P-waves are able to travel through solids and liquids, which allows them to travel through the Earth's outer core, though they are refracted, or bent. P-waves are compressional meaning that the rocks compress together and expand as the waves pass through them. Think of a slinky being ...
Only about 5,000 feet of sediment accumulated during middle Mesozoic times (about 200 to 150 million years ago) in the region now occupied by the Southern Rockies. Mountain building in these ranges resulted from compressional folding and high-angle faulting during the Laramide Orogeny, as the Me...
The earthquake and its aftershocks were the result of thrustfaulting(i.e., compression-driven fracturing) in the Indus-Yarlung suture zone, a thin east-west region spanning roughly the length of theHimalayanranges. The earthquake relieved compressional pressure between the Eurasiantectonic plateand the...
The quake was caused by the collision of the Indian-Australian and Eurasian plates along the 155-mile- (249-km-) longLongmenshan Fault, a thrustfaultin which the stresses produced by the northward-moving Indian-Australian plate shifted a portion of thePlateau of Tibeteastward.Compressional forces...