Breakthrough Achieved in Explaining Why Tectonic Plates Move the Way They Do

[The Straight Story]

Breakthrough Achieved in Explaining Why Tectonic Plates Move the Way They Do

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2010) — A team of researchers including Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego geophysicist Dave Stegman has developed a new theory to explain the global motions of tectonic plates on the earth's surface.

The new theory extends the theory of plate tectonics -- a kinematic description of plate motion without reference to the forces behind it -- with a dynamical theory that provides a physical explanation for both the motions of tectonic plates as well as motion of plate boundaries. The new findings have implications for how scientists understand the geological evolution of Earth, and in particular, the tectonic evolution of western North America, in the past 50 million years.

The research, led by Monash University's Wouter Schellart, is published in the July 16 issue of the journal Science.

These findings provide a new explanation as to why tectonic plates move along the Earth's surface at the speeds that are observed, the details of which were previously not well-understood.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100716125841.htm

[aquart]

1. Cool.

[Possumpoint]

2. Excellent Read

Thanks for sharing! 1 recommendation.

[MadMaddie]

3. I love when this kind of science is shared

[msongs]

4. they are not moving. the earth is only 6K years old. Dinosaurs were on the ark. lol nt

[stevedeshazer]

5. Good stuff.

Recommended.

[Igel]

6. Perhaps I'm dense.

No, let's just assume I am.

If it's all pull and no push, it makes sense that "As the subduction zone decreased in size, the compressive stresses along the west coast of North America decreased, resulting in destruction of the mountain range and formation of the Basin and Range province, a 2 million-square-kilometer (772,000-square-mile) area of elongated basins and ridges that characterizes the present-day western North American landscape."

But I always understood that plates ramming against each other were responsible for things like that utterance presumes: "Until 50 million years ago, the west coast of North America was characterized by a massive mountain chain similar to the present day Andes in South America, and ran from Canada in the north to southern Mexico in the south."

Is the "plate" actually under the continent, so that when the plate was subducted the continental fluff wasn't sucked down up crashed against other chunks of continental fluff?