Continents plate tectonics

Orogeny is the process of mountain formation. Plate tectonics is the main force of nature responsible for orogeny. This continent-building process may be simply explained ... 

One special type of orogeny that can happen during a continental collision is the rise of ophiolite mountains. On rare occasions the crast beneath the ocean floor fractures along the tectonically active coast of a continent, and oceanic crust is thrast up over the shore and forms mountains. This spectacular form of plate-tectonic backfire is not supposed to happen, yet it does often enough to have its own name obduction, meaning over (ob-) leading (-duction). A piece of oceanic crast, and the... 

North America was not formed in one piece, or at one time, the way a cake is baked from batter. Various parts of it were formed all over the world, at various times over four billion years, and were brought together and assembled into one continent by the endless process of plate tectonics. What is now called North America began to form in the first two and one-half billion years of Earth s history, a period of time called the Archean eon. 

Plate tectonics—The interactions of the plates of Earth s crust, which float on top of Earth s mantle, and whose movements through geologic time have caused the major features of the continents. 

Abbott, D. H. Hoffman, S. E. 1984. Archean plate tectonics revisited 1, Heat flow, spreading rate and the age of subducting lithosphere and their effects on the origin and evolution of continents. Tectonics, 3, 429-448. 

The surface temperature and the presence of liquid water on Earth are today consequences of the atmospheric thermal control and filtering of light that is exerted by an anomalous, dominantly biogenic, atmosphere. The uniformitarian argument would thus be the present is the key to the past, hence in the past the stability of liquid water on Earth was, as today, biologically maintained - life sustains the oceans . To this argument could come the further addendum liquid water enables plate tectonics to function, subduction to operate, and andesite volcanoes to erupt . Hence if water is sustained by life, then plate tectonics and the maintenance of continents are sustained by life. But this is only unsupported conjecture. As an alternative hypothesis it... 

Weathering, erosion, transport, and deposition take material from the continental rocks to the sediments in the oceans. If there was no sink for these sediments, the ocean should fill up in less than 100 Ma. On the other hand, if there was no source for rocks on the continents, they should be degraded to ocean level in less than 50 Ma (Holland, 1978, p. 146). Neither of these figures make sense, and the reason is that they do not take continental plate tectonics into account. Sediments are metamorphosed and returned from the oceans back to the continents either by overthrusting (continental plate/con-tinental plate convergence) or subduction (continental plate/ocean plate convergence). In the former case we are dealing mainly with sediments from the continental shelf, and in the latter case... 

VeeversJ.J. (1990) Tectonic-climatic supercycle in the billion-year plate tectonic eon Permian Pangaean icehouse alternates with Cretaceous dispersed-continents greenhouse. Sed. Geol. 68, 1—16. 

Finally, the cycle which summarizes the equilibrium of mercury in nature is presented. The cycle can be considered closed through the physical transfer of mercury in deep sea sediments to the continents by plate tectonics, where mercury will eventually be remobilized by magmatic heat, erosion, and mining. Since some of the geological and chemical terms may be unfamiliar to the reader, a glossary is included. 

Data obtained from many sources led scientists to develop the theory of plate tectonics. This theory is the most current model that explains not only the movement of the continents, but also the changes in the earth s crust caused by internal forces. 

This theory of plate tectonics is a relatively recent way of ejq)laining the causes and driving force behind the multitude of surface processes that geologists have been studying for many hundreds of years. In the last 30 years, plate tectonics has revolutionised our ideas about the structure of the Earth. Previously, no single theory had been able to account for all the observations and catastrophic phenomena witnessed on the Earth s surface. Plate tectonics explains the jigsaw fit of the continents, the appearance of... 

The hypothesis of plate tectonics attempted to provide an explanation on the hoop movement of the continents on the Earth s spherical surface. But, it also encountered the difficulty of driving force. So, it introduced other mechanisms such as the presence of asthenosphere and/or mantle plumes. 

Earth s upper mantle, called the asthenosphere. The science of plate tectonics explains the large-scale phenomena that affect the geosphere, including the creation and enlargement of oceans as the ocean floors open up and spread, the collision and breaking apart of continents, the formation of mountain chains, volcanic activities, the creation of islands of volcanic origin, and earthquakes. 

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