image: Marine gravity model of the Central Indian Ocean (10 mGal contours). Red dots show locations of earthquakes with magnitudes > 5.5 and they highlight the present-day location of the seafloor spreading ridges and transform faults. The image is centered at the Indian Ocean Triple Junction where three major tectonic plates meet (African plate – left; Indo-Australian plate – right; Antarctic plate bottom. This region of the Indian Ocean is very poorly charted and includes the crash site of the Malaysian aircraft that was lost March 8, 2014. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the Oct. 3, 2014 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by D.T. Sandwell at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA, and colleagues was titled, 'New global marine gravity model from CryoSat-2 and Jason-1 reveals buried tectonic structure.' view more
Credit: [Credit: David Sandwell, Scripps Institution of Oceanography]