Plates Y'all...

There have been a lot of major geological incidents in recent years: the tsunamis of the pacific, the earthquakes of Haiti, Chile, and Taiwan, as well as major climate changes around the world. These and other events motivated me to look up the explanations for these happenings to figure out what they meant in the grand scheme of our planet, and I found out some interesting stuff. For one, our planet's poles are beginning to shift, that's right. The magnetic fields of north and south are swapping polarities, which means bad news for us, but I'll save that for another post.

What I really wanted to talk about were the real movers and shakers of our planet, and I mean it quite literally. They're called tectonic plates. They are the cause of a lot of what goes on here on Earth. There are six main plates as well as a handful of smaller plates, but don't sleep on the smaller ones, they have just as much an impact as their big brothers.

There are three types of tectonic boundaries: convergent, divergent, and transform.

Convergent boundaries are when plates come together. When they do, you get a massive pile up, i.e. mountains. such as the Himalayas. They are even responsible for the formation

Divergent boundaries are when plates move apart due to magma from deep within the earth's core. NationalGeographic.com says that due to divergent boundary shifts, the eastern coast of Africa will split and form a new land mass that will mark the boundaries of two plates beneath the continent (Arabian and African Plates).

The last of the types, transformation boundaries, are pretty much when two plates grind side by side on each other, this phenomena is responsible for earthquakes.

So there you have it, a brief, VERY brief over view of tectonic plates. Check this out for more info. >>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDqskltCixA