Asthenosphere

This was cool becuase we looked at how upper crust interaction ie mountain building events are affected by the underlaying interaction of the crust and upper mantle - he actually mentioned the word asthenosphere which I haven't heard since like A'level geology I swear! ❋ Unknown (2008)

They travel at a speed of about 5 to 7 kilometers per second through the lithosphere and about 8 kilometers per second in the asthenosphere. ❋ Unknown (2010)

The asthenosphere is weak in the sense that it is not rigid and brittle like the rocky plates of the lithosphere but behaves somewhat like a liquid: yielding, like putty or toffee, if not necessarily molten. ❋ RICHARD DAWKINS (2009)

The asthenosphere, in its capacity as a quasi-liquid, has convection currents that extend throughout its whole surface, under the entire area of the plates. ❋ RICHARD DAWKINS (2009)

The upper layer of asthenosphere under the South American plate, for example, is moving inexorably westward. ❋ RICHARD DAWKINS (2009)

In any one region, the asthenosphere is slowly moving in a consistent direction, and then circling back in the opposite direction down in its deeper layers. ❋ RICHARD DAWKINS (2009)

The plates constitute the hard lithosphere – literally, ‘sphere of rock’ – which floats atop the hot, semi-molten asthenosphere – ‘sphere of weakness’. ❋ RICHARD DAWKINS (2009)

In this convergence, the ocean plate area between the arc and the continent is subducted into the asthenosphere and the volcanic rocks and sediments associated with the island arc become accreted to the margin of the continent over time. ❋ Unknown (2008)

These plates have the ability to move horizontally by gliding over the plastic asthenosphere (see Figure 8). ❋ Unknown (2008)

Subsequent research discovered that the Earth's surface was composed of a number of oceanic and continental plates that float on top of the asthenosphere (see Figure 3). ❋ Unknown (2008)

In geology, just underneath the lithosphere, there is another layer -- a more fluid, plastic-like surface, called the asthenosphere. ❋ Unknown (2008)

And like a living organism, you tear it open it bleeds its molten blood, rises up to heal that wound from the asthenosphere, hardens, forms new tissue and moves laterally. ❋ Robert Ballard (2008)

Near the top of the mantle is a region of partially melted rock called the asthenosphere. ❋ Unknown (2008)

The lithosphere, and therefore, the earth's crust, is not a continuous shell, but is broken into a series of plates that independently "float" upon the asthenosphere, much like a raft on the ocean. ❋ Unknown (2008)

The layer of the mantle above the asthenosphere plus the entire crust make up a region called the lithosphere. ❋ Unknown (2008)