I've always enjoyed the subject of plate tectonics. Since we don't have anything else to discuss I'll throw out a bit of information that I find most interesting:
Albert Wegener, currently known as the "Father of plate tectonics", was a German weather scientist, who proposed in 1912 that the continents were once all together many millions of years ago. (The current theory is that the supercontinent Pangaea existed for about 60 million years starting about 240 million years ago before it started breaking up about 180 million years ago.) Everyone pretty much laughed at him. He underwent many expeditions in Greenland but tragically got lost in 1930 and died of exposure. The idea had a major breakthrough during World War II when the U.S. Navy was commissioned to produce a map of the ocean floor for the purpose of submarine warfare. What they discovered then was an amazing fractured network of sub-marine mountains, rifts, and trenches that split the oceans into enormous plates of crust which were identified as the building blocks for the new science of plate tectonics. Where the heat currents rise upwards from the earth's molten magma two rifts form next to each other and it is there that the plates are pushed apart as the new ocean crust fills in the gap between the rifts of the two opposing plates. Old mantle is ultimately drug down beneath neighboring plates far away as the new crust is formed ....at the rate of about 2.5 centimeters a year, or 1 inch a year, which is about the same speed as a human finger nail grows. As the plates slowly move so too do the continents that sit on top of the plates. For somebody who is 48 years old the coasts of North America and Europe are now about 4 feet farther apart (and so too is Africa and South America) compared to where they were when that person was born. Amazing stuff. People forget that the Earths crust sits on top of a liquid, molten magma. In consideration that the continents sit atop molten magma miles underneath, it is no wonder that they do indeed move over time, much in the same way that ocean currrents are able to slowly push massive icebergs long distances over time.
Anyhow, didn't mean to go too far off topic. But yes indeed Sculpin, your point is well taken. We are indeed next to that massive subduction zone. The Nazca plate is moving underneath the South American plate which led to the formation of the Andes. With such activity so nearby it is no wonder that our Tesoro is such a prized possession with 9 kilometers worth of gold laden veins, and with anticipated disseminated gold pockets of great value underneath .....as supported by Quantec imagery.
My2Cents
