Posted on 10/19/2017 10:14:29 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Last week, scientists released a monumental interactive catalog that tracks 94 ancient tectonic plates lurking deep within Earth’s mantle, a resource they’re calling an “Atlas of the Underworld.”
Although scientists have known for decades that tectonic plates plunge into the Earth’s interior at subduction zones, until recently, those plates disappeared off the geological map once they stopped generating earthquakes, which happens after they’re around 670km below the surface. In the last few years, seismic tomography, which uses waves from earthquakes to make images of the planet’s interior, has restored their visibility. It has revealed subducted plates sinking in the mantle all the way down to the core-mantle boundary, 2,900km below Earth’s surface.
Now, Dutch scientists Douwe van der Meer, Douwe van Hinsbergen, and Wim Spakman of Utrecht University have catalogued 94 separate pieces of ancient tectonic plates, called “slabs,” in the mantle, linking them to dates where geological events happened while they were on the surface. Some subducted almost 300 million years ago, while others can be traced to active faults, such as those along the western coast of the Americas.
(Excerpt) Read more at arstechnica.com ...
Can we send George Soros to one of these plates?
Earthquakes happen when Atlas Shrugs.
These activities cause sea level changes and mountains to rise. Nothing man can do but adapt.
Thanks for posting.
I always figured these slabs headed under the mantle and then were melted down.
Interesting.
Very interesting.
It’s plates, all the way down.
One of the comments at the source puts this discovery into its place. While we’ve known for some time that there are subducted slabs in the mantle this level of complexity wasn’t understood, just suspected. As the comment reads “the mantle isn’t a uniform chunk of ultramafic rock with nice olivine/spinel/perovskite transitions with depth. Instead there’s lots of compositional heterogeneity”.
Trump’s fault!
I’d think they’d be remelting, and re-added to the mix.
A lot of gold still down there. If only I could figure out....
I need some sleep. I thought that said “dead pirates’.
As an American, this number means nothing to me. Is this like a mile or something?
Wait, don't answer that. I wallow in my ignorance.
1 KM = 0.62 mile.
670 x 0.62 = 415.4 miles.
How much gold? A meter thick layer of gold over the whole surface of the Earth, per some educated speculations.
Almost enough to back the dollar with gold again! /s
Note: this topic is from 10/19/2017. Thanks MtnClimber.
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Somewhere, in my little pea brain, I knew this. I mean, there is nowhere else for the plates to go but back into the earth’s core. Kinda like mixing up a bowl of different ingredients. You think they’re gone, but they’ve just been absorbed by other ingredients, so they are still there. Yep. That’s my assessment and I’m stickin’ to it!
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