Write For Us

NASA Scientist Reveals Greenland's Geologic Past

E-Commerce Solutions SEO Solutions Marketing Solutions
139 Views

  • Thanks! Share it with your friends!

    You disliked this video. Thanks for the feedback!

admin
Published
We tend to think of Earth's landmasses as being fixed in place, but in reality they are attached to moving tectonic plates that constantly jostle for position. In some areas these tectonic plates slide over a hotspot - an upwelling of magma from deep in the mantle that can leave behind a geologic "scar" in the crust. Now, a NASA scientist and her colleagues have used anomalies in Greenland's crustal magnetic field to derive its geothermal heat flux, allowing them to effectively peer beneath Greenland's thick ice sheet and into the crust itself. What they found was a thermal track in Greenland's bedrock that records the motions of the North American tectonic plate over geologic time. This finding helps scientists to better understand the movement of Greenland, as it was slowly pushed over the hotspot that is now located under neighboring Iceland. It also serves as a reminder that nothing stands still over geologic time, and that even the largest landmasses are constantly being reshaped by our dynamic planet.
Learn more about this finding at
This video is public domain and can be downloaded from the Scientific Visualization Studio at:
Supporting visualizations appearing in this video are available at:
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Dan Gallagher/Ernie Wright
Music Provided by Killer Tracks: "Valfri" by James Alexander Dorman
If you liked this video, subscribe to the NASA Goddard YouTube channel:
Follow NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
· Facebook:
· Twitter
· Flickr
· Instagram
· Google+
Category
Documentary
Tags
NASA
Be the first to comment