12 Facts About Plate tectonics

Plate tectonics came to be generally accepted by geoscientists after seafloor spreading was validated in the mid to late 1960s.

Plate tectonics movement is thought to be driven by a combination of the motion of the seafloor away from spreading ridges due to variations in topography and density changes in the crust (density increases as newly-formed crust cools and moves away from the ridge).

Key principle of plate tectonics is that the lithosphere exists as separate and distinct tectonic plates, which ride on the fluid-like asthenosphere.

Plate tectonics boundaries are commonly associated with geological events such as earthquakes and the creation of topographic features such as mountains, volcanoes, mid-ocean ridges, and oceanic trenches.

For example, the African Plate tectonics includes the continent and parts of the floor of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.

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These ideas find their roots in the early 1930s in the works of Beloussov and van Bemmelen, which were initially opposed to plate tectonics and placed the mechanism in a fixistic frame of verticalistic movements.

However, the fact that the North American Plate tectonics ishere being subducted, although it is in motion, presents a problem.

Plate tectonics concluded that tidal forces caused by Earth's rotation and the forces acting upon it by the Moon are a driving force for plate tectonics.

Concepts close to the elements now incorporated in plate tectonics were proposed by geophysicists and geologists like Vening-Meinesz, Holmes, and Umbgrove.

The theory of plate tectonics was defined in a series of papers between 1965 and 1967.

One explanation for Venus's lack of plate tectonics is that on Venus temperatures are too high for significant water to be present.

Consideration of plate tectonics is a part of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and extraterrestrial life.