Mohoroviˇci´ c in 1909, is termed the Mohoroviˇci´c discontinuity, or Moho for short.

The core of the Earth was discovered by R. D. Oldham in 1906 and correctly delineated
by Beno Gutenberg in 1912 from studies of earthquake data (Gutenberg 1913, 1914).
The core is totally different, both physically and chemically, from the crust and mantle. It
is predominantly iron with lesser amounts of other elements. The core was established
as being fluid in 1926 as the result of work on tides by Sir Harold Jeffreys. In 1929 a
large earthquake occurred near Buller in the South Island of New Zealand. This, being
conveniently on the other side of the Earth from Europe, enabled Inge Lehmann, a
Danish seismologist, to study the energy that had passed through the core. In 1936, on
the basis of data from this earthquake, she was able to show that the Earth has an inner
core within the liquid outer core. The inner core is solid. The presence of ancient
beaches and fossils of sea creatures in mountains thousands of feet above sea level
was a puzzle and a stimulation to geologists from Pliny’s time to the days of Leonardo
and Hutton. On 20 February 1835, the young Charles Darwin was on shore resting in a
wood near Valdivia, Chile, when suddenly the ground shook. In his journal The Voyage
of the Beagle Darwin (1845) wrote that ‘The earth, the very emblem of solidity, has
moved beneath our feet .
like a thin crust over a fluid.’ This was the great Concepci´on earthquake. Several
days later, near Concepci´on, Darwin reported that ‘Captain Fitz Roy found beds
of putrid mussel shells still adhering to the rocks, ten feet above high water level:
the inhabitants had formerly dived at low-water spring-tides for these shells.’ The
volcanoes erupted. The solid Earth was active.
By the early twentieth century scientific opinion was that the Earth had cooled
from its presumed original molten state and the contraction which resulted from
this cooling caused surface topography: the mountain ranges and the ocean basins.
The well-established fact that many fossils, animals and plants found on separated
continents must have had a common source was explained by either the sinking
of huge continental areas to form the oceans (which is, and was then recognized
to be, impossible) or the sinking beneath the oceans of land bridges that would
have enabled the animals and plants to move from continent to continent.
In 1915 the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener published a proposal that
the continents had slowly moved about. This theory of continental drift, which
accounted for the complementarity of the shapes of coastlines on opposite sides
of oceans and for the palaeontological, zoological and botanical evidence, was
accepted by some geologists, particularly those from the southern hemisphere
such as Alex Du Toit (1937), but was generally not well received. Geophysicists
quite correctly pointed out that it was physically impossible to move the continents
through the solid rock which comprised the ocean floor. By the 1950s,
however, work on the magnetism of continental rocks indicated that in the past
the continents must have moved relative to each other; the mid-ocean ridges,
the Earth’s longest system of mountains, had been discovered, and continental
drift was again under discussion. In 1962 the American geologist Harry H. Hess
published an important paper on the workings of the Earth. He proposed that
continental drift had occurred by the process of seafloor spreading. The midocean
ridges marked the limbs of rising convection cells in the mantle. Thus, as
the continents moved apart, new seafloor material rose from the mantle along the
mid-ocean ridges to fill the vacant space. In the following decade the theory of
plate tectonics, which was able to account successfully for the physical, geological
and biological observations, was developed. This theory has become the unifying
factor in the study of geology and geophysics. The main difference between plate
tectonics and the early proposals of continental drift is that the continents are no
longer thought of as ploughing through the oceanic rocks; instead, the oceanic
rocks and the continents are together moving over the interior of the Earth.
Tectonics on a sphere: the geometry of plate tectonics

2.1 Plate tectonics

The Earth has a cool and therefore mechanically strong outermost shell called
the lithosphere (Greek lithos, ‘rock’). The lithosphere is of the order of 100 km
thick and comprises the crust and uppermost mantle. It is thinnest in the oceanic
regions and thicker in continental regions, where its base is poorly understood.
The asthenosphere (Greek asthenia, ‘weak’ or ‘sick’) is that part of the mantle
immediately beneath the lithosphere. The high temperature and pressure which
exist at the depth of the asthenosphere cause its viscosity to be low enough to
allow viscous flow to take place on a geological timescale (millions of years, not
seconds!). If the Earth is viewed in purely mechanical terms, the mechanically
strong lithosphere floats on the mechanically weak asthenosphere. Alternatively,
if the Earth is viewed as a heat engine, the lithosphere is an outer skin, through
which heat is lost by conduction, and the asthenosphere is an interior shell through
which heat is transferred by convection (Section 7.1). The basic concept of plate
tectonics is that the lithosphere is divided into a small number of nearly rigid plates (like
curved caps on a sphere), which are moving over the asthenosphere. Most of the
deformation which results from the motion of the plates – such as stretching, folding or
shearing – takes place along the edge, or boundary, of a plate. Deformation away from
the boundary is not significant.

A map of the seismicity (earthquake activity) of the Earth (Fig. 2.1) outlines the
plates very clearly because nearly all earthquakes, as well as most of the Earth’s
volcanism, occur along the plate boundaries. These seismic belts are the zones
in which differential movements between the nearly rigid plates occur. There are
seven main plates, of which the largest is the Pacific plate, and numerous smaller
plates such as Nazca, Cocos and Scotia plates (Fig. 2.2). The theory of plate tectonics,
which describes the interactions of the lithospheric plates and the consequences of
these interactions, is based on several important assumptions.

Tectonics on a sphere

1. The generation of new plate material occurs by seafloor spreading; that is, new
oceanic lithosphere is generated along the active mid-ocean ridges
2. The new oceanic lithosphere, once created, forms part of a rigid plate; this plate may
but need not include continental material.

3. The Earth’s surface area remains constant; therefore the generation of new plate by
seafloor spreading must be balanced by destruction of plate elsewhere.
4. The plates are capable of transmitting stresses over great horizontal distances
without buckling, in other words, the relative motion between plates is taken up only
along plate boundaries.

Plate boundaries are of three types.

1. Along divergent boundaries, which are also called accreting or constructive, plates
are moving away from each other. At such boundaries new plate material, derived from
the mantle, is added to the lithosphere. The divergent plate boundary is represented by
the mid-ocean-ridge system, along the axis of which new plate material is produced
(Fig. 2.3(a)).

2. Along convergent boundaries, which are also called consuming or destructive, plates
approach each other. Most such boundaries are represented by the oceanic-trench,
island-arc systems of subduction zones where one of the colliding plates descends
into the mantle and is destroyed. The downgoing plate often penetrates
the mantle to depths of about 700 km. Some convergent boundaries occur on land.
Japan, the Aleutians and the Himalayas are the surface expression of convergent plate
boundaries.
3. Along conservative boundaries, lithosphere is neither created nor destroyed. The
plates move laterally relative to each other (Fig. 2.3(e)). These plate boundaries are
represented by transform faults, of which the San Andreas Fault in California, U.S.A. is
a famous example. Transform faults can be grouped into six basic classes (Fig. 2.4). By
far the most common type of transform fault is the ridge–ridge fault (Fig. 2.4(a)), which
can range from a few kilometres to hundreds of kilometres in length. Some very long
ridge–ridge faults occur in the Pacific, equatorial Atlantic and southern oceans (see
Fig. 2.2, which shows the present plate boundaries, and Table 8.3). Adjacent plates
move relative to each other at rates up to about 15 cm yr-1.

Present-day plate motions

2.4.1 Determination of rotation poles and rotation vectors Several methods can be used
to find the present-day instantaneous poles of rotation and relative angular velocities
between pairs of plates. Instantaneous refers to a geological instant; it means a value
averaged over a period of time ranging
Figure 2.9. On a spherical Earth the motion of plate A relative to plate B
must
be a rotation about some pole. All the transform faults on the boundary
between
plates A and B must be small circles about that pole. Transform faults can be
used to
locate the pole: it lies at the intersection of the great circles which are
perpendicular
to the transform faults. Although ridges are generally perpendicular to the
direction of spreading, this is not a geometric requirement, so it is not
possible to
determine the relative motion or locate the pole from the ridge itself. (After
Morgan
(1968).)

from a few years to a few million years, depending on the method used. These methods
include the following.

1. A local determination of the direction of relative motion between two plates can be
made from the strike of active transform faults. Methods of recognizing transform faults
are discussed fully in Section 8.5. Since transform faults on ridges are much easier to
recognize and more common than transform faults along destructive boundaries, this
method is used primarily to find rotation poles for plates on either side of a midocean
ridge. The relative motion at transform faults is parallel to the fault and is of
constant value along the fault. This means that the faults are arcs of small circles
about the rotation pole. The rotation pole must therefore lie somewhere on the great
circle which is perpendicular to that small circle. So, if two or more transform faults
can be used, the intersection of the great circles is the position of the rotation pole
(Fig. 2.9).

2. The spreading rate along a constructive plate boundary changes as the sine of the
angular distanceθ from the rotation pole (Eq. (2.3)). So, if the spreading rate at various
locations along the ridge can be determined (from spacing of oceanic magnetic
anomalies as discussed in Chapter 3), the rotation pole and angular velocity can then
be estimated.

3. The analysis of data from an earthquake can give the direction of motion and the
plane of the fault on which the earthquake occurred. This is known as a fault-plane