Basaltic Magmatism: The Dominant Factor in the Petrologic and Tectonic Evolution of the Earth
Why this work is in the frame
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Silicate bodies such as the Moon, Mars, probably Mercury, and possibly Venus, appear to have evolved in three main stages: a first (felsic) differentiation, a late heavy bombardment, and a second (basaltic) differentiation. It has been proposed that the Earth underwent a similar sequence. This paper argues that the second differentiation, basaltic magmatism, has dominated the petrologic and tectonic evolution of the Earth for four billion years. A global andesitic crust, formed during and after accretion of the planet, was disrupted by major impacts that triggered mantle upwelling and sea-floor spreading about 4 billion years ago. The oceanic crust collectively has since been formed by basaltic volcanism, from spreading centers and mantle plumes. However, the continental crust has also been greatly affected. Basaltic underplating has promoted anatexis and diapiric intrusion of granitoids in granite-greenstone terrains, as well as providing heat for regional metamorphism. Basaltic intrusions, such as the Nipissing diabase of the Sudbury area, have added to the thickness of continental crust. Satellite magnetic surveys suggest that there are more such basaltic intrusions than previously realized; examples include the Bangui anomaly of central Africa and the Kentucky anomaly. Basaltic overplating from mafic dike swarms has repeatedly flooded continents; had it not been for erosion, they would be covered with basalt as Venus is today. The tectonic effects of basaltic volcanism on continents have only recently been realized. The World Stress Map project has discovered that continents are under horizontal compressive stress, caused by push from mid-ocean ridges, i.e., by basaltic volcanism. The stress fields are generally uniform over large intraplate areas, and could contribute to intraplate tectonism. Seafloor spreading has demonstrably been effective for at least 200 million years, and ridge push thus a contributor to tectonic activity for that long. Collectively, the petrologic and tectonic evolution of the Earth has been dominated for about 4 billion years by the 'second differentiation,' i.e., by basaltic magmatism.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it