North America Is Dripping from Below, Geoscientists Discover

I believe it's a shame that the drippings do not create the basis of a mantle-stalagmite. That would be a neat feature to study.

'Our continent keeps on dripping, dripping, dripping, into the mantle...'

Doo-doo dah doo-doo.

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Is there currently any type of ground penetrating radar or other device which could physically confirm the model's output?

It is not just model output. The paper uses seismic tomography to image it:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-025-01671-x

The abstract mentions:

> Here we present a full-waveform seismic tomographic model

So presumably, you would actually do the seismic tomography (if they haven't already). Instead of radar, you use the waves from earthquakes!

Steve Miller song at the speed of continental drift.

it usually starts with a stalactite, then a stalagmite; by the way is there a mnemonic for the two words in English? something like t for tumbling and m for mounting...

Stalactites hold “tight” to the ceiling.

Courtesy of a 30-year-old Bill Nye episode.

The one I've heard is 'just remember ants in pants: the mites go up, the tites come down'

I memorized it as "c" for "ceiling" and "g" for "ground."

I always remember it with “g” for ground and “c” for ceiling… haha but I do like the mites and tites one too in a neighbor comment :)

T from the top

hope it holds tight...

I also heard this lame one: stalagmites might hang, but they don't.

If I needed a mnemonic today, just remember that drops slowly drip from stalactites, like drops in a chemical titration procedure.

Tights go down and mites go up.