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 ...
I can’t see stuff on Facebook, but I take your word for it that it was lovely as well as cold.
I haven’t decided about planting. First we have to see what comes back up from last year. Now that I’m almost done weeding, we’ll start thinking about applying mulch.
*shudder*
Kitteh doesn’t look happy about today’s wind and the barometer dropping.
Good morning.
I got side-tracked. I checked FB and found all the nieces are on the new “Roots-Tech” thing on Family Search and I found a ton of records of various kinds about one of my ancestors. It took about an hour to download them all.
But here I am. Now I have to sort through the files that have been piling up for the last week and put them in the proper receptacles. It would be nice to chuck them all, but...
I have no clue what today will bring. But I’ll wait and see.
Good morning. My feet are cold! I will be taking Vlad to the doctor today. By the end of March, everyone will be all medicalized for a considerable interval, unless they have a bad experience with physics.
Happy Friday Eve, everyone!
Ready or not, here it comes.
I’m so sorry about your cold feet!
The only thing I have to do today is bring in the water. I’ll wait until the sun is up for that, even though the wind has died down. Or has shifted to another direction.
I’m still fighting with U-Haul and FedEx about the status of my boxes. Push comes to shove, they’ll refund the money and I’ll have to re-order. And I will have lost about 10 days. Since there is no moving date, it’s OK. For now.
Erase what I said about the wind...
Good morning, ArGee!
Yes another day closer to Friday and the wind is still blowing. Now the Valley Fever is coming back into play. The wind blows and I get sleepy.
Happy Thorsday! I just finished the animal friend, and next, I will do some exercises for my ankle and some laundry.
Today’s special animal friend is the Atlantic puffin, Fratercula arctica. The Atlantic puffin is a seabird native to the waters, islands, and coasts of the North Atlantic. They are also found at the North Carolina Zoo, and I have a plush puffin named Edna. They are super adorable. Netflix has a cartoon series, “Puffin Rock,” in which all the puffins and other island fauna have darling little Irish accents. I highly recommend it for your mental health, especially if you have cold weather and can’t go out today and make an animal friend in real life.
Atlantic puffins are short, stout birds, about 12 inches long, with a wingspan about 24 inches, weighing 1 to 1-1/2 lbs. They have a black head and back, gray cheek patches, and white underparts. Their legs and feet are bright orange, and their large, curved bills are red and orange with a dramatic black chevron at the base. The bill has a very narrow cross section, which reduces its weight while maintaining strength for biting. Their wings are small relative to their weight, and they fly well but with considerable effort.
Puffins spend most of their life on the open ocean, floating along, snapping up fish near the surface or diving to pursue fish. They use both their webbed feet and their long, narrow wings to propel themselves through the water. They are solitary during their oceanic period, which is September-ish to late spring. During this time, they moult, and the colors of their beak and facial markings fade. The colors brighten during mating season, which begins in April in the southern part of their range (Maine) but not until June in Greenland.
Mated pairs usually reconnect in the spring, either on the ocean or at the breeding grounds. Puffins always nest in large colonies, and they favor islands over mainland coast. Around 60% of Atlantic puffins nest in Iceland. The largest Western Atlantic colony is at Witless Bay in Canada. Puffin couples dig burrows in soft ground in which the female lays a single egg. The parents take turns incubating the egg for 39 to 45 days. Infant puffins are fed with fish and eels brought mainly by the father. Adult puffins near land eat crustaceans as well as fish.
Babies take 35 to 50 days to fledge, depending on their diet. Once fledged, they paddle, rather than fly, out to sea, where they remain for up to three years. (Older chicks do not remain with the parents, unlike in “Puffin Rock.”) Reproductive life begins at about 5 years of age. A 20-year lifespan is not uncommon. Predators include seals and larger seabirds such as the Great Black-Backed Gull and the Great Skua. On land, a variety of small mammals, reptiles, and bird of prey can be a threat to eggs and infants. Puffins are hunted for food in the Faroe Islands.
The Atlantic puffin is considered Vulnerable by conservationists. Although the population is large – in the 13 million range – significant declines have been observed in some habitats. Invasive animals, including cats and dogs, can increase predation. Some breeding areas have been abandoned due to overuse by puffins, which cause erosion with their burrowing. Conservationists have been able to help establish colonies in new areas. Fishing patterns and sea-water temperature change affect the availability of fish for infant puffins.
Not much is known about the lives of Atlantic puffins at sea. Although they are very numerous, their solitary habits and the size of the Atlantic Ocean make them difficult to study. “Light level geolocators” are being used to trace a few puffins’ movements, but the puffin must be recaptured to retrieve the device and its information. With another ten years of technological advances, we will learn so much more!
Thanks! :o])
I love puffins! I saw a cross stitch pattern once with a puffin and the words, “No puffin here!” as a No Smoking sign. I wanted it, but I’ve since hung up the cross stitch gloves. My eyes don’t want me to do little stuff.
It will be interesting to learn about puffin’s lives at sea, once the information is available.
that evidently falls into the category of, “You’re so cute I could just eat you up!” ;o])
I can no longer remember the name of the cereal it copies, but it’s a pretty good organic version. It’s just expensive, as organics tend to be.
Odd that organics are so much more expensive than those items with additives, when the additives are so expensive.
Conspiracy theory, anyone?
The item looks like Rice Chex. Are those even made any more?
Yes, you can get Rice Chex.
Good morning.
I’ll be right back.
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