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

Scripps Institution of Oceanography ^ | July 15, 2010 | Unknown

[Upstate NY Guy]

DEEP OCEAN RIDGES, you can see the ‘growth lines’ on the seafloor.

kinda like this?

[agere_contra]

Admit it. You hate us all!

Aggh my eyes.

[valkyry1]

//we know for a fact that the moon is moving away from the earth//

And if everything was old as they say it is, it would already be gone. Not that I adhere to any specific age of the solar system etc.

[Gondring]

As I see it from a brief skim, the point isn’t the explanation—it’s the improvement of the model.

[redangus]

A theory based on past history as opposed to theory based on supposition. Not the same thing. These guys have actually taken known facts and observations and plugged them into the computers to come up with their theory. The GW crowd goes the opposite direction. They have the answer, i.e. the computer models and now are trying to find proof.

[Gondring]

Theory and hard science are too often confused.

Theories are part of hard science.

[cripplecreek]

And if everything was old as they say it is, it would already be gone.

At a couple of centimeters per year it will be around for a very long time.

[Beowulf9]

Subterranean hampster ping!

[Upstate NY Guy]

Admit it. You hate us all! Aggh my eyes.

LOL. Hey, I could have done Helen Thomas!

[redangus]

The new mantle being produced at the mid ocean ridges is recycled at the subduction zone in the deep ocean trenches. It works somewhat like the conveyor belt at your local grocery store. It bubbles up at the ridge, solidifies, rides across the molten magma and then dives back under the adjoining plate at the subduction zone and is re-melted only to be pushed back up at the ridge(or as volcanic magma).

[GOPJ]

The Geosyncline hypothesis is an obsolete concept[1] involving vertical crustal movement that has been replaced by plate tectonics to explain crustal movement and geologic features. Geosyncline is a term still occasionally used for a subsiding linear trough that was caused by the accumulation of sedimentary rock strata deposited in a basin and subsequently compressed, deformed, and uplifted into a mountain range, with attendant volcanism and plutonism. The filling of a geosyncline with tons of sediment is accompanied in the late stages of deposition by folding, crumpling, and faulting of the deposits. Intrusion of crystalline igneous rock and regional uplift along the axis of the trough generally complete the history of a particular geosyncline. It is then transformed into a belt of folded mountains. Thick volcanic sequences, together with graywackes (sandstones rich in rock fragments with a muddy matrix), cherts, and various sediments reflecting deepwater deposition or processes, are deposited in eugeosynclines, the outer deepwater segment of geosynclines. Wikipedia

Graywackes and eugeosynclines? Hmmmm...

[El Gato]

Monash University is in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. They also have campuses in Malaysia and South Africa.

[El Gato]

THEORY.....

As is everything in science. The thing is, this one postulates a cause or mechanism, rather than just being description. It apparently does a better job of explaining the observations than the "bottoms up" theory.

E=MC^2 is "just a theory" too. But don't stand too close to the devices that exhibit the "theory".

[El Gato]

These guys have actually taken known facts and observations and plugged them into the computers to come up with their theory. The GW crowd goes the opposite direction.

No, that's not what they did. They took their observations, probably more in a qualitative sense, came up with a model. Then they built a computer code using that model, and generated "predictions". Their predictions match reality better than those of the previously most accepted model.

The GW models are of dubious origin, in the sense that they use dubious assumptions and ignore significant factors. Increasingly they diverge from reality. IOW, they are bad models.

[Andrewksu]

[Bernard Marx]

These guys have actually taken known facts and observations and plugged them into the computers to come up with their theory.

Exactly. All they're doing is refining what is already known and observed about plate tectonics. If the computer models hold up, I think this is the important element of the scientists' work:

"The computer models demonstrate that the subducted portion of a tectonic plate pulls on the portion of the plate that remains on the earth's surface. This pull results in either the motion of the plate, or the motion of the plate boundary, with the size of the subduction zone determining how much of each."

"In some ways, plate tectonics is the surface expression of dynamics in the earth's interior but now we understand the plates themselves are controlling the process more than the mantle underneath. It means Earth is really more of a top-down system than the predominantly held view that plate motion is being driven from the bottom-up."

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon. Somehow I'd missed this one, maybe others. :'0

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[decimon]

This one is rather witty. And a reply would be an act of kindness. ;-)

WSU researchers find way to make cancer cells more mortal

[Monkey Face]

*shudder*
(There goes my breakfast.)

[SunkenCiv]

I *love* that, btw.