According to a study, plates are breaking in the interior of the Pacific Ocean

This study challenges some of the tenets of the theory of plate tectonics

The oceans are a source of knowledge that is still constantly expanding. Since this is not our medium we have always tried to dominate it from a distance. The source of all kinds of myths and legends, some of which, such as ghost waves, turned out to be true, there has always been a restless curiosity to know it better, after all, our species had recently discovered a new ocean. Have “discovered”. At this time, there have been attempts to figure out how plate tectonics works, and although there are quite a few solid theories about it, it seems that we are now going how to complete them Because a new study has revealed how they work.

Pacific Ocean plates are breaking apart

A study published in Geophysical Research Letters in December and led by Erkan Gün has shed light on aspects of plate tectonics that may reconsider the current understanding of this geological phenomenon. whose theory was stated more than half a century ago,

Traditionally, the theory holds that tectonic plates, giant slabs of the Earth’s crust, move and interact with rigidities on the Earth’s surface that are evidence of any type of modification. However, this new discovery suggests that the Western Pacific Plateau, rather than being rigid structures, They have weak points that are susceptible to stretching by forces applied at the edges of the plate., In the words of Erkan Gün for the University of Toronto:

We knew that geological deformations, such as faults, occur inside continental plates, away from plate boundaries. But we didn’t know the same thing was happening with ocean plates

This discovery challenges what we previously thought we knew, that geological structures such as oceanic plateaus were more resistant to deformation. Research has shown that oceanic plates They are not flat and immovable bodies, On the contrary, they are subject to significant deformations because they are fragile. Additionally, it has been observed that when a tectonic plate collapses into distant trenches, the plateaus stretch, making them even more fragile.