U33A:
Plate Tectonics: Fifty Years After the Revolution

Note: Abstract submissions to Union sessions are by invitation only.



Session ID#: 21880

Session Description:
Fifty years ago, the Earth Sciences were revolutionized by the discovery of plate tectonics, which subsumed the seafloor spreading and continental drift hypotheses. The geometrical framework of rigid plate tectonics on a sphere was presented for the first time in a talk at the 1967 AGU meeting, as noted in books such as Plate Tectonics, and The Continental Drift Controversy Vol. 4: Evolution into Plate Tectonics. AGU symposia commemorating the 10th and 25th anniversaries were well received, filling the largest meeting rooms. 50 years after a landmark event in the history of science is an appropriate time to look back and forward at the impact, including talks by early workers who developed plate tectonics and by current researchers, to see where plate tectonics has and has not taken us, and to emphasize improved solutions to problems solved by plate tectonics and to problems testing the limits of plate tectonics.
Primary Convener:  Richard N Hey, University of Hawaii at Manoa, HIGP/SOEST, Honolulu, HI, United States
Convener:  Hank Frankel, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, United States
Chairs:  Richard N Hey, University of Hawaii at Manoa, HIGP/SOEST, Honolulu, HI, United States and Jason Phipps Morgan, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, United Kingdom
OSPA Liaison:  Richard N Hey, University of Hawaii at Manoa, HIGP/SOEST, Honolulu, HI, United States

Cross-Listed:
  • G - Geodesy
  • GP - Geomagnetism, Paleomagnetism and Electromagnetism
  • S - Seismology
  • T - Tectonophysics
Index Terms:

1714 Geomagnetism and paleomagnetism [HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICS]
1734 Seismology [HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICS]
1744 Tectonophysics [HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICS]
3040 Plate tectonics [MARINE GEOLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS]

Abstracts Submitted to this Session:

Driving Forces of Plate Tectonics and Evolution of the Oceanic Lithosphere and Asthenosphere (Invited) (225668)
Donald W Forsyth, Brown University, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Providence, RI, United States
MY ROAD TO TRANSFORM FAULTING 1963; LONG-TERM PRECURSORS TO RECENT GREAT EARTHQUAKES (Invited) (211097)
Lynn Sykes, Columbia University of New York, Palisades, NY, United States
The Thermal Structure of Oceanic Lithosphere (Invited) (235727)
Dan P McKenzie and Keith Priestley, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
THERMAL MODELS OF THE OCEAN FLOOR: FROM WEGENER TO CERRO PRIETO (Invited) (246885)
John G Sclater, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA, United States and Raquel Negrete-Aranda, Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, Geología, Ensenada, BJ, Mexico
Composite and Component Plates, Plate Non-rigidity, and the Steadiness of Plate Motion From Marine Geophysical and Space Geodetic Data (Invited) (210850)
Donald F Argus, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, United States, Charles DeMets, University of Wisconsin Madison, Geoscience, Madison, WI, United States and Richard G Gordon, Rice University, Houston, TX, United States
From Plate Tectonic to Continental Dynamics (Invited) (218357)
Peter H Molnar, University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Geological Sciences, Boulder, United States

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