Plate Techtonics

Plate tectonics carries continents thousands of kilometers across the Earth. It creates and consumes oceans, and recycles chemicals that would otherwise build up and suffocate life. Why it is still going however is unknown. This machinery should have, by rights, seized up by now.
Without this form of stress release, the tectonic plates should have long ago jammed together in a global gridlock. The process doesn’t happen on any other planet—even Venus, our twin planet. So what keep the Earth moving? Suspicion is growing that the secret ingredient may be water deep in the Earth’s mantle because the planet is so wet.
Researchers Klaus Regenauer-Lieb and colleagues are beginning to understand how the tiny amount of moisture inside the Earth might have such a extreme effect. Their theory not only explains the Earth’s unique behavior, it makes some startling predictions as well. If their predictions are accurate, then in less than a million years giant earthquak...