Earth is tearing apart beneath the Pacific Northwest

tracerbulletx•about 1 hour ago

I feel like it's kind of misleading to say "earth is tearing its self apart" when talking about a subduction zone. Yeah I mean the subducting plate faulting as its pulled down is breaking.. but its still a compressive collision. If you crammed two things together and one of the things cracked, saying its tearing its self apart would be a real.. stretch.

jschveibinz•about 1 hour ago

Nic Zentner is a great lecturer on the unique geology of the Pacific Northwest. He has a lot of interesting material on YT. Here is the link to his academic webpage:

https://www.cwu.edu/about/directory/geological-sciences/nico...

ucyo•about 1 hour ago

This is such a nice topic for visualisations, but not a single drawing or visual explanation. That’s unfortunate. The main pic is impressive but without context it’s disappointing a bit

gus_massa•39 minutes ago

The main pict is generated by AI and a misleading hallucination, or as we use to call it "totally wrong".

I'm not a geologist, so I have to take a few guess to read the main paper https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady8347

<IIUC>

When the slab in the subsection one goes under another slab, it does not get destroyed, but goes down quite intact. But from time to time (every few million years?) a part split. See figure 8 D. So the split is already covered with a huge layer of soil (like 10kn?) and above that a swallow sea (like .1km). Note also that they split is a very different way

     /\      ----
    /  \         ----
   Press     Research

So the main graphic of the press article is wrong in many aspects.

</IIUC>

dylan604•23 minutes ago

or as we use to call it artist rendering. Artistic visualizations have been part of articles long before generative AI came along.

margalabargala•about 1 hour ago

The main pic is AI generated, according to the credit caption.

sfink•26 minutes ago

The main pic makes absolutely zero sense. The sides are tilted upwards, so clearly they were moving towards each other. But there's a big gap, so clearly they're moving away from each other. I was mentally sketching out a scenario where it was first one then the other, until I realized it was just AI slop.

thundercleeze•about 1 hour ago

This article is AI.

schiffern•39 minutes ago

Yes, it's an AI rewording of the LSU press release (credited at the bottom): https://www.lsu.edu/science/news/2025/09/shuck-sci-adv.php

Can we change the link to point there instead?

overcast•about 1 hour ago

I've seen this movie, we need start preparing our Jaeger program with all of this AI capital floating around.

hyperhello•about 1 hour ago

> Credit: AI/ScienceDaily.com

Nice picture.

inshard•about 1 hour ago

Vancouver Island is a special place.

analog8374•about 1 hour ago

subduction zone. a million years buried a mile underground, pulverized by lava and rocks, will erase literally any crime.

Earth is tearing apart beneath the Pacific Northwest

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