00:04Our 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
00:24the protoplanet Earth.
00:25This essentially redid the planet and created the moon, but new research suggests it also changed the way Earth would
00:31behave 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,
00:48and 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
01:03the rest of the mantle.
01:05The researchers add this is also due to the type of material that make up these hot blobs, which they
01:09say are iron rich and most likely contain material from Theia.
01:13Theia.
01:16Theia.
01:17Theia.
01:17Theia.
01:18Theia.
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