SALT LAKE CITY, June 25 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists have discovered parts of North America would be far under water if it were not for heat generated from within the Earth.
University of Utah researchers found planet-generated heat makes rock within the Earth's crust buoyant and without that heat, New York would be 1,427 feet under the Atlantic, Boston would be 1,823 feet deep, Miami and New Orleans would be about 2,400 feet underwater and Los Angeles would rest 3,756 feet beneath the Pacific.
"If you subtracted the heat that keeps North American elevations high, most of the continent would be below sea level, except the high Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada and the Pacific Northwest west of the Cascade Range," said doctoral student Derrick Hasterok, the study's co-author.
"We have shown for the first time that temperature differences within the Earth's crust and upper mantle explain about half of the elevation of any given place in North America," Professor David Chapman said.
The study appears in the online issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth.
