How long do neutron star mountains last? The durability of elastically deformed crust is important for neutron star physics including pulsar glitches, emission of gravitational waves from static mountains, and flares from star quakes. The durability is defined by the strength properties of the Yukawa crystals of ions, which make up the crust. In this paper we extend our previous results [Mon. N...

[1] Recordings in western Tibet of Rayleigh and Love waves at periods less than 70 s from aftershocks of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake cannot be matched by an isotropic velocity model beneath Tibet. These intermediate‐period Rayleigh and Love waves require marked radial anisotropy in the middle crust of Tibet, with the vertically polarized S‐ waves propagating more slowly than S‐waves with horizo...

Chemical weathering, as well as physical erosion, changes the composition and shapes the surface of the continental crust. However, the amount of continental material that has been lost over Earth's history due to chemical weathering is poorly constrained. Using a mass balance model for lithium inputs and outputs from the continental crust, we find that the mass of continental crust that has be...

Intermediate-period Rayleigh and Love waves propagating across Tibet indicate marked radial anisotropy within the middle-to-lower crust, consistent with a thinning of the middle crust by about 30%. The anisotropy is largest in the western part of the plateau, where moment tensors of earthquakes indicate active crustal thinning. The preferred orientation of mica crystals resulting from the crust...

First-order (transform) and second-order ridge-axis discontinuities create a fundamental segmentation of the lithosphere along mid-ocean ridges, and in slow spreading crust they commonly are associated with exposure of subvolcanic rust and upper mantle. We analyzed available morphological, gravity, and rock sample data from the Atlantic Ocean to determine whether consistent structural patems oc...

The evolution and the growth of the continental crust is inextricably linked to the evolution of Earth's geodynamic processes. The detrital zircon record within the continental crust, as well as the isotopic composition of this crust, indicates that the amount of juvenile felsic material decreased with time and that in geologically recent times, the generation of new crust is balanced by recycl...

■ Abstract The bulk of the ∼50-km-thick Martian crust formed at ∼4.5 Gyr B.P., perhaps from a magma ocean. This crust is probably a basaltic andesite or andesite and is enriched in incompatible and heat-producing elements. Later additions of denser basalt to the crust were volumetrically minor, but resurfaced significant portions of the Northern hemisphere. A significant fraction of the total t...

[1] Seismic tomography has revealed two large low shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs) in the lowermost mantle beneath the central Pacific and Africa. The LLSVPs are further shown to be compositionally different from their surroundings. Among several hypotheses put forth in recent years to explain the cause of the LLSVPs, one postulates that they are thermochemical piles caused by accumulation of ...

Crustal growth in the Coast Mountains, along the leading edge of the Canadian Cordillera, was the result of processes associated with horizontal flow of material during transpression and subsequent transtension, and the vertical accretion of mantle derived melts. From 85 to 58 Ma, as exotic terranes were translated northward during transpression, the crust was thickened to about 55 km, and melt...

One of the fundamental geophysical observations made of the Earth is the stratified nature of the continental crust, in which the lower crust comprises denser, more mafic material and the upper crust comprises less dense, more felsic material. This chemically differentiated layered structure is developed and maintained by partial melting at depth and the ascent of magma to shallower crustal lev...