GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that explains how major landforms are created as a result of Earth’s subterranean movements. The theory, which solidified in the 1960s, transformed the earth sciences by explaining many phenomena, including mountain building events, volcanoes, and earthquakes.

Detailed explanation-2: -Even though plates move very slowly, their motion, called plate tectonics, has a huge impact on our planet. Plate tectonics form the oceans, continents, and mountains. It also helps us understand why and where events like earthquakes occur and volcanoes erupt.

Detailed explanation-3: -This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift. Our planet looks very different from the way it did 250 million years ago, when there was only one continent, called Pangaea, and one ocean, called Panthalassa.

Detailed explanation-4: -Geodesy, the science of measuring the Earth’s shape and positions on it, allows the measurement of plate motion directly using GPS, the Global Positioning System. This network of satellites is more stable than the Earth’s surface, so when a whole continent moves somewhere at a few centimeters per year, GPS can tell.

Detailed explanation-5: -The movement of these tectonic plates is likely caused by convection currents in the molten rock in Earth’s mantle below the crust. Earthquakes and volcanoes are the short-term results of this tectonic movement. The long-term result of plate tectonics is the movement of entire continents over millions of years (Fig.