Continental drift: how it works (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, February 08, 2022, 01:22 (810 days ago) @ David Turell

Both drift and magmas pressures:

https://phys.org/news/2022-02-tectonic-plates-formation-rifts.html

"The new study was published in November 2021. It describes how a trench-like structure called a rift-graben opened in 2014 in Iceland near what is now known as the Holuhraun lava field, in a region that straddles the tectonic boundary between the North American and Eurasian plates. A graben forms when a chunk of land sags downward as the land on both sides of it moves away, creating a chasm called a rift.

"The team concluded that in this particular case, the slow drift of tectonic plates, and not pressure from a magma chamber along the rift, was the driver.

"The graben formed within a period of a few days, and then, "it just stayed like that, and it didn't care about anything else that happened in the magmatic plumbing system," Kolzenburg says. "The graben was remarkably stable even though lots of dynamic processes were happening underneath, such as pressure changes in the magmatic feeder system of the eruption."

"Magma leaked through the rift once it was open, but that magma didn't appear to be the main force behind the initial creation of the rift, Kolzenburg says.

***

"The findings apply specifically to the graben the team studied. In other rift zones, different dynamics may be at play, including in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, where magma is believed to play a more important role in driving rift formation, Kolzenburg says.

"As he and co-authors write in their 2021 paper in Geology, "In concert, the data suggest that while some rifts may be magmatically controlled, not all rift zones require the presence of a deep-seated pressurized magma chamber to control their dynamics."

Comment: no matter how it works, because continents drift and subduct conditions for life are established on this Privileged Planet