Timeline for How many tectonic plates should my planet have? And why?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
9 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 6, 2018 at 12:26 | comment | added | cjnash | I am actually not sure. If you think about only one moving plate in an isolated system then it should have all types. However, I can think of some scenarios where a moving plate is being rammed into directly by a couple other plates, not causing a couple transform boundaries but rather a couple convergent boundaries. So I don't think that a moving plate necessarily has all types of interactions as the whole planets system can be a lot more chaotic. | |
| Jun 6, 2018 at 7:17 | comment | added | Anton Sherwood | Wouldn't moving plates necessarily have all TYPEs of interactions, in different places? | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 16:35 | comment | added | Skyler | Note that Mars, which has much less internal heat, only has two plates for the entire planet, so it's a probably a good assumption that more heat = more plates. | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 15:58 | comment | added | Keith Morrison | Note that the number of plates can change over time. They aren't fixed by any means. Plates can weld together, split, or be subsumed. Also note that sometimes where they are bounded can be vague; the Chersky Range in Siberia is the contact between the North American and Eurasian plates, but what's going on there isn't clear. | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 14:57 | comment | added | Daniel | I´d imagine lots and more distributed small earthquakes, but basically it´s a chaotic system so hard to predict. Would be funny to imagine what would happen when a small plate would actually topple over or stack, like shelf-ice. | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 14:55 | comment | added | cjnash | I didn't even think of that, thanks for bringing that up. You are right, the activity is driven by convection of molten rock to shift the mantle. If the plates are too small I could image that there wouldn't be enough force to move them. | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 14:38 | comment | added | Daniel | Does having more plates directly transfer to having more tectonic activity? I´d recon it depend on what drives the plates, i.e. how much of each plate is consumed in a given amount of time and how much local pressure builds up. If the plate gets too small, it could be conceivable that pressure-maxima and minima regulate internally, without erupting. | |
| Jun 5, 2018 at 14:35 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 5, 2018 at 15:02 | |||||
| Jun 5, 2018 at 14:32 | history | answered | cjnash | CC BY-SA 4.0 |