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The plate formed because the triple junction had converted to an unstable form surrounded on all sides by transform faults, due to the development of a kink in one of the plate boundaries. The "Pacific Triangle", the oldest part of the Pacific plate, created during the initial stages of plate formation, is located just east of the Mariana ...
The East Pacific Rise near Easter Island is the fastest spreading mid-ocean ridge, with a spreading rate of over 15 cm/yr. [2] The Pacific plate moves generally towards the northwest at between 7 and 11 cm/yr while the Juan De Fuca plate has an east-northeasterly movement of some 4 cm/yr. [3]
The oceanic Pacific plate subducts under the North American plate (composed of both continental and oceanic sections) forming the Aleutian Trench. The oceanic Pacific plate subducts beneath the continental Okhotsk microplate at the Japan Trench. The oceanic Philippine Sea plate subducts beneath the Eurasian plate at the Ryukyu Trench.
The Pacific Plate began forming when the triple junction at the center of Panthalassa destabilized about 190 million years ago. Panthalassa , also known as the Panthalassic Ocean or Panthalassan Ocean (from Greek πᾶν "all" and θάλασσα "sea"), [ 1 ] was the vast superocean that encompassed planet Earth and surrounded the ...
The vast majority of the world's active volcanoes occur along plate boundaries, with the Pacific plate's Ring of Fire being the most active and widely known. Some volcanoes occur in the interiors of plates, and these have been variously attributed to internal plate deformation [15] and to mantle plumes.
On one side of the spreading ridge new Pacific Plate crust is made, then moves away from the ridge. On the other side of the spreading ridge the Juan de Fuca and Gorda plates move eastward. [2] Image of the Juan de Fuca Plate that produced the magnitude 8.7–9.2 Cascadia earthquake in 1700.
Currently, the Pacific plate is subducting beneath Alaska, producing the Aleutian arc series of volcanoes through the Alaskan Peninsula and Aleutian Islands. [21] One of the sutures left by terrane addition is the Denali Fault, which curves through south-central Alaska. [21] The Denali Fault bends just north of Denali. The combination of the ...
In the eastern Pacific, where the subducting oceanic lithosphere is much younger, the depth of the Peru-Chile trench is around 7 to 8 kilometers (4.3 to 5.0 mi). [18] Though narrow, oceanic trenches are remarkably long and continuous, forming the largest linear depressions on earth. An individual trench can be thousands of kilometers long. [3]