There are twelve major tectonic plates that make up Earth’s stiff outer shell, and one of the larger ones, the Pacific plate, is presently breaking apart. Researchers from the University of Toronto have made this discovery, which throws new light on the century-old theory of plate tectonics. The team discovered that massive underwater faults are tearing apart the Pacific plate. The study discusses the massive forces pulling the plates apart and was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The underwater faults span several hundred kilometers and descend to a depth of thousands of meters.
“We knew that geological deformations like faults happen on the continental plate interiors far from plate boundaries. But we didn’t know the same thing was happening to ocean plates,” Erkan Gun, a post-doctoral researcher in the department of Earth Sciences in the Faculty of Arts & Sciences, told phys.org.
“What we’re doing is refining plate tectonics-the theory that describes how our planet works-and showing those plates really aren’t as pristine as we previously thought,” added Russell Pysklywec, a professor in the department of Earth sciences.
The majority of the Pacific Ocean floor is made up of the Pacific plate, the largest tectonic plate, which stretches from Alaska to the west coast of North America. It extends from Japan to New Zealand and Australia at its westernmost point.
A sizable section of the Pacific Ring of Fire is composed of this plate.
New locations where the Pacific plate is being drawn into the mantle have been found by recent research.
“It was thought that because the sub-oceanic plateaus are thicker, they should be stronger. But our models and seismic data show it’s actually the opposite: the plateaus are weaker,” said Gun.
The research team studied four plateaus in the western Pacific Ocean – the Ontong Java, Shatsky, Hess and Manihiki – in a vast area roughly bounded by Hawaii, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. The data was then fed to a supercomputer, which compared it with information collected in studies done in the 1970s and 80s.
“A new finding like this overturns what we’ve understood and taught about the active Earth. And it shows that there are still radical mysteries about even the grand operation of our evolving planet,” said Pysklywec.
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