Word: crust
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Colombian eruption, like most volcanic events, is the result of continental wanderlust. According to the widely accepted theory of plate tectonics, the earth's crust forms the top layer of about a dozen major plates and several smaller ones, which range in thickness from 20 miles to 150 miles. These sections float on a gooey layer of partly molten rock known as the asthenosphere. As they move in different directions at an average speed of several inches a year, the plates collide, dive under and buckle against one another, crinkling up into a mountain range here, yanking apart to form...
...paid the price. First, there was DJ “the Yard Guy,” a sketchy, vaguely Mexican boy toy and a categorically atrocious character. While he must be commended for getting closer to the manicured lawns and luxury vehicles of The OC’s upper-crust than any other minority, he needed to go. As Seth once said, “What happens in Mexico stays in Mexico...
That's true, at least, for Meridiani Planum, the plain near the Martian equator, where Opportunity set down. By pure good fortune, the rover landed inside a small crater gouged by an ancient meteorite. This natural excavation exposed ancient layers of crust laid down by a shallow lake that had periodically dried up and refilled. Spirit landed half a world away in giant Gusev Crater, on what looked like a lake bed but turned out to be lava. Frustrated, mission scientists ordered the rover to move on. "We were already at 80 days, but we decided to put the pedal...
...This one's a documentary, shot in IMAX 3-D. It's his cinematic take on the emerging science of astrobiology, the search for life in other worlds. Paradoxically, astrobiologists are equally fascinated with outer space and the ocean depths, where water superheated by magma from the Earth's crust spews from cracks called hydrothermal vents and sustains a bizarre menagerie of bacteria and other aquatic life...
...Titan is a chemical cousin of Earth, it's an Earth gone terribly wrong. The surface is etched with riverbeds and shorelines carved by the methane rains. The ground seems to be a thin, frozen crust over a smoother, softer layer. "Kind of a creme brulee consistency," says John Zarnecki, a principal science investigator. The atmosphere produces plenty of wind and weather, and there is even a flicker of a greenhouse effect, but with sunlight a thousand times dimmer than on Earth, it doesn't amount to much...