Plate Tectonics Essay

The crust has two types, the oceanic and continental; they both differ because of composition. Stern Two of my favorite topics of geoconversation are how new subduction zones get started and when in Earth’s history did plate tectonics begin?Plate tectonics and mountains also play a big part in the geological features of our planet or any planet for that It turned out that all of these edges became known as tectonic plates (Kearey 2009).

) is one of the most important – and exciting – unresolved questions in the history of the solid Earth.

I find this to be a particularly interesting question because EVERYONE can get involved: graduate students, undergraduate students, K-12 students, professors, amateurs, the media.

This proves that the Earth has gone through several magnetic reversals; this would not be possible if the lithosphere was not in motion.

Since all of this has been discovered, plate tectonics has gained acceptance as the Earth processes (Kearey 2009).

But strict adherence to Uniformitarianism is ridiculous, as Stephen Jay Gould pointed out in his first peer-reviewed paper (Gould, 1965).

Uniformitarianism is very useful when you are trying to explain how the Earth came to be to a bunch of religious nuts who think the Earth is 6000 years old and that humans and dinosaurs coexisted, but it is not useful when trying to understand Earth’s tectonic history for the simple reason that it inhibits inquiry.Thinking about the rotational axis of the Earth, and possibly of what the Earth may become at a certain point in time, has a great influence on understanding all aspects of living things, either in the past, present, or future.The study of Plate tectonics is accredited to most of the creations of Mountain Ranges, the drifting of continents, earthquakes, and volcanic activity.The crust moves in a rigid way, which explains the change that we see. New material is made by the spreading of the ocean floor and eventually become part of a plate, and motion of plates occurs only at plate boundaries.Plates are rocks that pretty much float on top of the asthenosphere.Yes it was mantle convection, but was convection driven by hot deep mantle rising or cold dense lithosphere sinking?Geodynamicists soon began investigating and now they tell us that it is mostly the sinking of dense lithosphere in subduction zones, pulling the plates and moving them.We can’t agree on the answer yet so let’s discuss it! must be to reconstruct Earth’s tectonic history, using both first-order understanding of how large silicate bodies cool and proper interpretation of the rock record, particularly those mineral and rock assemblages that are diagnostic of plate tectonic records of independent plate motions, subduction and collision.One possibility is that Earth has always had plate tectonics.Our modern understanding of what drives the plates shows us that the key to understanding how subduction zones form is by understanding the density and strength of oceanic lithosphere.It also tells us that we should be thinking about lithospheric strength and density when we try to answer the question “When did plate tectonics start on Earth?