Earth's tectonic plates are weaker than once thought
October 3, 2017 by Katherine Unger Baillie
No one can travel inside the earth to study what happens there. So scientists must do their best to replicate real-world conditions inside the lab.
"We are interested in large-scale geophysical processes, like how plate tectonics initiates and how plates move underneath one another in subduction zones," said David Goldsby, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania. "To do that, we need to understand the mechanical behavior of olivine, which is the most common mineral in the upper mantle of the earth."
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2017-10-earth-tectonic-plates-weaker-thought.html#jCp
