Continental Incontinence

The other day I was leafing through the latest edition of Plate Tectonics magazine when I came across an interesting article.

Alert readers know that Plate Tectonics is not about dinnerware.

Plate Tectonics is the branch of science that concerns “the structure of the Earth’s crust and many associated phenomena resulting from the interaction of rigid lithospheric plates which move slowly over the underlying mantle, minding their own business most of the time, voting in favor of fiscal responsibility and fewer pronouns, when need arises, and occasionally crashing into each other, causing earthquakes, eruption of deep sea hydrothermal vents and last but not least, toilet paper shortages.”

Actually, I’m lying. First of all, there is no “Plate Tectonics” magazine. If there was, no one would read it. There’s a lot of stuff going on down below the Earth’s surface but most of it is happening extremely slowly. Reading a magazine devoted to Plate Tectonics would be like reading a magazine devoted to what you can learn by watching your toenails grow.

The other thing that I’m lying about (besides the toilet paper shortages) is that I didn’t discover the interesting article. My wife did. She sent me this link: “North America is ‘dripping’ down into Earth’s mantle, scientists discover.”

This diagram below depicts what’s going on “downstairs” in a large area centered underneath the Midwest and extending up into Canada.

The purple thing that sort of looks like a tongue is a rigid slab of rock that is now subducting or diving deep into the Earth’s interior, creating a kind of drainpipe/funnel. Rocks that crumbled off elsewhere are drawn through the drainpipe/funnel toward the Lower Mantle (also referred to as “The Nether Regions”).

Even though the dripping zone consists of rocks instead of liquid, I think this phenomenon should be called Continental Incontinence.

In case you were wondering, discovery of this subterranean “leakage” came about due to the advent of a high-resolution seismic imaging technique called full-waveform inversion. If you ask me full-waveform inversion sounds more like a wake boarding trick.

In addition to diagnosing Continental Incontinence, full-waveform inversion has also been used to locate socks that start out on your bed-partner’s feet but then somehow they (the socks) wind up oozling their way down into the subduction zone located between the end of the mattress and the bedding tucked in against the footboard. Oozling is actually a highly technical term. But I could have just made it up. You decide.

Anyway, every morning I do a sock retrieval sweep of the landscape below the comforter, the sub-comforter and the sub-sub-comforter. Plus the subduction zone.

Quite frankly, we really shouldn’t spend much time worrying about lithospheric “dripping”. According to the experts, it will probably stop once the subducting slab, aka purple thing, is completely submerged in the Nether Regions.

Whew, all this technical Geophysics terminology is overwhelming, but it does bring to mind a 1965 sci-Fi movie I saw as a kid: Crack in the World.

Here’s the synopsis: “A dying scientist pushes forward his project to tap through to the Earth’s magma layer, with results that threaten to destroy the Earth as we know it.” (I don’t know about you but I think the “as we know it” bit is redundant.)

And at the risk of being called lazy, I’m hereby reprinting a plot summary from Wikepedia:

“An international consortium of scientists, operating as Project Inner Space in Tanganyika, Africa, is trying to tap into the Earth’s geothermal energy by drilling a very deep hole down to the Earth’s core. The scientists are foiled by an extremely dense layer of material. To penetrate the barrier and reach the magma below, they intend to detonate an atomic device at the bottom of the hole (Of course they do. Who wouldn’t?)

The leader of the project, Dr. Stephen Sorenson, who is secretly dying of cancer, believes that the atomic device will burn its way through the barrier, but the project’s chief geologist, Dr. Ted Rampion, is convinced that the lower layers of the crust have been weakened by decades of underground nuclear tests, and that the detonation could produce a massive crack which would threaten the very existence of Earth (I think the “very” is also redundant)

The atomic device is used and Rampion’s fears prove justified, as the crust of the Earth develops an enormous crack that progresses rapidly along a fault line, causing earthquakes and tsunamis along its path. Rampion warns a committee of world leaders that the crack is capable of extending beyond the fault, and that if it were to encircle the Earth, causing the land masses to split, the oceans would be sucked in, generating steam with enough pressure to rip the Earth apart.

Sorenson meanwhile discovers that there was a huge reservoir of hydrogen underground, which turns the small conventional atomic explosion into a huge thermonuclear one that is millions of times more powerful. Another atomic device, lowered into the magma chamber of an island volcano in the path of the crack, is used in the hope of stopping the crack, but it only changes the crack’s direction. (Ed. Note: Bummer) Eventually, the crack approaches its starting point at the test site, and a huge chunk of the planet outlined by the crack is expected to be thrown out into space. Sorenson remains at the underground control center to record the event, despite pleas by his wife Maggie to evacuate with the rest of the project staff. She and Rampion barely escape the test site in time to observe the fiery birth of a second moon. Its release stops the crack and the Earth (Ed. Note: as we know it) survives.”

Remember, this was 1965 we’re talking about. Times have changed. These days we would just send down a deep-Earth probe led by Katy Perry and filled with intrepid innerspace explorers, geophysicists, and other well-heeled celebrities.

Katy could write a song about it: “I Saved the Earth. And I Liked It.”