In South America, beneath the Andes mountains, the Earth’s crust is dripping into the planet’s interior. This has been occurring for millions of years-a long geological process that has produced visible wrinkling and other features on the surface.
This might help us identify interior geological activity on other planets that don’t have plate tectonics, such as Venus and Mars.
It’s called lithospheric dripping, and it has only been identified fairly recently on Earth.
As the rocky crust is warmed up and reaches a certain temperature, it starts to thicken and drip down into the mantle.
First, the pull of the drop forming below creates a basin on the above surface. Then, once the drop breaks off, the surface reacts by springing upward.
“We have confirmed that a deformation on the surface of an area of the Andes Mountains has a large portion of the lithosphere below avalanched away,” said lead author and geology graduate student Julia Anderson at the University of Toronto.
“Owing to its high density, it dripped like cold syrup or honey deeper into the planetary interior and is likely responsible for two major tectonic events in the Central Andes – shifting the surface topography of the region by hundreds of kilometers and both crunching and stretching the surface crust itself.”
https://www.sciencealert.com/earth-s-crust-is-dripping-under-the-andes