They think that a new subduction zone might occur at the western edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

他们认为，一个新的俯冲带可能会出现在大西洋的西部边缘。

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In the past few centuries, the subduction zone off the coast of Sendai has generated earthquakes of up to magnitude 8 or so, but nothing as powerful as a 9, which releases 30 times more energy.

在过去的几个世纪里，仙台沿海地区的俯冲带发生的地震震级最大才达到8级，从未达到过9级，而这次地震释放的能量是8级地震的30倍。

youdao

The 8.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday, the largest ever recorded in Japan, occurred in a subduction zone, where one of the earth’s tectonic plates is sliding beneath another.

这次周五来袭的8.9级地震，也是日本有记录以来最强的一次地震，发生在一个俯冲带里，即一个板块俯冲于另一个板块之下的地带。

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The large subduction zone earthquakes are responsible for most of the ocean-wide tsunamis, such as the recent tsunami in Japan.

VOA: special.2011.06.07

Instead of occurring at a plate boundary along an area called a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate is diving beneath another, this earthquake occurred in the middle of an oceanic plate, where the faults in the crust essentially moved from side to side instead of up and down.

MSN: Why this Indonesia quake didn't spark a monster tsunami

But on that fateful Friday, when the North American plate slid over the Pacific plate along a subduction zone running 130km (80 miles) off the Pacific coast of northern Japan, the shock leapt from the first segment to a second and on to a third, extending the fault zone some 400km and increasing its intensity more than 30-fold.

ECONOMIST: The myth and reality of the Japanese earthquake