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Pacific Ocean: cracks in the seabed intrigue scientists and could cause worrying impacts. Understand why the earth is opening up and what the possible risks are!
A study conducted by scientists from Canada and Turkey revealed a mystery An intriguing discovery in the Pacific Ocean: cracks in the seafloor that could change our understanding of how tectonic plates behave. The research suggests that these plates, including the Pacific Plate—the largest on Earth—are not as rigid as previously thought. Instead of remaining stable until they reach subduction zones, where one plate sinks beneath another, they begin to deform long before that happens. The discovery challenges previous theories and raises questions about the potential geological and environmental impacts on the region.
Earth opening at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean could generate impacts
Published on Advancing Earth and Space Sciences, the scientists' research analyzed four large underwater plateaus (Ontong Java, Shatsky, Hess and Manihiki) and found cracks in the seafloor, faults and signs that these regions were "stretching" as they traveled across the ocean.
However, scientists believed that the plates were rigid as they circulated through the ocean and this type of deformation would only happen when they were close to colliding or diving under each other, but now there is land opening up at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
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With the land breaking open at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, the authors of the paper believe that these damaged areas of the plateaus are more fragile because they have a thicker crust. And even though they are thousands of kilometers away, they feel the “pull” of the subduction zones.
These sudden movements, which create cracks in the seabed, increase the risk of earthquakes and tsunamis in coastal regions.
However, they are much less intense than those in subduction zones, which occur in Japan, for example. Furthermore, the chance of a tsunami is very low, although possible, since these phenomena are a mystery in the Pacific Ocean, far from inhabited regions.
Understand why Earth is the only planet with tectonic plates
Now that we understand the mystery of the Pacific Ocean, it is important to remember that tectonic plates are crucial for maintaining the formation of mountain ranges, earthquakes and the movement of continents, in addition to having created fundamental conditions for life on Earth. However, no other planet currently has tectonic plates.
According to Penn State geodynamicist Bradford Foley, it is still not known for sure why only the Earth has plates, and he believes that this is still considered one of the great unsolved problems in geophysics today. The Earth's lithosphere, composed of the crust and the rigid upper mantle, is divided into about 15 plates that are in constant motion.
These plates continually separate, collide and move apart, although scientists do not know exactly how the lithosphere was fragmented, certain aspects of the Earth's geology support the functioning of this mechanism.
There are some sentences that are very poorly understood, which say that “plates move through the ocean”. This is either a clueless or a bad translation. It is a somewhat disturbing statement to say that only Earth has tectonic plates and that it is NOT scientific at all, because I am not aware of any research of this nature on other planets in our planetary system, much less on others. Why say something with such “certainty”?