Bibliographic record
Abstract
Labeled 'the all-time breakthrough in geology', plate tectonics brought a revolution in Earth Science 40 years ago.This theory links movements of lithospheric plates to processes taking place deep inside the Earth.The assumption of rigid surface plates enables one to describe the surface kinematics in terms of two components: the horizontal divergence (ridge-trench system) and the radial vorticity (transform faults and plate spin).The horizontal divergence and the radial vorticity are directly related to the poloidal (vertical motion around a lateral axis) and toroidal (lateral motion around a vertical axis) scalar fields, respectively.Surprisingly, kinetic energy in present-day plate motions is partitioned approximately equally between horizontal divergence (poloidal) and radial vorticity (toroidal) parts.I work with a time-dependant 3D spherical convective code where plates are coupled dynamically to the mantle.This method, which ensures the retrieval (to within ±10%) of the main global observables at the Earth's surface (mean plate velocity, global heat flux and potential temperature under oceanic ridges), is unique and provides new opportunities to tackle questions such as the coupling between plates and the deeper mantle.I made experiments with different plate geometry on top of the 3D spherical code.When I plot the degree variance of the poloidal and toroidal components of the surface velocity field, only a geometry close the observed presentday geometry shows almost the same toroidal to poloidal ratio that exists at present-day.It suggests that only a geometry close to the one which is observed at present-day can reproduce an equipartition between the poloidal and toroidal components of plate motions.Further, O'Connell et al. (Toroidal-poloidal partitioning of lithospheric plate motions.Glacial Isostasy, Sea Level and Mantle Rheology, eds R. Sabadini & K. Lambeck, Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, 1991) presume that, since the toroidal velocities are not involved in the heat transfer, the convective process develops a dynamical structure reducing the loss of kinetic energy, so that the partitioning essentially depends on the plate distribution.The constructal theory is covariant (the shape is changing in relation to the flow) as is plate tectonics.Plate motion reconstructions show that the geometry and plate motions are evolving slowly and probably maintain a lowest relative toroidal power through time.The constructal theory can be used to explain why the present-day configuration of plates is optimal for the Earth's mantle flow dynamics as the surface plate motions are indeed representative of the large-scale convective flow in the mantle.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.010 | 0.002 |
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 itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".