scholarly journals Earth science: How plate tectonics clicked

Nature ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 501 (7465) ◽  
pp. 27-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naomi Oreskes
Keyword(s):  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science

The Paving Stone Theory of World Tectonics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Livermore
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Transform Faults ◽  
Plate Motions ◽  
Euler’S Theorem ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Entire History ◽  
The Indian Ocean

Tuzo Wilson introduces the concept of transform faults, which has the effect of transforming Earth Science forever. Resistance to the new ideas is finally overcome in the late 1960s, as the theory of moving plates is established. Two scientists play a major role in quantifying the embryonic theory that is eventually dubbed ‘plate tectonics’. Dan McKenzie applies Euler’s theorem, used previously by Teddy Bullard to reconstruct the continents around the Atlantic, to the problem of plate rotations on a sphere and uses it to unravel the entire history of the Indian Ocean. Jason Morgan also wraps plate tectonics around a sphere. Tuzo Wilson introduces the idea of a fixed hotspot beneath Hawaii, an idea taken up by Jason Morgan to create an absolute reference frame for plate motions.

Earth Sciences

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glennda Chui
Keyword(s):  
Natural Hazards ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
North Anatolian Fault ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fault System ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Apartment Building ◽  
The North ◽  
Scientists And Engineers

In August 1999, I stood in the ruins of a collapsed apartment building near Izmit, Turkey—one of 60,000 buildings destroyed in 40 seconds by the most powerful earthquake to strike a major city in nearly a century. It was a modern building surrounded by trees and greenery. A couch and a table stood intact in a room bright with potted flowers, now open to the air. A woman's coat had been carefully draped over the remains of a wall. As the stench of death rose around us, I wondered if the coat's owner was buried in the rubble beneath my feet. I was sent to Turkey to chase the science—to bring home lessons for readers who live near a strikingly similar fault system in California. But as I surveyed the damage with a team of scientists and engineers, there was no separating the science from the politics. Covered with a fine film of sweat mixed with dust from crumbled buildings and lime that had been scattered to prevent the spread of disease, we saw firsthand how corruption and greed had conspired with the forces of nature to kill more than 17,000 people. Some buildings were constructed right on the North Anatolian Fault. Its mole-like tracks plowed through barracks that had collapsed on 120 military officers, a highway overpass that fell on a bus, a bridge whose failure cut off access and aid to four villages. Researchers found concrete that was crumbly with seashells, chunks of Styrofoam where reinforcing metal bars should have been. Yet some well-reinforced buildings nicked or even pierced by the fault came through just fine, including an apartment building that moved 10 feet and had its front steps sliced off. Another home was cut in two; half collapsed, the other survived with windows intact. “How the hell?” marveled one engineer. “There's no way that building should stand in an earthquake.” That blend of science, politics, and human nature is just part of what makes earth science so compelling. It goes far beyond the academics of geology and plate tectonics to embrace earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, volcanoes, landslides—natural hazards that affect thousands of people and change the course of civilization.

John Tuzo Wilson: a man who moved mountains

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. xvii-xxxi
Author(s):  
Gordon F. West ◽  
Ron M. Farquhar ◽  
George D. Garland ◽  
Henry C. Halls ◽  
Lawrence W. Morley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Earth Sciences ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
National Research Council ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Rapid Expansion ◽  
Tectonic Processes ◽  
Major Player ◽  
Canadian Research

Fifty years ago, the world’s Earth Scientists experienced the so-called “Revolution in the Earth Sciences”. In the decade from 1960 to 1970, a massive convergence took place from many diverse and contradictory theories about the tectonic processes operating on Earth (then loosely called “mountain building”) to a single widely accepted paradigm now called Plate Tectonics. A major player in leading the international “Revolution” was Canadian geophysicist J. Tuzo Wilson. This tribute reviews how he helped define and promote the Plate Tectonic paradigm, and also, from 1946 to 1967, how he led a rapid expansion of the role of geophysics in Canadian and international earth science. Wilson was a controversial figure before and during the “Revolution”, but his influence was large. It was not coincidental that earth science research in Canada grew by 1964 to the point where the National Research Council of Canada could add the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences to its group of Canadian research journals.

A citation study of significant papers in plate tectonics

1984 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 221-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
A.P.W. Hodder ◽  
C. Balog
Keyword(s):  
Citation Analysis ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Physical Oceanography ◽  
Earth History ◽  
Magnetic Stratigraphy ◽  
Considerable Success ◽  
Earthquake Distribution ◽  
Geologic Processes ◽  
The Revolution

A consideration of the use made of selected papers in physical oceanography, magnetic stratigraphy, and earthquake distribution traces the development of the ideas necessary to the theory of plate tectonics, the presently accepted theory to explain geologic processes. The citation analysis undertaken of some thirty significant papers supports a previously proposed revolution m earth science thinking in the early 1970s. Al though the theory has enjoyed considerable success in unravell ing 'young' geology, its application to older rocks, particularly those that make up the continents, has been less successful. This may be because the 'revolution' has constrained earth scientists to think that present-day lateral crustal motions have been dominant throughout Earth history.

7. From whence to whither?

2015 ◽  
pp. 110-127
Author(s):  
Peter Molnar
Keyword(s):  
Physical Science ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Ore Deposits ◽  
Great Earthquakes ◽  
Petroleum Resources ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

‘From whence to whither?’ discusses two examples that illustrate the role of plate tectonics in topics related to society and science: the recurrence of great earthquakes and the link between plate tectonics and glaciation. It also considers how plate tectonics has affected the way questions are approached in Earth Science. Has plate tectonics facilitated the discovery and acquisition of petroleum resources and ore deposits? Can plate tectonics be observed on other planets? Plate tectonics accelerated a shift from geology being a largely descriptive science aimed mostly at the history of our planet to a quantitative physical science focused on the processes that have made the present-day Earth what it is.

From crisis to normal science, and back again: Coming full “Kuhn cycle” in the career of Warren B. Hamilton

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Rossetter
Keyword(s):  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
Normal Science ◽  
Plate Tectonic ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Tectonic Model ◽  
New Period ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
New Phase

ABSTRACT In this paper, I use Thomas S. Kuhn’s model of scientific change to frame a brief, broad-brushed biographical sketch of the career of Warren B. Hamilton. I argue that Hamilton’s career can usefully be interpreted as encompassing a full “Kuhn cycle,” from a period of crisis in his early work, to one of normal science in midcareer, and back to something resembling crisis in his later research. Hamilton entered the field around mid-twentieth century when earth science can plausibly be described as being in a period of crisis. The then dominant fixist paradigm was facing an increasing number of difficulties, an alternative mobilist paradigm was being developed, and Hamilton played an important role in its development. The formulation of plate tectonics in the 1960s saw the overthrow of the fixist paradigm. This inaugurated a new phase of normal science as scientists worked within the new paradigm, refining it and applying it to different regions and various geological phenomena. Hamilton’s midcareer work fits largely into this category. Later, as the details of the plate-tectonic model became articulated more fully, and several of what Hamilton perceived as weakly supported conjectures became incorporated into the paradigm, problems began again to accumulate, and earth science, in Hamilton’s estimation, entered a new period of crisis. Radically new frameworks were now required, and Hamilton’s later work was dedicated principally to developing and articulating these frameworks and to criticizing mainstream views.

Global Adjoint Reconstructions of Earth’s Mantle

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sia Ghelichkhan ◽  
Jens Oeser
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Solid Earth ◽  
Mantle Convection ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Driving Mechanism ◽  
Earth Observations ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
High Resolution Images

<p><span>Mantle convection is the driving mechanism for plate tectonics and associated geological activities, including earthquakes, surface dynamic uplift and subsidence, and volcanoes. Mantle convection can be regarded as the central framework for linking the sub-disciplines of solid Earth science, e.g., geochemistry, seismology, mineral physics, geodesy and geology. </span></p><p><span>In theory, it is possible to model mantle convection by integrating the principial conservation equations in time, given a past mantle-state as the starting point. Nonetheless, there remains a fundamental lack of knowledge on any past mantle-states. Without such knowledge any direct comparison of convection models and solid Earth observations is challenging and often impractical. One can, however, pose the problem differently, and obtain a past flow history by minimising ‘a misfit’ functional between observations and models of Earth’s mantle. The recent applications of adjoint method in geodynamics, together with the ever-increasing computational power, has facilitated solutions to such minimisation problems, where a unique flow history in Earth’s mantle can be generated, subject to assumed geodynamic modelling parameters.</span></p><p><span>Here, we build on previously published adjoint models and present a suite of eight high resolution (11 kms) reconstruction models going back to 50 Ma ago. These models incorporate many improvements. First, we take advantage of the recent advances in surface and body waveform tomography to obtain high resolution images of present-day structures in Earth’s mantle. Our thermodynamic modelling of mantle structures rely on the most recent datasets of mantle mineralogy and account for effects of anelasticity. Furthermore, we assume a wide range of viscosity profiles, including published models consistent with observations of geoid, mantle mineralogy, and post-glacial rebound studies. Finally, we verify these models by comparisons against a range of different geologic observations.</span></p>

Plate Tectonics and Macrogeomorphology

2021 ◽  
pp. M58-2021-12
Author(s):  
Michael A. Summerfield
Keyword(s):  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Earth Science ◽  
Significant Advance ◽  
Continental Margins ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Landscape Development ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Status ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
Global Tectonics

AbstractThe plate tectonics revolution was the most significant advance in our understanding of the Earth in the 20th century, but initially it had little impact on the discipline of geomorphology. Topography and landscape development were not considered to be important phenomena that deserved attention from the broader earth-science community in the context of the new model of global tectonics. This situation began to change from the 1980s as various technical innovations enabled landscape evolution to be modelled numerically at the regional to sub-continental scales relevant to plate tectonics, and rates of denudation to be quantified over geological time scales. These developments prompted interest amongst earth scientists from fields such as geophysics, geochemistry and geochronology in understanding the evolution of topography, the role of denudation in influencing patterns of crustal deformation, and the interactions between tectonics and surface processes. This trend was well established by the end of the century, and has become even more significant up to the present. In this chapter I review these developments and illustrate how plate tectonics has been related to landscape development, especially in the context of collisional orogens and passive continental margins. I also demonstrate how technical innovations have been pivotal to the expanding interest in macroscale landscape development in the era of plate tectonics, and to the significant enhancement of the status of the discipline of geomorphology in the earth sciences over recent decades.

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