Salt deposits beneath the North Sea have bumps that are spaced by varied amounts

What is it about?

Rock salt has a low density and is an extremely weak rock. When buried, it can become fluid-like and can rise up into the overlying sediments forming subterranean hills. In this work, we attempt simply to measure how far apart the hills are and how those spacings compare with the thickness of the salt when it was originally deposited.

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Photo by Timo Volz on Unsplash

Photo by Timo Volz on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Evaluating theories for salt movements requires good estimates of diapir spacings and the original thickness of the salt, but this article shows how difficult this can be and often the values are non-unique.