Word: lavas
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...that the earth's mantle is really a giant convection system. Like hot air in a room, he suggested, material heated by radioactive elements in the earth's interior slowly rises out of a relatively fluid layer of the earth's mantle called the asthenosphere. This lava surfaces at the mid-ocean ridges; hence, the higher water temperatures. As it flows away from the ridges, it hardens into a more rigid layer called the lithosphere. When new lava oozes out, it attaches itself to the older lithosphere and continues to move laterally from the mid-ocean ridges...
...theory was so unorthodox and tenuous that Hess cautiously called it "geopoetry." It was soon to become geo-fact. After studying Hess's work, a 24-year-old Cambridge University graduate student, Frederick J. Vine, proposed an ingenious test. The iron in the lava from the mid-ocean ridges, he suggested, should be imprinted with the direction of the earth's magnetic field prevailing at the time that the lava cooled off. But patterns in land rocks had already shown that the magnetic field has inexplicably reversed itself as many as 171 times in the past 76 million...
...astronauts to Houston. Some 80 Ibs. of lunar rock were delivered by midweek to eager scientists at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL). Although a thick coat of clinging dust prevented immediate detailed observation, geologists could see that several of the rocks were igneous-formed out of molten material like lava. They were also of a lighter hue than the brownish gray Apollo 11 rocks from the Sea of Tranquility-and much larger. The biggest of these "grapefruits," as Conrad had called them, weighed as much as four pounds and were about six inches long and five inches wide. Said...
...Antarctica might be easier to explain than the riddling ruins on Easter Island. More than 2,000 miles from the coast of Chile, still farther from the reefs of Tahiti, Easter is the world's most isolated islet: a tiny (45.5 sq. mi.) blob of wind-scraped lava jutting from the gray Pacific like a roost for passing frigate birds. Yet on its stony surface, dozens of enormous statues, known in local dialect as modi, stand and stare. Some of them rear up to a height of 40 feet; many of them wear a subtle expression that presumably only...
...looking north up to ward Aristarchus now, and there's an area that is considerably more illuminated than the surrounding area. It seems to have a slight amount of fluorescence." Aldrin confirmed his observation. Many scientists believe the glows are caused by lunar eruptions, complete with fire fountains and lava flows...