Plate tectonics refers to how humongous slabs of solid rock glide over Earth s mantle, the layer just below the crust. These continental slabs shift, fracture and collide, causing
earthquakes to occur, mountains to grow and oceans to form. Besides Earth, no other known planetary bodies have plate tectonics, the researchers said. It s likely that Earth has life because of plate tectonics,
For instance, over time, rocks capture carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that helps to warm Earth (although too much CO2 can lead to
global warming), and plate tectonics ensures that these rocks eventually get dragged down and melted, and their CO2 is spewed out as gas through volcanoes,
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IMAGE: Zircons studied by the research team, photographed using cathodoluminescence, a technique that allowed the team to visualize the interiors of the crystals using a specialized scanning electron microscope. Dark circles. view more
Credit: Michael Ackerson, Smithsonian.
Scientists led by Michael Ackerson, a research geologist at the Smithsonian s National Museum of Natural History, provide new evidence that modern plate tectonics, a defining feature of Earth and its unique ability to support life, emerged roughly 3.6 billion years ago.
Earth is the only planet known to host complex life and that ability is partly predicated on another feature that makes the planet unique: plate tectonics. No other planetary bodies known to science have Earth s dynamic crust, which is split into continental plates that move, fracture and collide with each other over eons. Plate tectonics afford a connection between the chemical reactor of Earth s interior and its surface t
New Study Helps Pinpoint When Earth’s Plate Subduction Began
A new study from scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the University of Chicago sheds light on a hotly contested debate in Earth sciences: when did plate subduction begin?
According to findings published Dec. 9 in the journal Science Advances, this process could have started 3.75 billion years ago, reshaping Earth’s surface and setting the stage for a planet hospitable to life.
For geochemists like Scripps assistant professor and study lead author Sarah Aarons, the clues to Earth’s earliest habitability lie in the elements that ancient rocks are composed of – specifically titanium. Aarons analyzed samples of Earth’s oldest-known rocks from the Acasta Gneiss Complex in the Canadian tundra – an outcrop of gneisses 4.02 billion years old. These rocks are dated from the Hadean eon, which started at the beginning of Earth’s formation and was defined by hellish conditions on a pla
New study helps pinpoint when Earth’s tectonic plates began
Dec 11, 2020 Rocks tell story of planet’s transition from alien landscape to continents, oceans and life
Every year, earthquakes shake the ground and volcanoes erupt around the edges of tectonic plates the massive pieces of Earth’s crust that slide slowly across the planet, creating and destroying mountains and oceans on the scale of eons. But the question of when this plate subduction actually began has been a hotly contested debate in earth sciences.
A new study from scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and the University of Chicago sheds light on this burning question. According to findings published Dec. 9 in the journal
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