Around 4.5 billion years ago a giant object around the size of Mars crashed into the proto-planet Earth, called Theia. This essentially redid the planet and created the Moon, but new research suggests it also changed the way Earth would behave for the rest of its days.
00:00Our planet's crust is made up of multiple giant slabs of Earth called tectonic plates.
00:09And while one might conclude that all rocky worlds probably have a similar tectonic assembly, they don't.
00:14And researchers might finally know why our planet seems to have this relatively rare structure.
00:19Around 4.5 billion years ago, a giant object called Theia, which was around the size of Mars, crashed into the protoplanet Earth.
00:26This essentially redid the planet and created the moon, but new research suggests it also changed the way Earth would behave for the rest of its days.
00:33The new study outlines how the impact increased temperatures at the core mantle boundary, kicking off plate tectonic movement.
00:40With the researchers writing, quote,
00:42In this study, we perform whole mantle convection models to illustrate that strong mantle plumes can arise, weaken the lithosphere, and eventually initiate subduction about 200 million years after the giant impact.
00:53Subduction is where one tectonic plate goes under another and is driven into the Earth's mantle.
00:58The plumes that are mentioned still occur today, and they arise from blobs of material that have increased temperatures over the rest of the mantle.
01:04The researchers add this is also due to the type of material that make up these hot blobs, which they say are iron-rich and most likely contain material from Theia.
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