{"id":15776,"date":"2023-10-12T08:26:54","date_gmt":"2023-10-12T02:56:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=15776"},"modified":"2025-04-03T19:45:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T14:15:30","slug":"pontus-tectonic-plate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/pontus-tectonic-plate\/","title":{"rendered":"Pontus Tectonic Plate"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><strong>About Pontus Tectonic Plate<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It is a <strong>long-lost tectonic plate<\/strong> recently <strong>discovered in the west Pacific Ocean<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>It is believed that the massive tectonic plate <strong>was once about 15 million square miles<\/strong> in size, which equates to approximately <strong>one quarter of the Pacific Ocean<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>It can be <strong>traced back as far as 160 million years<\/strong>, and even more <strong>recently to around 20 million years<\/strong> back.<\/li>\n<li>It was <strong>slowly subducted<\/strong> and lost over millions of years, <strong>pulled down under a neighbouring plate by gravity.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>How the discovery was made?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The <strong>subducting plate is <\/strong>actually <strong>denser than the surrounding mantle<\/strong>, so gravity basically pulls the plate down into the mantle.<\/li>\n<li>A <strong>subducted plate leaves behind traces when it &#8216;sinks&#8217;<\/strong> into Earth&#8217;s mantle \u2013 namely, <strong>fragments of rock hidden in mountain belts<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>During the process of subduction, however, <strong>the upper parts of the subducting plate are sometimes scraped off.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The researchers <strong>used geological data to reconstruct the movements of the current plateswith computer modelling<\/strong>, which hinted at a wide area potentially vacated by a subducted plate.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li><strong>Using magnetic techniques<\/strong>, researchers d<strong>etermined the basalt from Borneo were relics of Pontus<\/strong> that were left behind when this part of the plate subducted, some 85 million years ago.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2><strong>What is a Tectonic Plate?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>A tectonic plate (also <strong>called lithospheric plate<\/strong>) is a <strong>massive, irregularly shaped slab of solid rock,<\/strong> generally <strong>composed of both continental and oceanic lithosphere<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Plate <strong>size can vary greatly<\/strong>, from a few hundred to thousands of kilometers across; the <strong>Pacific and Antarctic Plates are among the largest<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Plate <strong>thickness also varies greatly<\/strong>, ranging <strong>from less than 15 km<\/strong> for young oceanic lithosphere <strong>to about 200 km or more for ancient continental lithosphere<\/strong> (for example, the interior parts of North and South America).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Theory of Plate Tectonics:<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Plate tectonics is the theory that <strong>Earth&#8217;s outer shell is divided into large slabs of solid rock, called \u201cplates<\/strong>,\u201d <strong>that glide over Earth&#8217;s mantle<\/strong>, the rocky inner layer above Earth\u2019s core.<\/li>\n<li>Earth\u2019s solid outer layer, which includes the crust and the uppermost mantle, is called the lithosphere. <strong>Below the lithosphere is the asthenosphere \u2014 a viscous layer kept malleable by heat deep within the Earth.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>It <strong>lubricates the undersides of Earth&#8217;s tectonic plates<\/strong>, <strong>allowing the lithosphere to move around.\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1<\/strong>: What is mantle?<\/h3>\n<p>The mantle is the largest layer of the earth, lying between the crust and the outer core. It is 2,900 kilometres thick and makes up around 60% of the planet\u2019s mass.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.livescience.com\/planet-earth\/geology\/scientists-discover-ghost-of-ancient-mega-plate-that-disappeared-20-million-years-ago\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Scientists discover ghost of ancient mega-plate that disappeared 20 million years ago<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pontus is a long-lost tectonic plate recently discovered in the west Pacific Ocean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":15777,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}