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Thousands of previously undetected tiny earthquakes have revealed the edge of a miniature tectonic plate slamming into Alaska near the Denali Fault.The microplate could be focusing seismic energy in a straight line in a region under the Alaska Range of mountains, potentially contributing to large earthquakes and the development of small volcanoes in the area. The Yakutat microplate is an ocean plateau that is thicker than the Pacific oceanic crust surrounding it. Formed by volcanoes tens of millions of years ago, this block of crust is now being pushed under the North American Plate in Alaska in a process called subduction. But because it is thicker and more buoyant than the surrounding oceanic crust, the microplate pushes up the Alaska Range, which includes North America's highest mountain, Mount McKinley (also known as Denali). "Being able to identify where the Yakutat microplate is in the subsurface has helped us understand the tectonics," said Meghan Miller, the study's first author and a seismologist at the Australian National University. Study co-author Meghan Miller deploys a temporary seismic station. The data from these stations revealed a hidden microplate's location. (Image credit: Sarah Roeske.)Part of the plate is still off the coast of Alaska, sticking out like a slipper under a rug. But the precise location of the edge of the plate that has already subducted under the continent has been hard to pinpoint. Miller and her colleagues installed seven new seismometers south of the Denali Fault, which runs through the Alaska Range. This is a tectonically active region, most famous for a 2002 magnitude 7.9 earthquake that was felt as far away as Seattle. Related storiesThere's a massive fault hidden under America's highest mountain — and we finally know how it formed'New' island emerges from melting ice in AlaskaTectonic plates can spread subduction like a contagion — jumping from one oceanic plate to anotherBut it wasn't a giant temblor like 2002's that revealed the hidden edge of the Yakutat. Instead, it was unmasked by about 3,000 newly discovered minuscule earthquakes clustered in a clean line running from northwest to southeast for 155 miles (250 kilometers) under the Denali Fault. The "very sharp, linear pattern" also aligns with a series of small volcanic cones and rock-type changes in the deep subsurface, Miller and her colleagues reported in the new study, published June 4 in the journal The Seismic Record.The researchers suspect that the leading edge of the plate is focusing seismic energy toward the surface. The plate's location also aligns with the initiation point of the 2002 Denali quake, which started on a nearby fault, Miller told Live Science, but exploring that idea further will require computational modeling. "What we were postulating is that the edge of the Yakutat plate is influencing all these different types of processes," Miller said.

iPhone users say their iOS alarms are going off silentlyThis has reportedly affected the work life of someA fix has been discovered in the iOS 27 betaHow many times have you slept through your phone alarm in the morning? Most of us have experienced it at one time or another — but what if the problem wasn’t so much your heavy sleeping, but more the fact that your iPhone alarm was going off completely silently, meaning it never had a chance of waking you up in the first place? That seems to be what’s happening to a number of iOS users, with several of them complaining that silent iOS alarms have risked or even cost them their jobs. In a since-deleted post on Reddit, user Jeremy_keister said that although their iOS alarm had been set and went off in the morning, it did so silently, making it next to useless. The situation, they said, “has practically lost me a job.” Similarly, user okeanouszeke said the same issue had actually “cost me a job.” Clearly, there’s something going on here, and a little investigation suggests that it might be to do with the volume settings in iOS. Fortunately, it looks like there’s a fix on the way in iOS 27.Silent alarm activated(Image credit: 9to5Mac / Future)If your alarm is ringing silently rather than out loud, it could be due to a certain setting in iOS 26 and earlier. In those versions of Apple’s operating system, there was only one volume control, and this setting would affect alarms, ringtones, system notifications and more all at once. That means that if you’d turned the ringtone volume all the way down to zero, your alarms might also be affected. If you happened to look at your iPhone display while the alarm was going off, you’d see it trying to alert you — but with no volume, you wouldn’t hear a thing. And since Apple didn’t build any kind of warning into iOS, you might not even realize that minimizing the system volume would render your alarms useless. In iOS 27, though, that’s all set to change. Users of the iOS 27 beta have noticed that there’s a new section under Sound & Haptics in the Settings app. There, you’ll find a volume slider for ringtones, one for alarms and timers, and another for alerts and system sounds. In iOS 26 and earlier, you just got one slider that controlled everything. In iOS 27, then, you can set ringtone volume to zero but push alarm volume to full, ensuring your alarms will still wake you up, even if everything else is silent. That should give you the peace of mind to know that you shouldn’t oversleep, whatever your taste for ringtone volume.Another alarming issueThere’s one more issue to be aware of. Some users have reported alarms starting off loud, then suddenly dropping in volume. One potential solution could be to disable Face ID’s attention features in Settings > Face ID & Passcode > Require Attention for Face ID. Supposedly, Apple’s facial recognition tech notices you looking at your iPhone and assumes that you’re fully awake, disabling your alarm in the process. Turning off this feature should allow the alarm to ring until you manually switch it off. So, if you’ve been struggling to wake up on time in the mornings and think a silent alarm could be the culprit, there are a few potential solutions to try. When iOS 27 launches this fall, this problem might become a thing of the past.