Sentences with phrase «mantle convection»

However, the process of mantle convection should comply with fundamental physics laws, such as conservation of mass, momentum and energy.

Much work has been performed over the past four decades to represent mantle convection by computer simulation.

Temperature variations in the upper mantle drive mantle convection.

The prevailing theory on plate motions involves mantle convection.

The team's experiments put the suspected plume at a depth of 250 kilometers (155 miles), at a location about 150 kilometers (about 100 miles) southeast of Fernandina Island, the westernmost island of the chain, and where generations of geologists and computer - generated mantle convection models have placed the plume.

According to the Wikipedia article on mantle convection, its speed near the top of the mantle is around 20 mm / yr.

Such diversity of size and internal temperature would not hamper planetary evolution if there was self - regulating mantle convection, Korenaga said.

Hotspots were thought to be caused by a narrow stream of hot mantle convecting up from the mantle - core boundary called a mantle plume, the latest geological evidence is pointing to upper - mantle convection as a cause.

So understanding mantle convection is crucial to understanding many fundamental questions about the Earth.»

Or did mantle convection forces shatter the lithosphere into moving parts?

«Learning about the anatomy of the mantle tells us more about how the deep interior of Earth works and what mechanisms are behind mantle convection,» said Nicholas Schmerr, an assistant professor of geology at UMD and co-author of the Science Advances paper that addresses mantle density and composition.

«This seems to suggest there was a big change going back in Earth's history in terms of how mantle convection and plate tectonic processes would have happened.»

It also was thought that planets were able to self - regulate their internal temperature via mantle convection — the underground shifting of rocks caused by internal heating and cooling.

Korenaga presents a general theoretical framework that explains the degree of self - regulation expected for mantle convection and suggests that self - regulation is unlikely for Earth - like planets.

«If true,» he says, «this will be very important in how we think about the links between surface plate motions and deep mantle convection.»

Through mantle convection, material from the lowermost part of Earth's mantle could be carried up to the surface, which offers insight into the composition of the deep Earth.

But he adds, «If the ultra-low velocity pockets of rock have a composition different from the ordinary mantle rock, then mantle convection would continually carry them to the edges of piles where they collect.

In fact, Anderson says, the behavior is the regular mantle convection first proposed more than a century ago by Lord Kelvin.

But this new study supports researchers» growing suspicion that mantle convection somehow regulates the amount of water in the oceans.

Core convection produces Earth's magnetic field, which may influence surface conditions, and mantle convection causes volcanism, seafloor generation, and mountain building.

«The advent of plate tectonics made the classical mantle convection hypothesis even more untenable.

This seems to have finally dawned on you, which is why you now seem to be walking back to your earlier suggestion and are now beginning to blame mantle convection.

For this effort the observed history of plate tectonics could be imposed as velocity boundary conditions in dynamic calculations of mantle convection using a spherical geometry and realistic constitutive relations for geologic materials.

«Based on our models of mantle convection, the mantle may be removing as much as half of Earth's total convective heat budget from the core,» Rowley said.

This cooling and plate tectonics drives mantle convection, the cooling of the core, and Earth's magnetic field.

Because seismic evidence allows both possibilities, he says, «We decided to model mantle convection by computer to investigate whether their shapes and positions can answer the question.»

Earth scientists have long suspected that upwellings in these mantle convection currents would manifest themselves as the plumes responsible for Earth's volcanic hot spots.

«If you assemble all kinds of scientific data on how Earth has evolved in the past few billion years and try to make sense out of them, you eventually realize that mantle convection is rather indifferent to the internal temperature,» said Jun Korenaga, author of the study and professor of geology and geophysics at Yale.

What we have done is to simulate the process of mantle convection by solving the equations which controls the process of mantle convection,» says Li.

The answer to this question is very important for us to understand the nature of mantle convection,» explains lead author Mingming Li, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in geological sciences.

He calls this theory «top - down tectonics,» based on Kelvin's initial principles of mantle convection.

Scientists now recognize that macroscale behaviors, such as plate tectonics and mantle convection, arise from the microscale properties of Earth materials, including the smallest details of their atomic structures.

And that's assuming that mantle convection is sufficiently variable to account for any variation at all, as opposed to a steady geothermal release at the surface.