© Deccan Chronicle Ancient geologic events may have left deep 'scars' that can come to life and play a role in earthquakes. (Representational image)
Ancient geologic events may have left deep 'scars' that can come to life and play a role in earthquakes, mountain formation and other ongoing processes on our planet, a new study which involved super-computer modelling of Earth's crust and upper-mantle has found. This changes the widespread view that only interactions at the boundaries between continent-sized tectonic plates could be responsible for such events, researchers said.
Scientists from University of Toronto (U of T) in Canada and the University of Aberdeen in the UK have created models indicating that former plate boundaries may stay hidden deep beneath the Earth's surface.
These multi-million-year-old structures, situated at sites away from existing plate boundaries, may trigger changes in the structure and properties at the surface in the interior regions of continents, researchers said."This is a potentially major revision to the fundamental idea of plate tectonics," said Philip Heron from U of T. Researchers have proposed a 'perennial plate tectonic map' of the Earth to help illustrate how ancient processes may have present-day implications.
"It is based on the familiar global tectonic map that is taught starting in elementary school. What our models redefine and show on the map are dormant, hidden, ancient plate boundaries that could also be enduring or "perennial" sites of past and active plate tectonic activity," said Russell Pysklywec from U of T.
To demonstrate the dominating effects that anomalies below the Earth's crust can have on shallow geological features, researchers used SciNet - home to Canada's most powerful computer and one of the most powerful in the world - to make numerical models of the crust and upper-mantle into which they could introduce these scar-like anomalies.
They created an evolving "virtual Earth" to explore how such geodynamic models develop under different conditions. "For these sorts of simulations, you need to go to a pretty high-resolution to understand what is going on beneath the surface," said Heron.
"We modelled 1,500 kilometres across and 600 kilometres deep, but some parts of these structures could be just two or three kilometres wide. It is important to accurately resolve the smaller-scale stresses and strains," he said.
Using these models, researchers found that different parts of the mantle below the Earth's crust may control the folding, breaking, or flowing of the Earth's crust within plates - in the form of mountain-building and seismic activity - when under compression. They suggest that ancient geologic events may have left deep 'scars' that can come to life to play a role in earthquakes, mountain formation, and other ongoing processes on our planet.
"Ultimately, this information could even lead to ways to help better predict how and when earthquakes happen. It is a key building block," said the findings were published in the journal
Nature Communications.
The Earth was made inside the star we now call Sol, (also called Saturn, Kronos, Ouranus, Aten, Eden) expelled by Sirius A (Alpha) which found a stable powered orbit LY away. The new star was red. The light on Earth/Adam was purple and green plants etc grew fastest. Earth was forced out by the increasing power acquired by Eden. The Z Pinch tightened forcing planets out of Eden. As Adam left, the Z Pinch release on the planet caused the moon (Eve) to be created out of the area now below the Himalaya. China, based on cold continental crust, was shifted hundreds of Ks west. The old anchors can be seen east of China as Seamounts and island chains. Most of the magma left Adam in the first few seconds! Thus we have Column worship, Lingam, and even pyramids. As the planet rotated, the expansion of it forced out more magma, leaving a massive water filled hole beneath the Tibetan Plateau. The new crust created by the loss os the stellar Z Pinch, was to contain the oceans. Hot salty water was shot out of the magma as were many other gases. Tidal waves swept the continents, hence the "salt lakes" and the flat interiors, with fossils piled up in their millions, under silt and sand. The old atmosphere was 30% Oxygen, but the much larger volume of the new air was death for many large animals and insects.
Given this, settlement of crust follows scar lines. Weight of oceans squeeze basalt crust too.