Plate Tectonic Theory and the Unification of the Earth Sciences
Overview
It took nearly a century for scientists to accept the idea that continents were not forever fixed in their places, but had, in fact, slowly drifted to their current locations. In the 1960s plate tectonics, a further refinement of this concept bolstered by irrefutable geologic proof, burst into widespread acceptance in less than a decade.
Plate tectonic theory holds that continents ride atop thin plates of crust that are constantly moving across the face of the Earth. These plates break apart at midocean ridges, such as the mid-Atlantic Ridge; when they come together, one plate dives beneath the other to be recycled into the mantle—a process called subduction. These subduction zones, appearing as deep-sea trenches, are the sites of most of the world's earthquakes. As the plates descend into the Earth, they heat up and start to melt. The rising magma reaches the surface, forming volcanoes at the surface, usually within about 100 kilometers of the subduction zone.
Plate tectonic theory has become the single unifying factor in the earth sciences. In the words of John Tuzo Wilson (1908-1993), one of its founders: "The acceptance of continental drift has transformed the Earth sciences from a group of rather unimaginative studies based upon pedestrian interpretations of natural phenomena into a unified science that holds the promise of great intellectual and practical advances." This theory, for the first time, gave a single mechanism to explain the locations of mineral and ore deposits, the origins of volcanoes, the reason for the "Ring of Fire," the origin of many earthquakes, the origin of seafloor magnetic anomalies, the formation of mountains, and much more.
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