Geologists 'resurrect' missing tectonic plate

Phys.org ^ | 10/20/2020 | Sara Tubbs, University of Houston

[BenLurkin]

A team of geologists at the University of Houston College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics believes they have found the lost plate in northern Canada by using existing mantle tomography images—similar to a CT scan of the earth's interior. The findings, published in Geological Society of America Bulletin, could help geologists better predict volcanic hazards as well as mineral and hydrocarbon deposits.

"Volcanoes form at plate boundaries, and the more plates you have, the more volcanoes you have," said Jonny Wu, assistant professor of geology in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "Volcanoes also affect climate change. So, when you are trying to model the earth and understand how climate has changed since time, you really want to know how many volcanoes there have been on earth."

Wu and Spencer Fuston, a third-year geology doctoral student, applied a technique developed by the UH Center for Tectonics and Tomography called slab unfolding to reconstruct what tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean looked like during the early Cenozoic Era. The rigid outermost shell of Earth, or lithosphere, is broken into tectonic plates and geologists have always known there were two plates in the Pacific Ocean at that time called Kula and Farallon. But there has been discussion about a potential third plate, Resurrection, having formed a special type of volcanic belt along Alaska and Washington State.

Using 3-D mapping technology, Fuston applied the slab unfolding technique to the mantle tomography images to pull out the subducted plates before unfolding and stretching them to their original shapes.

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Good morning. Good King Wenceslaus looked out on the Feast of Stephen. That’s St. Vaclav of Bohemia.

Jake said I had to get up.

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Kitteh wonders who went after his whiskers with a curling iron while he was asleep.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8fPvODASoI

My family is nothing like this.

[Monkey Face]

Nor mine.

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It is 19 degrees here. I need to put on many layers of clothing and then get pages ready for choir.

[Monkey Face]

It’s 23° here, so I feel your cold. I need to go mail my letter to Charlie but will wait until after the sun is up. I don’t have enough warm clothes.

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I’ll send a boy out to put thank-you notes in the box, later. Based on recent experience, we probably won’t have mail pickup today anyway.

[Monkey Face]

A belated Merry Christmas to you all and my apologies for being in absentia the last few days. I’ve been slightly under the weather. Still not out of the woods, but...

[no-to-illegals]

Prayer for a quick recovery !!!

[Monkey Face]

Thanks! :o]

XO

[no-to-illegals]

Big Hug !!!

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Choir practice accomplished, we’re going to have lunch and then go to Hobby Lobby for the clearance.

[Chode]

and happy new year!

[Monkey Face]

Thanks, Chode! I hope all is well with you and yours!

:o]

[Monkey Face]

If we had a Hobby Lobby here, I’d love to bundle up myself and go slink through the racks and shelves of yarns and threads. I had so much fun in CO with my Favorite Daughter when we shopped there. (I shopped. She paid.)

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I bought some decor items for my choir-ladies. I usually get them wreaths, but the Boy Scouts and K of C didn’t sell the wreaths this year because Covid.

And I got some books at Ollie’s Bargain Warehouse, next door to Hobby Lobby. Smithsonian Tree Identification sets, one for me and one for a friend.

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The Russian costumes were amazing.

[Monkey Face]

That’s the second time I’ve seen that article and this time, I just had to share it. I was so flabbergasted with the decadent opulence that I had to let others see it. The costumes were stuning.

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All the layers and furs ... they needed to keep warm!

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