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The tectonic plates that cover Earth like a puzzle move as fast as our fingernails grow, but over a billion years, that’s enough to travel across the entire planet – as shown in a fascinating new video.
In one of the most comprehensive models of tectonic plate motion ever assembled, scientists condensed a billion years of motion into a 40-second video clip, so we could see how these giant slabs of rock interacted with each other. over time.
As they move, the plates affect the climate, tidal regimes, animal movements and evolution, volcanic activity, metal production and more: they are more than just a blanket for the planet, they are a survival system that affects everything. that lives on the surface.
“For the first time, a complete model of tectonics has been built, including all boundaries,” geoscientist Michael Tetley, who completed his doctorate at the University of Sydney, told Euronews.
“On a human scale, things move in centimeters per year, but as we can see from the animation, continents have been everywhere in time. a beautiful holiday destination at the equator. “
The shifting and sliding of plates is quite a sight if you watch the video – land masses that are close neighbors become distant cousins and vice versa, and you might be surprised at how countries and continents come together. are recently installed in the positions we know today.
Understanding these movements and patterns is crucial if scientists are to predict how habitable our planet will be in the future and where we will find the metallic resources we need to ensure a clean energy future.
Plate motion is estimated by studying geological records – magnetism which provides data on the historical positions of substrates relative to the Earth’s axis of rotation and the types of material enclosed in rock samples which help to match pieces of geological plate puzzles from the past.
Here, the team went to great pains to select and combine the most suitable models currently available, examining both the movements of the continents and the interactions along the boundaries of the plates.
“Planet Earth is incredibly dynamic, with a surface made up of constantly jostling plates in a way unique among known rocky planets,” says geoscientist Sabin Zahirovic of the University of Sydney.
“These plates move at the speed of nail growth, but when a billion years are condensed into 40 seconds, a fascinating dance is revealed. Oceans open and close, continents disperse and recombine periodically to form huge supercontinents.
The more scientists advance into the past, the more difficult it becomes to estimate how the plates moved, and in this case the epochs from the Neoproterozoic to the Cambrian (1000-520 million years ago) in particular have been carefully mapped. and aligned to match the most modern drives we have.
Questions remain about how these plates formed and when this formation occurred, but each new data point helps us understand Earth’s ancient history – even taking into account the missing plates in some models.
Scientists admit their work lacks finer detail – spread across the planet and over a billion years – but they hope it can serve as a useful resource and foundation for future study of these motions and their pattern. impact. have all over the rest of the planet.
“Our team has created a whole new model of Earth’s evolution over the past billion years,” says geoscientist Dietmar Müller of the University of Sydney.
“Our planet is unique in that it harbors life. But this is only possible because geological processes, like plate tectonics, provide a planetary survival system.”
The research was published in Earth-Science Reviews.
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