This is the planet Earth, the homeland to all of mankind, a lot of animals, and a lot of plants (like said in the last essay). But get ready for another plunge into the world of Geography. This is not about Earth, but the tectonic plates inside of it.
The earth, like any other star or planet, started off as a gas planet with lava in the middle of it. That lava released immense heat as it was white hot. All the particles were being compressed in the center of the planet, and that is why it was white hot. As it cooled down, the earth stopped spinning as fast. White, yellow, red, it kept changing colours until there was no light left. The earth had cooled down, but what effects did the cooling have on the earth? When the earth cooled down, the crust was made, but cracks in the crust were being formed. There was water that formed underneath the earth’s crust, and with those cracks it escaped, leading to the fact that water vapour was released into the atmosphere. This lead to clouds. There was already water in those clouds though so gravity pushed down, and down came the first ever rainfall on this earth. Later on heat pushed up solid portions of the earth’s crust, and the continents were formed.
How did this earth even start off after the earth’s crust cooled down, and water was brought into this planet? It started off as a great supercontinent, the first ever, called Rodinia, surrounded by the ocean called Mirovia. This happened about 1 and 1.2 billion years ago, this is way before Christ (also known as B.C). The supercontinent was formed by 4 continents colliding, which not only made this super continent, but mountains as well. When two lands collide, one land will partially fold underneath the other one. While the one piece of land folds under, the other forms a mountain to relieve the stress being put on it. So in one zone, there is a mountain that is formed, while underneath an earthquake prone area is formed. After a while this continent separated, and created a new layout of the continents.
The layout of the continents were not always the same as they are today (as noted in the previous paragraph), in fact, the will not be the same in the future either. But that topic is not for now. The continents after the supercontinent kept moving around. Due to the tectonic plates moving, so do the continents. There have been 3 supercontinents for certain: Rodinia, and Pangaea. There is a possibility that there has been one more supercontinent between Rodinia and Pangaea: Pannotia. But there have been many layouts before today’s layout.
It is true that the continents are still moving, and they always will be moving until something happens that disperses the earth, such as the theory that the sun will devour the earth in around 3 billion years (so do not worry, everyone is safe... for now) A fun fact is actually that every year the continents shift 4 centimeters? The future layout of the earth is already coming, just at an extremely slow rate. The Earths diameter is 12 756.2 kilometers, the circumference is 40 075 km, and the volume is 1,083,210,000,000 km3. The earth is so big, that is surpasses the billions in circumference! In the future, it is predicted to have even more supercontinents; the next one is called Amasia. There are many land formations to come and this one will just be a part of history. Some fun facts: the Pacific Ocean is shrinking while the Atlantic Ocean is expanding, and it is predicted that the Mediterranean Sea might soon close up. As will it is predicted that in 60 million years Australia will actually have moved so far north to about the equator. These are actually fascinating facts, and that was just a glimpse of what is to come in the future.
What effects does tectonic movement have on earthquakes and volcanic activity? Well they are what cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Earthquakes happen when two tectonic plates grind past each other, and catch each other. From there they are being forced to move right, so they stretch and pull the rocks around it and when they reach their elastic limit, they break like any other thing. Now when they break, the pressure building up inside of it is let loose. Now when there is not much pressure, only a little shaking happens, but when there is a lot of pressure, that is when it is likely to create a ripple in the ground. When it comes to volcanoes, this contains an issue with both types of tectonic plates. The two are the continental plates, and the oceanic plates, and when those two collide, the more dense plate (usually the oceanic), slide under the more dry plate. But the initial collision actually causes the rock to bunch up and crush up, making cracked mountains. But as the more dense plate slides underneath, it also pulls down water from the ocean with it, creating water vapour. The magma from the earth’s mantle then rises into those cracked mountains with the water vapour, making the magma rich with silica and water vapour. The gasses in the chamber will then force the magma out of the mountain making it explode, and that how a volcano is made.
A couple of examples are the two states California and Hawaii. Now Hawaii relates to volcanoes because Hawaii is filled with them, and actually is one itself. It is said that Hawaii will soon one day erupt and destroy the world, leaving earth once again empty with no life forms. California gets plenty of earthquakes; in fact it has to do with something called the San Andreas fault. Now a fault is a break in the rocks that make up the earth’s crust. Now when that movement is sudden it releases an energy that creates an earthquake. The San Andreas Fault is situated in California. It actually runs 810 miles in a diagonal direction, and it is divided into three segments: the northern, central, and southern segment. It is actually the tectonic boundary between the Pacific and North American plate.
Now it is understood what tectonic plates are, and their dire importance to everybody, and everything on this earth. Tectonic plates might not always do the best for mankind, but it definitely serves an important role on this earth.
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