos Moreno
- & Michael Bevis
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Research Highlight |
Putting the squeeze on liquid iron helps to reveal Earth’s make-up
Diamonds help to hold iron at conditions simulating the planet’s interior.
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Where I Work |
Measuring ice in a precious place
Robin Bell studies ice sheets in sensitive polar regions to map the march of climate change.
- Emily Sohn
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Article |
Intraplate volcanism originating from upwelling hydrous mantle transition zone
The widespread intraplate volcanism in northeast China and the unusual ‘petit-spot’ volcanoes offshore Japan could have resulted from the interaction of the subducting Pacific slab with a hydrous mantle transition zone.
- Jianfeng Yang
- & Manuele Faccenda
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News |
Greenland rocks suggest Earth’s magnetic field is older than we thought
Analysis finds that the planet’s protective shield was in place by at least 3.7 billion years ago, as early life arose.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Two of the biggest US earthquake faults might be linked
Provocative analysis of sea-floor cores suggests that quakes on the Cascadia fault off California can trigger tremors on the San Andreas.
- Alexandra Witze
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Comment |
Women from some under-represented minorities are given too few talks at world’s largest Earth-science conference
Researchers from racial and ethnic groups that are under-represented in US geoscience are the least likely to be offered opportunities to speak at the field’s biggest meeting.
- Heather L. Ford
- , Cameron Brick
- & Petra Dekens
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Article |
Upper-plate rigidity determines depth-varying rupture behaviour of megathrust earthquakes
Models compiled from subduction zones worldwide show that the elastic properties of the rock overlying shallow subduction megathrusts can be used to estimate potential slip, possibly enabling early tsunami warnings.
- Valentí Sallarès
- & César R. Ranero
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Article |
Similar scaling laws for earthquakes and Cascadia slow-slip events
A new catalogue of slow-slip events on the Cascadia megathrust shows that a cubic moment–duration scaling law is likely, with scaling properties strikingly similar to regular earthquakes.
- Sylvain Michel
- , Adriano Gualandi
- & Jean-Philippe Avouac
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News |
Earth scientists push ambitious project to map Canada’s geology
A fleet of geophysical observatories would probe everything from the inner Earth to the upper atmosphere.
- Alexandra Witze
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News & Views |
Determining whether the worst earthquake has passed
When a big earthquake occurs, it is hard to tell if it will be followed by a larger quake or by only smaller ones. A method has been developed that aims to distinguish between these scenarios while events are still unfolding.
- Emily E. Brodsky
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Nature Podcast |
PastCast: Plate tectonics – the unifying theory of Earth sciences
In the Nature PastCast series, we delve into the archives to tell the stories behind some of Nature’s biggest papers.
- Kerri Smith
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News & Views |
Small and large earthquakes can have similar starts
A long-standing question in seismology is whether small and large earthquakes have similar or different onsets. An analysis of earthquakes around Japan shows that, in some cases, these onsets are almost identical.
- Rachel E. Abercrombie
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Letter |
Seismic velocities of CaSiO3 perovskite can explain LLSVPs in Earth’s lower mantle
Unexpectedly low seismic velocities of CaSiO3 perovskite in deeply subducted oceanic crust can explain the properties of anomalous continent-sized regions in Earth’s lower mantle.
- A. R. Thomson
- , W. A. Crichton
- & S. A. Hunt
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Research Highlight |
Danger lurks in Californian fault long presumed dead
A Los Angeles fault could unleash significant destruction — but isn’t factored into the region’s earthquake planning.
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Letter |
Turbulent convective length scale in planetary cores
Numerical modelling of rotating turbulent convective flows shows that the length scale of convection in planetary cores is set by the flow speed and not by the fluid viscosity.
- Céline Guervilly
- , Philippe Cardin
- & Nathanaël Schaeffer
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News & Views |
Role of major erosion events in Earth’s dynamics
A study provides evidence for the unconventional idea that the advent and evolution of plate tectonics on Earth were related to the rise of continents and to sediment accumulation at continental edges and in trenches.
- Whitney Behr
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: Microbes modifying medicine and kickstarting plate tectonics
Listen to the latest science news, with Shamini Bundell and Nick Howe.
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News Feature |
Venus is Earth’s evil twin — and space agencies can no longer resist its pull
Once a water-rich Eden, the hellish planet could reveal how to find habitable worlds around distant stars.
- Shannon Hall
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Article |
Surface erosion events controlled the evolution of plate tectonics on Earth
The rise of continents and the accumulation of sediments in trenches since about three billion years ago has had a crucial role in the emergence and evolution of plate tectonics on Earth.
- Stephan V. Sobolev
- & Michael Brown
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News |
Japanese drill ship fails to reach the earthquake-generating zone
Chikyu drilled deeper into the seafloor than ever before, but could not reach point where tectonic plates meet.
- Alexandra Witze
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Nature Video |
The secret of volcanic flows’ deadly speed
Hot mixture of rock and ash slides on thin layer of air.
- Shamini Bundell
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Research Highlight |
Wintery weather makes California’s landscape tremble
Seismic shivers documented in the Golden State after record-breaking snows in 2016 and 2017.
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Letter |
Deep electrical imaging of the ultraslow-spreading Mohns Ridge
An inversion model for the ultraslow-spreading Mohns Ridge, combining controlled source electromagnetic and magnetotelluric data, reveals passive mantle upwelling controlled by slow and asymmetric plate movements.
- Ståle Emil Johansen
- , Martin Panzner
- & Børge Arntsen
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News |
How AI and satellites could help predict volcanic eruptions
Emerging monitoring methods will allow scientists to keep an eye on many more volcanoes.
- Alexandra Witze
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News |
Japan’s Hayabusa2 craft touches down on asteroid Ryugu
The mission team is now waiting to learn whether the probe collected a sample from the space rock.
- Davide Castelvecchi
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Research Highlight |
The vaporized rock and extreme heat at a huge landslide’s heart
An entire mountainside came crashing down after a devastating earthquake in China’s Sichuan Province.