Mountains aren't eternal: even the most imposing massifs are smoothed away by weathering in a few hundred million years or less. Plate tectonics makes new ones, and without it, our future would be flat. Votes: 8
If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so. Votes: 6
The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event - not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics - then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light. Votes: 1
Planets that don't currently sport plate tectonics, such as Venus and Mars, are scarcely habitable. Tectonics might be a requirement of any world that aspires to a rich diversity of life. Votes: -1
Plate tectonics is not all havoc and destruction. The slow movement of continents and ocean floors recycles carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans back into the atmosphere. Without this slow speed carbon cycle, Earth's temperatures would cool dozens of degrees below your comfort zone. Votes: -2
Unfortunately, we haven't found many very old rocks on Earth because our planet's surface is constantly renewed by plate tectonics, coupled with erosion. Votes: -3
The plate tectonics of media have shifted where NBC had to become a new media company from an old media company. Votes: -4
The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving. Votes: -4
Why did the earthquake and tsunami occur in Japan? Was it the act of an angry God? No, it was the result of the movement and collision of the earth's tectonic plates - a process driven by the earth's need to regulate its own internal temperature. Without the process that creates earthquake, our planet could not sustain life. Votes: -4
If you could drive straight down, into a tunnel bored through the crust of the planet, you'd hit this molten mess in about an hour. It's called the asthenosphere - a sluggish sea, several hundred miles thick, on which floats the Earth's cool epidermis - the so-called tectonic plates. Votes: -5
Blue Plate Special' is the autobiography of my first half-century of life, with food as the subject. Votes: 3 Kate Christensen