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Why Plate Tectonics May Be Essential for Life

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https://www.quantamagazine.org/plate-tec...-20180607/

EXCERPT: . . . there’s more to plate tectonics than earthquakes and eruptions. A wave of new research is increasingly hinting that Earth’s external motions may be vital to its other defining feature: life. That Earth has a moving, morphing outer crust may be the main reason why Earth is so vibrant, and why no other planet can match its abundance.

[...] In the past few years, geologists and astrobiologists [...] have shown that Earth’s atmosphere owes its longevity, its components, and its incredibly stable Goldilocks-like temperature — not too hot, but not too cold — to the recycling of its crust. Earth’s oceans might not exist if water were not periodically subsumed by the planet’s mantle and then released. Without plate tectonics driving the creation of coastlines and the motion of the tides, the oceans might be barren, with life-giving nutrients relegated forever to the stygian depths. If plate tectonics did not force slabs of rock to dive underneath one another and back into the Earth, a process called subduction, then the seafloor would be entirely frigid and devoid of interesting chemistry, meaning life might never have taken hold in the first place. Some researchers even believe that without the movement of continents, life might not have evolved into complex forms.

[...] Yet understanding how plate tectonics affects evolution — and whether it is a necessary ingredient in that process — hinges on finding answers to some of the hottest questions in geoscience: how and when the plates started moving. Figuring out why this planet has a movable crust could tell geologists more not just about this planet, but about all planets or moons with solid surfaces, and whether they could have life, too....

MORE: https://www.quantamagazine.org/plate-tec...-20180607/


- - - Media Bias / Fact Check - - -

Quanta Magazine: PRO-SCIENCE

Factual Reporting: VERY HIGH

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