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Earth’s crust drips “like honey” into our planet’s hot interior beneath the Andes mountains, scientists have found. By setting up a simple experiment in a sandbox and comparing the results with actual geological data, researchers have found solid evidence that earth Earth’s crust has “bullied” across hundreds of miles in the Andes after being swallowed up by the thick mantle. The process, called lithospheric drip, has occurred for millions of years and in various locations around the world – including Turkey’s central Anatolian Highlands and the Great Basin of the western United States – but scientists have only studied it in recent years. The researchers published their findings on Andean drops on June 28 in the journal Nature: Earth & Environment Communication (opens in a new tab) . Related: A ‘totally new’ type of magnetic wave found surging through Earth’s core “We have confirmed that the deformation on the surface of the Andes Mountains area has a large part of the litho

Just as honey slowly drips from a spoon, parts of the rocky outermost layer of Earth’s shell have been continuously sinking into the more fluid layers of the planet’s mantle over millions of years. Known as lithospheric dripping – named for the fragmentation of the rocky material that makes up the Earth’s crust and upper mantle – this process results in significant deformation of the surface such as basins, crustal folds and irregular elevations. Although the process is a relatively new concept in the field of decades-old plate tectonics, several examples of lithospheric droplets around the world have been identified – the Central Anatolian Plateau in Turkey and the Great Basin in the western US, to name two. Now, a research team led by Earth scientists at the University of Toronto has confirmed that several areas of the central Andes Mountains in South America formed in a similar way. And they do so using materials available at hardware stores and art supply outlets. “We have confir