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Earth science

Through thick and thin

The sea floor around the Hawaiian island chain is unusually shallow. New seismic evidence suggests that this up-raised ‘swell’ is partly due to heating and thinning of the lithosphere beneath.

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Figure 1: The Hawaiian swell.
Figure 2: The origin of the Hawaiian swell.

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Ribe, N. Through thick and thin. Nature 427, 793–795 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/427793a

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