So You Think You Know Plate Tectonics? Part 2

Dr. Jesse Reimink: [00:00:00] Welcome to Planet Go, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.

Chris Bolhuis: Hey, how we doing, doc?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Hey, what's up Chris? What's going?

Chris Bolhuis: Uh, not a whole lot. I am ready to roll, but I'm looking at you and I'm like, I just gotta say today, love is blind. And you're living proof for that.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You love me

Chris Bolhuis: I like No, no, no, no. Not at all. Not at all. I'm talking about Tess. Um, like I don't,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh,

Chris Bolhuis: what, how, I don't know how you managed to finagle this situation, but you married way.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: lots of water right now. Um. So back to you criticizing me. Uh, yeah, I, um, I'm not sure what to say. I don't understand it either. I'm not gonna argue with it.

Chris Bolhuis: somebody's gotta marry up, right? It's one of the

Dr. Jesse Reimink: got to That's right. You know,

Chris Bolhuis: [00:01:00] Very rarely would it be an equal. That's

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's exactly right.

Um, so I have a confession to make.

Chris Bolhuis: Uh oh. I have no idea what you're gonna say.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: You don't, Oh, uh, I, I confessed that I was, I was wrong about this whole plate tectonics thing. It turns out , uh, it was a, well, it was a popular episode. Let's put it that way. People seem to like it. We're continuing on in the same theme here, which is plate tectonics questions. do you know plate tectonics? the random thoughts on plate tectonics and the unifying

Chris Bolhuis: do a better job?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: tectonic.

Chris Bolhuis: Uh, you need, you're doing a horrible job at this, by the way. Alright.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: go for it.

Chris Bolhuis: First of all, I don't feel like you did a good job of, um, saying why you were wrong. I mean, the backstory has to come into this. You know, you fought me hard on this one. You did , you did not wanna do this, and I was right. And you can't just gloss over it and say, Oh, I was wrong. And then just quickly change topic. That doesn't work for me.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think that's [00:02:00] allowed. What do you want me to do? Get down and bow on my knees and you know, beg your forgiveness or something? Heck no. Are you kidding me?

Chris Bolhuis: I just, I think a little more backstory is appropriate, but hey look. this is a series and we said that from the outset and we just kind of broke this up by topic and in terms of like, how does Plate tectonics unify. Massive parts of the field of geology, right? That's where this came from. But it really came from a discussion that I had with my classes and that they thought they knew plate tectonics. And I'm just thinking, No, you really don't. You, You know these boundaries and things like this and you know it at a rudimentary level. And so I wrote a bunch of questions. These are some of them that we're gonna talk about, that we talked about in our last episode. We're gonna talk about today, a few more of 'em. That to me, gets. And I think you can agree, right? They get at a deeper level of plate tectonics and explaining just really important things in geology.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, I think, you know, it's, [00:03:00] um, it is a idea or it's a concept, or it's a theory that permeates through an entire introductory course. I mean, we're recording this Camp Geo thing, which gives us a good opportunity to advertise Camp Geo. If you wanna learn about geoscience in a very structured way with all the images in a conversational way, the link in the show notes first link right at the top there will take you to our mobile friendly conversational textbook that we're calling Camp G. So go to that. Let us know what you think. We would love some feedback on that. Back to the story of plate tectonics, Chris, is that plate tectonics really permeates this entire field because when I teach the intro to geology, physical geology section, almost every lecture contains something about plate tectonics from glaciers to metamorphic rocks like we're gonna talk about today, to streams to climate cycling. I mean, so it's all there. It is the grand unifying. And there are parts of every little sub-discipline that relate to plate tectonics, and [00:04:00] that's kind of what we're sort of working through. And this is part two. Out of that sort of series, we don't really know how long this is gonna go. It could be six, it could be seven, it could be five. We don't really know. So.

Chris Bolhuis: And the, the title of this is, this series is, Well, and you fought me on this too, but it's So you think, you know, plate tectonics

Dr. Jesse Reimink: hey. hey. Right. No, no, no. Hold on. We're gonna, I'm gonna interject here a little bit. I think this does not mean that I'm not gonna fight you next time you come up with a hair-brained idea.

Chris Bolhuis: This is, I don't come up with a lot of hair brand ideas. I'm pretty well thought out. Jessie Reimink. I don't, I don't deserve that at all. But that, that's, because that was my thought when my students were talking the way they were talking, I'm like, Oh, so you think you know this? Here we go. So that's where this comes from. Today we're gonna tackle these three questions.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: interject real quick, Chris, because last time we talked about the questions we kind of went through is how does plate tectonics generate the rock basalt? How is Andesite produced and how does plate tectonics explain the formation of [00:05:00] granite? And those three rocks are igneous rocks, and so those are rocks formed from magma or lava molten rock crystallized to form a new rock. Today we're gonna go in the other direction. Other rock types. Sorry, go ahead.

Chris Bolhuis: good on you, Jesse. You know, talking about where we came from. That's, that's good teaching. So, today we're gonna talk about how plate tectonics. Relates to and, and explains the formation of sedimentary rocks. Then we're gonna go into how plate tectonics explains the formation of metamorphic rocks, and then a huge topic that we have to like stay pretty tight on. How do earth's resources, our natural resources, relate to plate tectonics? In other words, Mineral resources that we get. Things like these, or deposits and so on, they form directly because of plate tectonics. And we're gonna get into some of the examples of that. So those are the three questions.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: And [00:06:00] each of these could be a very, very, very long discussion. So we're gonna try and keep it to the very high level, you know, the, the most important summary. So Chris, where does your mind go? When you wrote this question about how does plate tectonics relate to the formation of sedimentary rocks?

Chris Bolhuis: Okay, well first, a little bit of backstory on this. Um, Hold on. I lost my train of thought there a minute.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Wow, so, so quickly. That ,that was the, the train barely got moving and it got lost off the tracks.

Chris Bolhuis: it comes and goes. It's all right. All right. I see how this is gonna go. Okay. Well, before we get into it, I just wanna say too that I really don't know the angle you are gonna take, and I love that because I think your mind is very interesting and I, I can't wait to like hear your

Dr. Jesse Reimink: It's a wild world over here.

Chris Bolhuis: Something. and the other thing is too, this first question. Now let's talk specifically about that. How plate Tectonics explains the formation of sedimentary rocks.[00:07:00] I remember the first time I saw a question like this, and it made me think, now here I am. You know, fresh outta college, perhaps when I first saw this. So I, you know, you think, you know really what, you got a college degree, right? You think you know what you're talking about, and then all of a sudden somebody throws this at you. And I was like, Wait a second. , I had never thought about that before and it gave me pause to think. that stuck with. That experience, and that's where this question comes from. So I, I kind of think of my response to this. How does plate tectonics explain the formation of sedimentary rocks? There are two very broad forces in geology forces that lift things up and forces that wear things down. Kind of like a big belt grinder from above, right? And. Without plate tectonics Earth would look very [00:08:00] different and very, a lot less interesting. But plate tectonics is that force that lifts things up. Weathering in erosion is the force that tears things down and they're always in opposition. And then when one of them stops, then the other one, like, you know, if a plate tectonic event, You know, kind of changes direction or, or ceases, you know, that event ends as they all do eventually. Then weather and erosion takes over and just like, just slowly and, you know, meticulously and relentlessly just grinds it all down. And so sedimentary rocks when things are lifted up, weathering in erosion is accelerated. So the breakdown of rocks, mountains. And then that's the weathering of them. Then they get carried downstream, usually where then they get sorted and then they get [00:09:00] deposited, and then they get solidified where they get, you know, cemented and compacted and cemented together. That process is directly tied to the uplift that caused it all to start, and that uplift is plate tectonic. So that's my like, Explanation for how sedi rocks are related to at least, like how the process is accelerated by plate tectonics by uplift.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: well that, that's kind of, uh, where I was Well, hoping and, uh, maybe expecting you to go with that. And, and that's a good one. I mean, that's like the, the key thing is the production of sediment is required to make sedimentary rocks. So you gotta have stuff to, you gotta have stuff to be broken down, which is mountain ranges before you can form sedimentary rocks. So, so I like that. Um, this will come back to, uh, when we talk about the sort of planetary aspects of this a little bit, and this is like a theme, uh, that we talked about last week too, is there are sedimentary rocks, you know, on Mars. We know [00:10:00] that now there's sedimentary rocks on Mars, which is really interesting. Ask the question of like, what did Mars look like? What did ancient Mars look like? Did ancient Mars have plate tectonics for instance? Maybe, you know, these are some really interesting questions about other planetary bodies driven by the fact that there are sedentary rocks that we observe on the surface of Mars. We don't know how old they are really. We don't know exactly how they formed, but they are there. So I think Chris, I, I generally, broadly agree completely with that assessment or the what? That answer to the

Chris Bolhuis: I sense a, but coming.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, not really. No. I think it's a, not, not at all, but I think it's a, a kind of, um, maybe one step. One step further and one step back in a, in a weird way, so like there's this old idea about sedimentary rocks that relates exactly to what you're saying. Let's say we have a, a sequence of rocks in the rock record, uh, that starts at the base and you have a conglomerate where, it's all a bunch of what we call lithic class, so little pieces of rock [00:11:00] that are in a sedimentary rock, and maybe those pieces of rocks are from a volcanic source. So think of if you formed a sediment right off the Andes Mountain Belt. The Andes are shedding material off into the Pacific Ocean, and you're forming some sediment there. It's gonna be what we call juvenile tect. Juvenile. And as that mountain belt gets eroded down, the rocks are gonna change. The sedimentary rocks that are feeding into that will be changed during that process. And so there's like, Can use the sedimentary rocks to infer the ancient tectonic setting. Uh, if that makes sense. So you can kind of go deeper and deeper and deeper down into this and understand ancient tectonic settings by looking at the sedimentary rock record, if that makes sense.

Chris Bolhuis: That makes sense. That was good. That was good. I, I agree.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: that kind of leads us really nicely into the next question, which, is, how does plate tectonics explain the formation of metamorphic rocks now? And metamorphic rocks are metamorphosis. It's just taking a rock and changing it into a different rock, [00:12:00] usually by high temperature and high pressure. Some combination of those two things. So Chris, where does your mind go with Metamorphic Rock?

Chris Bolhuis: Okay. My mind with metamorphic rocks. And I want to ask you a question actually, and this is totally off the cuff, . What plate Tectonic boundaries produce the most Metamorphic rocks. Specifically,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Ask me that again.

Chris Bolhuis: All right. What plate tectonic boundaries produce the most regionally? Metamorphose rocks.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Uh, that would be continental collision zones or tectonic collision zones where you're smashing a piece of a continent into another piece of a continent. that's just a lot of force being basically, you've got, I think, India smashing into Asia. You got the, the force of this entire Indian subcontinent smashing into Asia, and that thing has to stop. You know, it's like, it's like one of those cruise ships. You see a video of like a cruise ship [00:13:00] accidentally running into shore, right? Like that's a lot of mass that you have to slow down. That does a lot of damage. Same thing goes in the rock record here.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay, so in order for Metamorphism, especially regionally, metamorphic rocks to form things like nice and schist, right, you need to have massive amounts of pressure. Very high temperatures. So this is something, Jesse, that's not typically covered in an intro level physical geology class. Then with a continent to continent convergent boundary. You know, we generally don't talk a lot about, we talk a lot about the pressure, obviously, but we don't talk a lot about the heat because, we saved, For the basic things like, oh, you have an ocean to continent, convergent boundary with a subduction zone, and then you get magma generated from that, right? It's often left out of the discussion. So how does that happen at a continent to continent Convergent boundary?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: so the heat basically comes from. It's like [00:14:00] putting two blankets, on the bed at night. You basically have a doubly thick that you can think of. Think of a lithospheric plate. In this case, it's a continental lithospheric plate, so the crust is about 30 to 70 kilometers deep, and then you have a lithosphere beneath that, a mental lithosphere. That's another a hundred to 150 kilometers deep. That's a pretty thick blanket. All the mantle heat is trying to get out, but it just kind of has to diffuse or conduct through the continental crust. If you make that doubly thick, it's adding another blanket onto your bed at night. It gets hotter and actually the con internally does produce lot heat. There's a lot of radio activity, lots of radio, Thom and potassium in the continental crust, so that radioactive decay. So it's like adding, not only just a blanket, but a heat blanket. Electric heat blanket and doubling, adding two electric heat blankets on top of each other. Uh, it gets really hot in there. That's mostly where the heat comes from.

Chris Bolhuis: does the pressure play into the heat too, or

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Not a lot the pressure, like the pressure [00:15:00] of collision. There's not a lot of like kinetic force that gets tr. There's a little bit, but there's a little bit of a debate about how much that matters, but it's probably not a big source of.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, and that is, by the way, a very, very common misconception with. young geoscience students is the pressure is what causes the heat. You know, the pressure is what drives the internal heat engine of the earth and all of that kind of stuff.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: think about any collisions and you know, the collisions you think of when we talk about geology is probably like a meteorite . Collision, which does a lot of melting and vaporizes stuff. You know, it's way too slow for that. Sort of kinetic force to transfer to heat and, and generate heat. It, it doesn't, not a major player.

Chris Bolhuis: That makes sense. Okay. So continent to continent virion boundary generates massive amounts of pressure and a lot of heat, and those are the ingredients that you need to regionally, metamorphoses, rocks that form things like nice and schist and fill light and, and then, you know, as you get a little bit further away with a little less heat and a little less [00:16:00] pressure, rocks like slate. Right.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, For the most part. Yep.

Chris Bolhuis: Okay. What about ocean to co? What about subduction zones generating massive amounts of metamorphic rocks or not?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Um, a decent amount, probably not by volume, but they generate some pretty diagnostic ones, some pretty unique ones that are higher pressure and lower temperature. Chris, do you have a good analogy for this? I always struggle to find a good analogy for this process in class. Do you have a good one that describes this?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, here's the thing is that it's counterintuitive to me to young students because be, here's why a subduction zone, lots and lots of pressure, right? And you also have tons of heat because you're literally generating magma along the subduction zone. Water is driven off that subducting slab. It rises up into the lithosphere. well, you have magma, so you have a potent heat source. So This is counterintuitive. if you were to ask [00:17:00] younger students what you know, A, B, or C, right? What generates more regionally? Metamorphs rocks. Uh, ocean to continent, subduction, ocean to ocean subduction, or continent to continent. It's gonna be the two subduction answers that are gonna generate the most response, for sure.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's, that's, yeah. Yeah. That's interesting cuz there's magnetism, so there's heat, they think, they say, Oh, there's lots of lava magma around, so there's heat and that does contact metamorphism or that does. A lot of metamorphism just by adding heat to the system. I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, that, that absolutely makes sense. I mean, you've kind of explained the three processes, the three dominant processes that produce different types of metamorphism. So you know where my mind goes with the formation of metamorphic rocks is that we have a wide variety of different metamorphic rocks on earth. There are shifts, but one shift is not equal to another shift. There are different types of shifts, shifts that formed in different ways, and you can [00:18:00] kind of think of things like, How did a rock get metamorphs? Did it go up in pressure first and then increase in temperature and then cool down by decompressing and cooling down? Or did it heat up really fast right away and then go deep and then cool down? So there's different like pathways to get to high metamorphic conditions, high temperature, high pressure, metamorphic conditions, and all of these different settings that we've kind of gone through. Seduction zones, collisional zones, and extensional environments where the mantle kind of gets really close to the surface in some way that adds a lot of heat to the system. All those generate different PT pathways, pressure temperature pathways that Iraq can experience, which allows us, again, to, to sort of say things about ancient tectonic environments by studying these things.

Chris Bolhuis: that's exactly the point I wanted to bring this back around to is that, you know, all of these boundaries that we're talking about, continent to continent, these subduction zone boundaries, these are all tectonic things. They, they wouldn't happen if we didn't have plates being moved around on the surface of the earth. I mean, we learned these almost, [00:19:00] I think all too often on an island. You know, we know that metamorphism happens because you need pressure, you need temperature, and you need chemically active fluids. You know, primarily water, but we don't have any of those if we don't have tectonics going on. And so plate tectonics directly ties to the formation and it explains the formation of metamorphic rocks.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I think a helpful thing that, and I just gave this lecture in class last week and it's just always such an amazing thing. Metamorphic rocks. They're just really amazing that you can tell so much information about these things. These things that have been cooked to 500 5600 degrees centigrade, they've gone down to 10 or 20 kilometers deep, and we can actually extract information about, their path down there. It's always amazing to me, but it's kind of useful, I think, to help understand how powerful this is. It's useful to consider. The alternative. So take something like Mars, which has what's called a stagnant lid planet or a single lid planet. The only way to metamorphose stuff is to move it straight up and down, basically what we call [00:20:00] vertical tectonics. So there's not horizontal plates running into each other. It's just a. Piling lava on top and burying stuff. And by doing that there's only so many pathways you can get to high pressure and temperature conditions, like you're only gonna bury it at a certain rate and heat it up at a certain rate. So Metamorphism on a planet like Mars, let's say right now is pretty boring. There's only like one type of metamorphic rock, whereas on earth we have all types of metamorphic rocks. Totally cool.

Chris Bolhuis: And the metamorphism? Well, no, the metamorphism that you get on Mars is going to be, um, it's non foliated. You, you have this kind of like equal dimensional stress that's applied due to burial. If you imagine going to the beach, you know, and, and digging a big hole and climbing in it, and then having somebody shove sand around all your body, right? That constriction that you feel, that equal dimensional pressure applied equally in every single direction. That's what that kind of metamorphism produces. And it doesn't lead to the [00:21:00] what I think, and I think you agree with me. Beautifully Foliated, metamorphic rocks. I mean, metamorphic rocks. They're, they're some of our favorites, Jesse. I mean, are in love with metamorphic rocks. In fact, I'm getting new granite countertops tomorrow that are beautifully metamorphose rocks. I cannot wait. They get installed tomorrow.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Excellent. That's a good one. That, that's a great, you know, summary ending to how plate tectonics explains the formation of metamorphic rocks. And the third one we wanna get to really is how do Earth's resources, and I think by this we typically mean like mineral resources we're talking about. Iron elements that we care about as society, lithium deposits, gold deposits, things like that. How do these resources relate to plate tectonics?

Chris Bolhuis: Well, okay. This is a huge topic and this could be its own series, so we're just gonna, We need to keep this, I think like, I think simple. I'm gonna throw this back at you. [00:22:00] What are some

Dr. Jesse Reimink: on, Chris.

Chris Bolhuis: resources,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: a like controversial approach you're taking Is throwing it back to me to keep it simple on this one. I feel like that's risky ground.

Chris Bolhuis: That's, that's true. So let me, let's talk about, like some common resources that would be, that would fit into this conversation or

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Yeah, We, I, Okay. I think I could do that without getting too rambly. Um, you know, we consider things like iron or deposits, zinc deposits, gold deposits, silver. Uh, we, we've talked about lithium, copper, exactly. And many of these occur in the same deposit. So we have things like iron or copper gold deposits. That's like a, a category that often occurs together. Rare earth elements often occur together in a deposit type, so we have kind of deposit classes, lead zinc sulfide deposits occur together. So those are kind of things we, would think about.

Chris Bolhuis: so if I think about one example of how resources like Iron, let's say, ties back to plate tets, I [00:23:00] think about something like fractional crystallization.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Okay.

Chris Bolhuis: You know, You you, think about like this magma chamber, right? Well, the magma chamber, these, uh, early minerals are very mafic, which means they're very rich in iron and magnesium. So these crystals begin to grow and grow and they get bigger, right? Think about building a wall, like that's how these crystals kind of grow, and they eventually then begin to. If, if the conditions are right, I should say the, the crystals can sink to the bottom of the chamber, which can cause them, because these are early formed crystals, it causes them to concentrate in the bottom of a, an ancient magma chamber, let's say. And that's one of the ways that we can get iron or, but how does that tie back to plate tectonics? Well, you don't get the magma chamber. If you don't have plate tectonics, you don't get the magma chamber

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I [00:24:00] think you're, No, my mind's going in a very similar place, just kind of the other end of the, of the spectrum there. Instead of thinking about the minerals that are crystallizing out, the magnet chamber and kind of raining down that contain. Iron and, and sort of source all of these iron nickel lead zinc deposits, Chromium deposits are formed this way. I was thinking the other end of the spectrum where you end up getting this, what we call Tite rich fluids, the last drags of a magnet chamber where you don't have. , minerals that are uncommon are formed there because the elements that don't fit in the rest of the stuff and the rest of the minerals are concentrated in this last very fluid rich phase, which can crystallize

Chris Bolhuis: interrupt you a second? I just want to interrupt you because if you, if our listeners want to go back to Pegmatites, which I think Pegmatites the formation of Pegmatites, what Pegmatites are, there's some of our favorite kind of rocks, Jesse, go. Search through. I don't know. We should probably have that ready at hand, but we don't go back and find our, episode on Pegmatite

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I [00:25:00] forgot. I actually forgot Chris. We did one on that as we're describing this. We did do one on that. So I think, you know where my mind goes with this question is a lot of the. Economic deposits that we care about, whether it's gold or copper or rare elements. A lot of these have to do with fluids = and plate tectonics is an amazing way to cycle fluids through the earth, through the solid earth, get fluids from the ocean that interact. Oceanic crust to bring that down. A seduction zone system, flu it through the mantle wedge and it comes up in magma chambers. And a lot of these iron or copper gold iocg deposits form right along seduction zone systems right above the magma chambers that end up forming volcanoes. And so it's, all of this stuff just gets concentrated because fluids are moving from the mantle all the way through the crust, and they have all the opportunity to soak up those elements like gold and.

Chris Bolhuis: That's right. I mean, think about a mid ocean ridge. Let's go to the other end of [00:26:00] the spectrum, right? We talked about subduction zones and magma formation. Well, what about mid ocean ridges? At mid ocean ridges, we have a very potent heat source. You know, this is thee material rising up, partially melting, forming basalt. So you have this really, you have a potent heat source and you have highly fractured rock, right? Combine that now we have hot, salty. That's flowing through because it gets heated by this potent heat source, hot, salty water flowing through highly fractured rock. Well, these metals, they're very soluble in. Hot, salty, maybe acidic water. These things are, they're very, very soluble in those kinds of conditions. So you're talking about this material, this fluid that you just described, moving through vast volumes of rock, selectively dissolving these very soluble metals, and then precipitating them when the conditions change. Therefore, concentrating again, these kind of, [00:27:00] or deposit.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: So something's just coming to me. I don't know why this is coming to me, but it's an old story. I don't know if I've ever told you this before, Chris, but so economic geology is the study of. Economic deposits, right? Like that's what economic geology is. And it's really all about fluids. It's about understanding how fluids are moving through the earth's system and you know, whether it's seduction zone fluids, or fluids that are flowing through sedimentary rocks coming out of metamorphoses basement, nices and flowing into sedimentary rocks and moving elements, and then dumping them somewhere like hit some chemical boundary and dumping 'em somewhere. But I had a roommate who was an economic geologist in. In grad school and we had another roommate who was a French physicist who knew nothing about rocks. And at one point I've ever told you this story, and I'm not sure if I have, at one point, Zavier, who's the French guy, He goes, Joe, what is economic geology? And he said it in a French accent, which I'm not gonna try and replicate, but What is economic geology? Is that just like cheap [00:28:00] geology, Which I thought was brilliant. Just geology. Very, very cheap.

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah, that's, Was he trying to be

Dr. Jesse Reimink: No, You know, he just, he was like, what is this term economic geology? Is it just the cheap geology?

Chris Bolhuis: Oh,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: I thought it was great, but I mean, yeah, I think we're on the same page and it's all about fluids. Fluids build these resources for us. And plate tectonics really controls where the fluids go and how far they go, how deep they go, uh, what kind of fluids there are. So

Chris Bolhuis: Yeah. Plate tectonics is the mechanism for generating the fluids and then the fluids do the work, right? It's then you get into geochemistry and then the conditions change and they precipitate them and they're concentrated now because you know, at a middle ridge, all rocks have these metals in it. All rocks have gold in it, right? I very, very minute. You know, small percentages of it, but they're there. but then if you take [00:29:00] these fluids that are hot, they're salty and sometimes acidic and they're flowing through the stuff and they selectively dissolve it, they're concentrating it bit by bit by bit and then making something that's economic

Dr. Jesse Reimink: That's exactly right. And in cheap. Exactly. And that's something that we kind of talked about to bring it full circle. And the reason we really put this, um, earth's resources in plate tectonics in this particular episode is because we can think about metamorphic rocks and Seder rocks in the same way sedimentary rocks are. Density filters and so there are gold deposits that form and there are diamond deposits actually that form just because those are really dense things and you need a stream to really filter those and wash away all the light stuff and keep all the dense stuff behind. And so, Sedimentary rocks and plate tectonics actually concentrate some of these things for us too. As do metamorphic rocks, certain melting reactions will concentrate zirconium or lithium or um, neodymium in the melt as well. So all these [00:30:00] processes work to concentrate stuff for us, which is the key to forming resource rich areas. So that was a good one, Chris. I think that, Is that a wrap? Do you, do

Chris Bolhuis: I think it's a wrap. I, I have a thought as you were rambling on. I had a thought there, so I

Dr. Jesse Reimink: was, was wandering

Chris Bolhuis: it was, it did a little bit. Um, I'm like, Okay, he's talking again. I can think. Um, so , here's my thought.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Why do I do

Chris Bolhuis: you know,

Dr. Jesse Reimink: you? You're, you're a bit of an a-hole sometimes, you know

Chris Bolhuis: Oh, It comes by me naturally. so I'm thinking about our next episode would our listeners be able to answer these questions like, Alright, how does this relate to plate tes? How does this relate to plate? Like, we should have started the episode of that. I think, you know, like, How does plate tectonics relate to the formation of sedimentary rocks? Can you answer that right here, right now? You know? I'm curious about that and I would, I would really like feedback from our listeners on this. Like, send us an email on this and let us know what you think. When you first heard it. [00:31:00] Did you have an answer ready to go?

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So send us feedback. You're asking, send us feedback on these questions. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I like it. Yeah. if you thought that, Oh, I have an answer to how a plate to s relates to formation Sinter X, send us that. We'll cover it in the beginning of next episode. Absolutely. At the outset, that's a good idea. So

Chris Bolhuis: all I had. It was just a thought.

Dr. Jesse Reimink: yeah, send us some feedback. We are gonna keep working our way through these. We might take a few breaks to do some other stuff in between, but we'll get through a whole bunch of questions about plate tectonics here, , over the next couple months. We're also gonna take a little bit of a break over the holidays and re-release some stuff. , but stay tuned. We will keep the good content coming here. You can follow us on all the social medias. We're at Planet Geo Cast. Our website is planet geo cast.com and our email is planet geo cast gmail.com. check out our Camp Geo, the first links at the bottom. If you wanna learn about geology in a very structured way with beautiful images, check it out. We're constantly updating that stuff.

Chris Bolhuis: Have a great week. Cheers.[00:32:00]

Dr. Jesse Reimink: Cheers.