Posted on 10/20/2020 9:33:20 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
For now, until some fool slams a telephone pole down because “He’s got a 4x4!”
*singing, terribly*
“Slip slidin away..”
Just like that guy in the 4x4 ...
Do you have blankets?
Blankets and cats.
“C’mere rat creature, you’re going to help me stay warm!”
*Cat stuffed in coat*
Cats can be a big help. Jake will get under the blanket with me when I go to bed.
Ceirdwyn is all fluff.
She is happy to cuddle to a point.
Afterwards she is “Okay, I want foods now!”
Jake is almost 14 lbs. of solid cat. He’ll stay under the covers for hours, if I don’t have to move.
Colton, the other kitty, is 18 pounds.
Dwyn is only 11 pounds.
But she gets overly warm and flees.
Tank (Colton) gets bored.
Jake wakes up occasionally, purrs and claws a little, and goes back to sleep.
I wish Dwyn would snooze.
She only does that rarely.
And when she does, she lays on her back belly skyward and looking truly ridiculous.
Shannon does that sometimes, but Jake is too image-conscious.
STOP TECTONIC SHIFT, NOW!!!
The Dobe boy basically “guards” my sleep by laying on top of me, all 110 pounds of him.
Honestly, I have no idea how the current “weighted blanket” fad ever caught on.
/pressed salamander
That would be a little much for me. I need to turn over pretty often, or my joints ache.
Ceirdwyn is a “Princess” yet she prefers to look moth eaten.
I comb her fur and she gets really MAD about it.
My joints ache.
And here we are.
:D
You cat is Goth.
:D
Probably!
I tell her she looks pretty all brushed and combed.
She will sniff at me disdainfully and they purposely make her fur look like she got moth mugged.
Too bad they don’t make tiny little Doc Martens for cats.
She’d like them.
:D
/I’m not a social butterfly...I’m a sarcastic Moth.
Shannon is looking plush again, now that she’s on her thyroid medication.
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