The expansion of the earth’s surface is demonstrated by what U.S. state that is believed to be increasing by 1.2 “nanostrains” per year?

New Mexico

New Mexico Is Stretching, Slowly but Surely

New Mexico is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States of America. It was admitted to the union as the 47th state on January 6, 1912. It is usually considered one of the Mountain States. New Mexico is fifth by area, the 36th-most populous, and the sixth-least densely populated of the 50 United States.

The research team calls it a “distributed deformation,” but we prefer to think of it as an America-shaped piece of taffy stretching endlessly, slowly but surely.