دیکشنری تخصصی مهندسی نفت - نسخه آنلاین

n: according to a theory proposed by Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, in 1910, the migration of continents across the ocean floor like rafts drifting at sea. Compare plate tectonics.

n pi: movement of great crustal plates of the earth on slow currents in the plastic mantle, similar to the movement of boxes on a conveyor belt. Today geologists believe that the earths crust is divided into six major plates and several smaller ones atop some of which the continents are carried away from a system of mklocean ridges and toward another system of deep-sea trenches. The theory of plate tectonics explains most of the mysteries that confounded earlier geologists. Compare continental drift.

any one of several insitu or earth stress forces. May include classic plate tectonics, salt flows, thrust forces, faults, folds, etc. Can be either near-field or far-field.