Numbers

The Ring of Fire

How It's Used

"The theory identifies the Earth's crust as made up of a number of major plates that are continually moving, driven by heat originating deep within the planet's core. Where the plates meet, they may find themselves compressing together, pulling apart or slipping under one another. The massive friction forces these generate can give rise to quakes. This is why parts of the globe located on plate boundaries, such as the west coasts of the Americas, or the Pacific 'ring of fire', experience such severe quakes. And why Britain, which sits in the middle of the Eurasian plate well away from anywhere terribly seismically interesting, gets such feeble ones."

"Ninety per cent of the world's earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire, an area that arcs up the west coast of the continental U.S. to Alaska, then crosses over to Asia and moves down the coast to Indonesia."

"Indonesia's 17,000 islands, which straddle the Pacific 'Ring of Fire,' an area where three tectonic plates merge causing continuous seismic activity, is regularly struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tidal waves. In 2004, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake triggered a tsunami off the coast of Aceh, Indonesia's northernmost province, killing more than 130,000 people."

"Skimming past otherworldly tube worms and bizarre crustaceans as they traversed primordial sediments in inky darkness seven miles below the surface, an unmanned yellow robot two weeks ago became the world's deepest-diving unmanned submersible.

"The craft, called Nereus, gave scientists on the surface their first long look at a portion of the Challenger Deep 35,768 feet (10,902 meters) down in the Mariana Trench. The trench is a gash in the Earth's crust in the volcanic Pacific Ring of Fire, where the Pacific tectonic plate collides with a smaller plate and plunges into the mantle."

"The Philippines lies along the Pacific 'Ring of Fire,' where volcanic activity and earthquakes are common. About 22 out of 37 volcanos in the archipelago are active."

Also Known As (AKA)

The Pacific Ring of Fire

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