Search

As that water flooded out of the slab, it weakened the surrounding rocks and triggered quakes, Shirey and his colleagues report in AGU Advances. PHOTO (COLOR): Imperfections such as the inclusions (dark flecks) in this diamond reveal that tectonic slabs can carry water deep into Earth's mantle. [Extracted from the article]

But the movement of many damaged blocks, including substantial gaps between some formerly interlocking blocks of stone, was likely driven by seismic shaking from at least two major quakes, the team concludes. Regardless of when those quakes occurred, construction thereafter shifted to a cheaper and easier scheme of merely stacking smaller blocks of rock (upper layer of stones, above right), not carving them so that they interlocked. [Extracted from the article]