Geophysics opened a new lithospheric plates of the Earth

The earth is the only known planet in the Solar system with a full tectonic activity.

Geophysicists from the United States and China released preliminary data about the presence in the bowels of the Earth of an additional layer of lithospheric plates. Of the study told at a joint press conference in Tokyo (Japan), organized by the American geophysical society and the Japan society of Earth Sciences.

Tectonic plates can be located in the layer of the upper mantle at depths of 410-660 kilometers beneath modern Japan, North and South Korea, northeast China and under the Pacific ocean extend all the way to the Fiji Islands. In the bowels, according to scientists, the surface of the Earth lithospheric plates were about 50-60 million years ago as a result of subduction — dip one lithospheric plate under another.

Located in the bowels of the planet’s tectonic plates, as noted by geophysicists, responsible for some deep and strong earthquakes in the Pacific ocean, in particular, between the Islands of Fiji and Australia. Tremors occur, according to the authors, due to the subduction in the transition zone (upper mantle).

Experts say that about 90 percent of deep aftershocks (hypocenter, that is, the locus of occurrence of earthquakes below 500 km) on the planet falls on the area of the Tonga Islands in the Pacific ocean. Scientists believe that the cause of this is immersed in a gown flat long plate.

Their conclusions came Geophysics, using mainly the methods of seismic tomography, which enable sound waves to study the distribution and motion of matter within the Earth. Specialists presented a three-dimensional computer reconstruction of the events that occurred 50-60 million years on the planet and led to the formation of the modern layer of the tectonic plates under the Pacific ocean.

Estimates of scientists, in particular, show that the lithospheric slab in the upper mantle in the region under the Tonga Islands in the last 15 million years moved in the transverse direction to the West at an average speed of about five centimeters per year.

Experts note that a number of provisions of plate tectonics as a result of new research can be refined or even redefined. The work of authors not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The earth is the only known planet in the Solar system with a full tectonic activity. The beginnings of plate tectonics, scientists have found mercury, it’s not on Venus, probably the tectonics in the past could be on Mars. Similar to the earth’s lithospheric structure of the planetary scientists still have discovered so far, only celestial bodies with ice-oceans (in particular, Europa, Jupiter).

paradox