The current theory of continental drift provides a good model for understanding terrestrial processes through history. However, while plate tectonics is able to successfully shed light on processes up to 3 billion years ago, the theory isn’t sufficient in explaining the dynamics of Earth and crust formation before that point and through to the earliest formation of planet, some 4.6 billion years ago. This is the conclusion of Tomas Naæraa of the Nordic Center for Earth Evolution at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, a part of the University of Copenhagen. His new doctoral dissertation has just been published by the journal Nature.
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If not plate tectonics, then what interaction dynamic between the core, mantle and crust was happening before 3 billion years ago? The article link provides no alternative mechanism or theories. Could the dynamic have been similar to that we see on Jupiter’s moon, Io, where the pull of its larger neighbour constantly reworks the moon’s surface? Could the development of continental plates have resulted from a collision with a large space object, the same type of collision that cosmologists and planetary scientists believe created our Moon? Could that type of collision disrupt the existing dynamic and set the crust in motion?
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