List of revolutionaries
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The Plate Tectonics Revolution was the scientific and cultural change which developed from the acceptance of the plate tectonics theory. The event was a paradigm shift and scientific revolution. [1]
By 1967 most scientists in geology accepted the theory of plate tectonics. [2] The root of this was Alfred Wegener's 1912 publication of his theory of continental drift, which was a controversy in the field through the 1950s. [2] At that point scientists introduced new evidence in a new way, replacing the idea of continental drift with instead a theory of plate tectonics. [2] The acceptance of this theory brought scientific and cultural change which commentators called the "Plate Tectonics Revolution". [2]
In 1975 a paper said that "plate tectonics" gained general acceptance in its field in 1968 and called that acceptance a revolution. [3]
One scientist said that the Plate Tectonics Revolution brought excitement among scientists in the field in the 1960s. [4]
Publications in generations after the event reflected on how the Plate Tectonics Revolution was an early example of data science. [5]
One commentator claimed that the plate tectonics theory became popular and established a revolution in culture even before scientists could confirm some of the claims for which evidence was lacking. [6]
There are claims that science in Russia was a significant contribution to the Plate Tectonics Revolution, but Western bias against Russia has blocked recognition of their contributions. [7]
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Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of plate tectonics, which studies the movement of the continents as they ride on plates of the Earth's lithosphere.
Plate tectonics is the generally accepted scientific theory that considers the Earth's lithosphere to comprise a number of large tectonic plates which have been slowly moving since about 3.4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of continental drift, an idea developed during the first decades of the 20th century. Plate tectonics came to be generally accepted by geoscientists after seafloor spreading was validated in the mid to late 1960s.
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world. In the North Atlantic, the ridge separates the North American from the Eurasian Plate and the African Plate, north and south of the Azores Triple Junction respectively. In the South Atlantic, it separates the African and South American plates. The ridge extends from a junction with the Gakkel Ridge northeast of Greenland southward to the Bouvet Triple Junction in the South Atlantic. Although the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is mostly an underwater feature, portions of it have enough elevation to extend above sea level, for example in Iceland. The ridge has an average spreading rate of about 2.5 centimetres (1 in) per year.
The Explorer Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada, which is partially subducted under the North American Plate. Along with the Juan de Fuca Plate and Gorda Plate, the Explorer Plate is a remnant of the ancient Farallon Plate, which has been subducted under the North American Plate. The Explorer Plate separated from the Juan de Fuca Plate roughly 4 million years ago. In its smoother, southern half, the average depth of the Explorer plate is roughly 2,400 metres (7,900 ft) and rises up in its northern half to a highly variable basin between 1,400 metres (4,600 ft) and 2,200 metres (7,200 ft) in depth.
A geosyncline is an obsolete geological concept to explain orogens, which was developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before the theory of plate tectonics was envisaged. A geosyncline was described as a giant downward fold in the Earth's crust, with associated upward folds called geanticlines, that preceded the climax phase of orogenic deformation.
William Jason Morgan is an American geophysicist who has made seminal contributions to the theory of plate tectonics and geodynamics. He retired as the Knox Taylor Professor emeritus of geology and professor of geosciences at Princeton University. He currently serves as a visiting scholar in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University.
The expanding Earth or growing Earth hypothesis argues that the position and relative movement of continents is due at least partially to the volume of Earth increasing. Conversely, geophysical global cooling was the hypothesis that various features could be explained by Earth contracting.
The New England hotspot, also referred to as the Great Meteor hotspot and sometimes the Monteregian hotspot, is a volcanic hotspot in the North Atlantic Ocean. It created the Monteregian Hills intrusions in Montreal and Montérégie, the White Mountains intrusions in New Hampshire, the New England and Corner Rise seamounts off the coast of North America, and the Seewarte Seamounts east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge on the African Plate, the latter of which include its most recent eruptive center, the Great Meteor Seamount. The New England, Great Meteor, or Monteregian hotspot track has been used to estimate the movement of the North American Plate away from the African Plate from the early Cretaceous period to the present using the fixed hotspot reference frame.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Belousov was an Earth scientist in the Soviet Union, and a prominent advocate of alternatives to the theories of plate tectonics and seafloor spreading during the period of the 20th century in which debate on these subjects was most intense.
Peter Alfred Ziegler was a Swiss geologist, who made contributions to the understanding of the geological evolution of Europe and the North Atlantic borderlands, of intraplate tectonics and of plate tectonic controls on the evolution and hydrocarbon potential of sedimentary basins. Ziegler's career consists of 33 years as exploration geologist with the petroleum industry, 30 of which with Shell, and 20 years of university teaching and research.
The Iberian Plate with the microcontinent Iberia encompassed not only the Iberian Peninsula but also Corsica, Sardinia, the Balearic Islands, and the Briançonnais zone of the Penninic nappes of the Alps. The Iberian plate is a part of the Eurasian plate.
The evolution of tectonophysics is closely linked to the history of the continental drift and plate tectonics hypotheses. The continental drift/ Airy-Heiskanen isostasy hypothesis had many flaws and scarce data. The fixist/ Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the contracting Earth and the expanding Earth concepts had many flaws as well.
The geology of Russia, the world's largest country, which extends over much of northern Eurasia, consists of several stable cratons and sedimentary platforms bounded by orogenic (mountain) belts.
John "Jack" Ertle Oliver was an American scientist. Oliver, who earned his PhD at Columbia University in 1953, studied earthquakes and ultimately provided seismic evidence supporting plate tectonics. In the 1960s, Oliver and his former graduate student, Bryan Isacks, set up seismographic stations in the South Pacific to record earthquake activity, and the data collected led to the insight that part of the ocean floor was being pushed downward.
The Luzon Volcanic Arc is a chain of volcanoes in a north–south line across the Luzon Strait from Taiwan to Luzon. The name "Luzon Volcanic Arc" was first proposed by Carl Bowin et al. to describe a series of Miocene to recent volcanoes due to eastward subduction along the Manila Trench for approximately 1,200 km from the Coastal Range in Taiwan south to southern Mindoro in the Philippines. Islands that form part of the arc are the Eastern Coastal Range of Taiwan, Green Island, Taiwan, Orchid Island, Kaotai Rock, Mavudis or Y'ami Island, Mabudis, Siayan Island, Itbayat Island, Diogo Island, Batan Island, Unnamed volcano Ibuhos, Sabtang Island, Babuyan, Didicas, Camiguin Island. At the south end it terminates on Luzon. The geochemistry of a number of volcanoes along the arc have been measured. There are five distinct geochemical domains within the arc. The geochemistry of the segments verified that the volcanoes are all subduction related. Isotopes and trace elements show unique geochemical characteristics in the north. Geochemical variations northward were due to the subduction of sediments derived from the erosion of continental crust from China and Taiwan.
Tectonophysics, The International Journal of Geotectonics and the Geology and Physics of the Interior of the Earth is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Elsevier. It was established in 1964 and covers the field of tectonophysics, including kinematics, structure, composition, and dynamics of the solid Earth at all scales.
The Main Uralian Fault (MUF) runs north–south through the middle of the Ural Mountains for over 2,000 km. It separates both Europe from Asia and the three, or four, western megazones of the Urals from the three eastern megazones: namely the Pre-Uralian Foredeep, West Uralian, and the Central Uralian to the west, and the Tagil-Magnitogorskian, East Uralian, and Transuralian to the east. The Russian Plate is often included as the fourth megazone to the west. On the west side of the fault the rocks represent the sediments of the eastern continental margin zone of the European Plate (Baltica). On the east the rocks are accreted oceanic and island arc basalts, ultramafics and volcanics as well as the sediments of the western continental margin zones of the Siberian craton on the north and the Kazakhstan craton on the south.
The evolution of tectonophysics is closely linked to the history of the continental drift and plate tectonics hypotheses. The continental drift/ Airy-Heiskanen isostasy hypothesis had many flaws and scarce data. The fixist/ Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the contracting Earth and the expanding Earth concepts had many flaws as well.
Subduction polarity reversal is a geologic process in which two converging plates switch roles: The over-lying plate becomes the down-going plate, and vice versa. There are two basic units which make up a subduction zone. This consists of an overriding plate and the subduction plate. Two plates move towards each other due to tectonic forces. The overriding plate will be on the top of the subducting plate. This type of tectonic interaction is found at many plate boundaries.
Ridge push or sliding plate force is a proposed driving force for plate motion in plate tectonics that occurs at mid-ocean ridges as the result of the rigid lithosphere sliding down the hot, raised asthenosphere below mid-ocean ridges. Although it is called ridge push, the term is somewhat misleading; it is actually a body force that acts throughout an ocean plate, not just at the ridge, as a result of gravitational pull. The name comes from earlier models of plate tectonics in which ridge push was primarily ascribed to upwelling magma at mid-ocean ridges pushing or wedging the plates apart.