Author Archives: Chris Rowan

Marie Tharp’s Adventures in Mapping the Seafloor, In Her Own Words

Establishing the rift valley and the mid-ocean ridge that went all the way around the world for 40,000 miles…You can’t find anything bigger than that, at least on this planet. Lots of cool science history in this first-person account, but also … Continue reading

Categories: academic life, history of science, tectonics

Spooky seismic action at a distance: moderate earthquakes in western US cause submarine landslides in the Gulf of Mexico

This is such a cool study, and such an interesting result! Earthquakes triggering landslides is not a surprise, but surface waves from a magnitude 5.5 earthquake in the Gulf of California triggering a landslide in the Gulf of Mexico (1500 … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, paper reviews

Two reflections on the largest earthquake yet recorded, 60 years later.

It has been 60 years since a magnitude 9.5 earthquake struck the Chilean coast near Valdivia. The stats for this earthquake remain pretty mind-blowing even today. It is still the largest earthquake ever recorded – over 20% of the Earth’s seismic energy … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, tectonics

At subduction zones, feeding a complicated plate means you get complicated earthquake behaviour out

What drives the occurrence of slow-slip events on subduction zones: “earthquakes”: that involve strain release over days and weeks rather than seconds? A new paper…doesn’t really answer that question, but it shows why it’s so complicated to answer.  The study uses … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, paper reviews, tectonics

Remagnetisation spoils the paleomagnetic party again

Did the Earth have a magnetic field before 3.5 billion years ago? Previous paleomagnetic studies of the world’s oldest mineral grains – the Jack Hills zircons, which have maximum ages of 4.4 billion years – claimed that tiny inclusions of … Continue reading

Categories: Archean, deep time, palaeomagic, paper reviews