The thickness of the earth's crust is gradually decreasing - scientists from the United States of America say alarmingly from the pages of the authoritative scientific publication Nature Geoscience, whose observations have shown a thinning of the earth's crust under the oceans.
For example, the crust in the regions of the mid-oceanic ridges formed in the middle of the Jurassic period, that is, about one hundred and seventy million years ago (when the ancient supercontinent Pangea finally disintegrated into parts) became thinner by 1,700 meters.
The most serious thinning of the earth's crust, as noted by American researchers, is recorded under the Atlantic and Indian oceans. To a lesser extent, the crust has become thinner under the Pacific Ocean.
“Before reaching such conclusions, we carried out a thorough meta-analysis of existing data collected using seismic refraction. This information allows us to track the dynamics of changes in the thickness of the earth's crust,”- say the authors of the study.
The lithosphere, that is, the Earth's crust, is a geological layer with variable thickness. If under land this figure can be eight tens of kilometers, then under the oceans we can talk about much lower numbers.
Kolesnikov Andrey
