“How Plate Tectonics Explain the Formation of the Andes Mountains”

By any size, that is Andes Mountain Very, very big. Stretching 8,900 kilometers (5,530 miles) across South America, they arrived It reaches a height of 7 km (4.3 mi) and SIt is up to 700 km (435 miles) wide..

But how does the range grow to a large scale? Plate tectonics—the movement of large plates of Earth’s crust across the planet—can create mountain ridges where slower parts are pushed up by faster moving areas.

Although the concept is simple in theory, tracking the speed of tectonic movement over shorter timescales of 10 to 15 million years is a challenge for geologists.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen used a Newly developed method To see in more detail the movement of the South American plate that forms the Andes. They identified a 13 percent slowdown in parts of the plate about 10 to 14 million years ago, and a 20 percent slowdown between 5 and 9 million years ago — enough to explain some of the features we see today.

“In the age before the two slowdowns, the plate to the west, the Nazca Plate, pushed up into the mountains and compacted them, causing them to elongate,” He said Geologist Valentina Espinosa of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

“These results could indicate that part of the existing span acts as a brake on both the Nazca Plate and the South American Plate. As the plates slow down, mountains grow instead.”

The technique used in this study begins with absolute plate motion (APM), which is the movement of the plates in relation to a fixed point on Earth. APM is largely determined by studying volcanic activity in the crust, because magma passages tell geologists how plates have changed.

Then there is relative plate motion (RPM), which is the movement of the plates relative to one another. It is calculated using a wider range of clues, including magnetization data embedded in the seafloor indicating rock movement, and provides a higher resolution (smaller time scale) than APM data.

To determine the rate of movement in the South American plate, geologists use high-resolution RPM data to estimate the APM through some detailed mathematics. By cross-checking prediction data with geological data we have confidence in, this method allows experts to learn more about the interactions between tectonic plates.

This method can be used for all panels, as long as high-resolution data is available. He said Geologist Giampiero Ivaldano of the University of Copenhagen.

“It is my hope that the method can be used to refine historical models of plate tectonics and thereby increase the opportunity to reconstruct geological phenomena that are still unclear to us.”

The team also considered the question of why these two significant slowdowns happened in the first place. While a few million years is a long time for us, it is a hypothetical blink of an eye on the geological time scale.

One possibility is that the convection currents in the mantle have changed, shifting the different densities of the surrounding material. There may also be a phenomenon called degassing, in which large portions of the plates sink into the mantle. Both events have an indirect effect on the board’s rate of motion.

More research and more data will be needed to know for sure, and new analytical methods will help with that. Even with one (possibly) answered question, there is still a lot to be done.

“If this explanation is correct, it tells us a lot about how these massive mountains formed.” He said Spinoza.

“But there’s still a lot we don’t know. Why is it so big? How quickly did it form? How did the mountain ranges survive? Will it eventually collapse?”

Research published in Earth science and planetary messages.