Day 262: The Earth As Dessert

Geology is delectable, don’t you know? It’s the only subject I know in which food analogies are used to aptly describe phenomena.

Using techniques of seismology and modeling, a large chunk of dense, oceanic crust has been discovered at the base of the mantle, or to make it sound cooler for the kids in the audience, very close to the earth’s core.

Earth is divided into three main layers: the core, mantle and crust. The crust, a thin surface layer, is divided into more than a dozen major plates.

… The structure is about 125 miles deep and at least 125 miles wide and 370 miles in the north-south direction. In consistency, it is more like a giant, folding mush of taffy, researchers said today.

“If you imagine cold honey pouring onto a plate, you would see ripples and folds as it piles up and spreads out, and that’s what we think we are seeing at the base of the mantle,” said Alex Hutko, … lead author of a paper describing the discovery in the May 18 issue of the journal Nature.

… If the scientists have correctly interpreted their data, the folding slab is the first hard evidence that sinking crust drives the upwelling of material so deep inside the planet.

Actually, the lithosphere, the crust and a portion of the upper mantle, is divided into plates. But, that’s neither here nor there right now.

The gooey, caramel-like folds of oceanic crust appear to sit under Central America and the Caribbean Sea, where the Cocos plate subducts eastward beneath the Caribbean plate. For reference, here is a map of the earth’s tectonic plates and a 3D representation of the discovery.

All this talk of honey and taffy is making me hungry.

Fox News is the only major online news network that mentions the study at this time. Does this mean they support plate tectonics and, hence, the age of the earth and … stretch … stretch some more … evolution?