Tectonic Plate Movement and Earthquake Triggering Processes
Posted by EQF on August 11, 2012

Projects Status Update
Earthquake Triggering Processes
Tectonic Plate Movement
The “Ratcheting” Theory For Tectonic Plate Movement
Mars Tectonic Plates

PROJECTS STATUS UPDATE

As I stated in other posts to this bulletin board, this is a Presidential Election year hear in the U.S. And my present primary focus is on providing the candidates with information regarding important matters such as the critical need for governments around the world to develop new sources of environmentally safe, affordable energy.

One consequence of those efforts is that my earthquake forecasting efforts have been moved down a notch or two in importance on my projects list. However, I can finally state that my personal earthquake forecasting program is at least mostly back in operation now since being on the generally inactive list since the beginning of the year. I had to do some significant software and hardware updates so that an especially time consuming step in the forecast process would work more efficiently. That effort has been a success. Fine tuning is now taking place. And it will also be necessary to update all of the data files that the program relies on before forecasting charts will be available again at my Web sites.

EARTHQUAKE TRIGGING PROCESS

My data and data from other earthquake researchers clearly indicate that many of our more powerful earthquakes are being triggered by forces related to the gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon. But, in order to see those relationships it is necessary to use the right equations. And other than myself and perhaps Amit Dave, few if any other researchers appear to be doing that.

Another group that I have been comparing notes with has demonstrated that these gravity – triggering force relationships exist. But going back a year or so in time since I last looked at their data, they were not yet using the types of equations that I have developed. Instead they were using what I refer to as a “brute force” approach. They loaded a lot of earthquake data into some powerful computers and started crunching numbers. And they showed that there are statistically significant links between the gravity forces and earthquake triggering. However, since they were not using the more accurate equations that I developed, their probability numbers were not as good.

Most of my own earthquake triggering data have been available at my Web sites for years. And I have permission to store the data from that other research group on my Web sites. But I have simply not had time to do that myself.

If someone else wants to volunteer to create the Web pages needed to do that then I would probably try to find some time to work with them. However, so far, no one seems to be interested in that. For some reason, Roger flatly refused to do any Web page development work in spite of the fact that this is quite easy using Web page creation programs such as SeaMonkey.

TECTONIC PLATE MOVEMENT

As stated in an earlier post, there is a new book available now that discusses the subjects of earthquake forecasting and the reasons that tectonic plates move relative to one another. I have not had time so far to do too much to get the word out regarding the existence and contents of the book. But in this post I am going to try to discuss what I believe might have been perhaps the most important parts of the book, the sections that do detailed analyses of why tectonic plates move relative to one another. Just the primary theory that they concluded is the reason will be briefly discussed here. And, it is important to remember that although I have several degrees in the physical sciences, I am not a geophysicist. So my interpretation of the information in the book might not be perfect.

THE “RATCHETING” THEORY FOR TECTONIC PLATE MOVEMENT

The book does detailed analyses of various theories for why tectonic plates are presently moving relative to one another. Among them are theories related to heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements over the ages and the existence of “hot spots” within or beneath the Earth’s crust.

The theory that I believe they concluded was the best one is what they refer to as a “ratcheting” action theory. It works like this:

Each year the sun moves from a position over the north part of the Earth to one over the south part, and then and back again. That then causes the Earth’s crust to go through yearly heating and cooling cycles. At the equator this happens twice each year as the sun is directly above the equator in both the Spring and the Fall.

That yearly or twice yearly cycle of heating and cooling causes the Earth’s crust to expand and contract, first on the surface, and then gradually farther down into the crust. That heat transfer is actually slow and occurs in waves that travel downwards for centuries and perhaps even thousands of years.

When a heat wave reaches various rock layers it causes them to expand. And that tends to cause continental bodies to become slightly larger in measured size even though the actual mass of the material remains the same.

When the rock layers contract as the cooling part of the cycle reaches them, small cracks open in the rock mass. And those cracks are quickly filled by debris such as sand and water that fall into them or are forced into them from the areas above. Then when the next heating cycle reaches the rock layers, there is more material there that has to be expanded. And this expansion and contraction process combined with the constant flexing of the Earth’s crust associated with the gravitational pulls of the sun and the moon results in the tectonic plates being forced to both grow in size relative to the ocean surface, and to move apart from one another.

The shift in the position of the plates does not take place in an even manner. I believe the authors of the book stated that these processes encourage the plates to shift gradually to the east for example. But their actual motion is more complicated than that. The book contains quite a few diagrams that show the actual plate movement over the ages.

It also states, if I remember correctly, that this tectonic plate expansion and movement process is fairly recent in geologic terms. It was not as pronounced early in the history of the formation of the Earth.

If I explained those theories incorrectly, perhaps the book’s primary author, Dr. Pavel Kalenda, will add the necessary corrections.

MARS TECTONIC PLATES

A reports that I just saw in the news states that a UCLA professor of Earth and space sciences has now concluded that the planet Mars has also experienced some tectonic plate movement action in the past. It sounds like people have believed for a while that this might be the case. But now with the recent evaluations of Mars photos there is some fairly solid evidence that tectonic plate movement is also a real phenomena for Mars.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120809155831.htm

These are personal opinions.

• Mars Teconic Plates