| |
1 CPD Hour
Geological Society WA Division monthly talk for June 2014, presented by Tim Johnson, Curtin University.
Earth is a dynamic and highly differentiated body, whose evolution has been driven by the need to lose heat. Partial melting and melt migration play an important role in moving heat, and are the dominant processes by which differentiation has occurred, producing a strongly layered lithosphere with widely varying physical and chemical properties. Plate tectonics is the observable manifestation of heat loss on the modern Earth, and can explain the assembly and break-up of supercontinents, how and where major mineral deposits formed and maybe even why there is life on Earth. However, it remains unclear when plate tectonics began in its present form and why it does not occur on other terrestrial planets in our solar system. Most data suggest that plate tectonics has operated at least since the Neoarchaean, but to what extent these processes occurred during the first two billion years of Earth history, when Earth was much hotter, is fiercely debated. This talk is an amble through my main research interests, including migmatites, rocks that partially melted, the application of phase equilibria and geodynamics, particularly where these relate to the evolution of the early Earth.
Meet at 5:30 pm, with the talk commencing at 6:00 pm.
