In 2016, Duarte and colleagues proposed a theory for what might be going on: the stitches between these plates could be unravelling, and a major rupture may be looming. "It could be a kind of infectious mechanism," he explains. Or like the glass splintering between two small holes in a car windscreen. If so, a subduction zone could be poised to spread out from the Mediterranean along western Africa and perhaps all the way up past Ireland and the UK, bringing volcanoes, mountain-building and earthquakes to these regions.
