Day 3-The Himalayan Mountain Range

On day 3, Tectonic Joe plans to take us curious adventurerers on a exploration we will never forget! Our trip takes us to the Himalaya mountain range. These mountains are renowned for thier teterious terrain and thier high altitude. They contain the world famous Mount Everest, which is the tallest mountain in the world.

Looking at the photograph, it looks amazing. well, you can thank plate tectonics for that wonderful view.

The Himalayas are among the youngest mountain ranges on the planet. According to the modern theory of plate tectonics, their formation is a result of a continental collision or orogeny along the convergent boundary between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Eurasian Plate. This is called a fold mountain. The collision began in the Upper Cretaceous period about 70 million years ago, when the north-moving Indo-Australian Plate, moving at about 15 cm per year, collided with the Eurasian Plate. About 50 million years ago this fast moving Indo-Australian plate had completely closed the Tethys Ocean, the existence of which has been determined by sedimentary rocks settled on the ocean floor and the volcanoes that fringed its edges. Since these sediments were light, they crumpled into mountain ranges rather than sinking to the floor. The Indo-Australian plate continues to be driven horizontally below the Tibetan plateau, which forces the plateau to move upwards.

-til next time,

Tectonic Joe

Day 2-Hawaii

The next stop on the trip will be Hawaii. Some people say that Hawaii and its islands were created from Tectonic plates moving but it is actually not it is what we call a Hot Spot.

In geology, a hotspot is a location on the Earth's surface that has experienced active volcanism for a long period of time. J. Tuzo Wilson came up with the idea in 1963 that volcanic chains like the Hawaiian Islands result from the slow movement of a tectonic plate across a "fixed" hot spot deep beneath the surface of the planet. Hotspots are thought to be caused by a narrow stream of hot mantle convecting up from the Earth's core-mantle boundary called a mantle plume, although some geologists prefer upper-mantle convection as a cause. This in turn has re-raised the antipodal pair impact hypothesis, the idea that pairs of opposite hotspots may result from the impact of a large meteor. Geologists have identified some 40–50 such hotspots around the globe, with Hawaii, Réunion, Yellowstone, Galápagos, and Iceland overlying the most currently active.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4MSt6PmPHc

Most hotspot volcanoes are basaltic because they erupt through oceanic lithosphere. As a result, they are less explosive than subduction zone volcanoes, in which water is trapped under the overriding plate. Where hotspots occur under continental crust, basaltic magma is trapped in the less dense continental crust, which is heated and melts to form rhyolites. These rhyolites can be quite hot and form violent eruptions, despite their low water content.

For example, the Yellowstone Caldera was formed by some of the most powerful volcanic explosions in geologic history. However, when rhyolitic magma is completely erupted, it may eventually turn into basaltic magma because it is no longer trapped in the less dense continental crust. An example of this activity is the Ilgachuz Range in British Columbia, which was created by an early complex series of trachyte and rhyolite eruptions, and late extrusion of a sequence of basaltic lava flows

Day 1-The San Andreas Fault

First stop on the trip will be the San Andreas Fault in California. The Fault streches the entire length of the state, which is roughly around 800mi (1300km) long. It runs from San Francisco to San Diego, and is the source of many violent earthquakes. The fault is classified as a transform fault boundary. In simpler terms, its when two plates slide by each other. This causes a mass amount of earthquakes. Some people call this a strike-slip fault, it extends vertically atleast 20mi (30km) into the earth.

On April 18th, 1906 San Francisco was wrecked by a tremendous earthquake and for the next few days was consumed by unforgiving fires.

The fault was named by geologist A.C. Lawson after the San Andreas Lake. Therefore makeing the remarkable landmark our first visit on our tour of plate tectonics.

Where next, Tectonic Joe?