WIP: unnamed Earh-like planet

[groovey]

Hello again!

Well, the other day I got very demotivated about the whole thing as you know, so I took a little break, for about 24h... Feel like a drama queen now.

Anyway, I wasn't planning to, but yesterday after writing my last post I opened the map in PShop just to take a casual look and play around with it in hope of deciding if I could fix the current model or I should start from scratch, and one thing led to another and now I got another version of the map (just the rotation, I won't do the boundaries till I get a finished working model).



I started fixing the poles and nº1 and 3 (for the novel), and then worked my way into the rest, altering boundaries' shapes when needed and adding micro plates (ugly blobs, I know) to correct inconsistencies. I tried to keep in mind:

- General direction of the plates.
- According to that, what rotation would make more sense (towards a subduction zone).
- Avoid divergent + convergent boundaries, though in some areas, like south of nº1 and 3 with nº7, they are divergent but because of the rotation they don't seem to retract from the boundary as much/fast and nº7, which I guess is not consistent, but I didn't see how to fix it, considering I need 1 and 3 to clash into each other while being consistent with the rest of the plates they border.

What I reckon I didn't have in mind, and I guess it's significant, is how ALL the plates came to be (some I know), which one separated from which one in such, so I hope the map it's not all messed up because of that.


Please note:

- A few more of the Euler Poles are now out of the plates, so it might a bit confusing to find them, but they're not far from the plate they belong to.

- The numbers of the plates are much more out of order than before, result of adding and deleting plates as I needed, so for example now plate nº2 is somewhere else.

- nº19 and nº12 happen to share Euler pole, basically because I realized nº12's worked for nº19.


So, how does it look now? Does this version work? Any major or minor issues?

[ascanius]

Hey Groovy, seeing that our mentor has a busy schedule right now looks like were going to have to pick up the slack, hopefully we learned enough to walk on our own two feet.

I took a look at your map and almost everything looks good to me. One way you could fix the boundaries between 1, 3, and 7 is to extend the divergent boundary between plates 23 and 3 down to plate 6 cutting in half plate 7. leave the right side as plate seven basically the way it now and on the left side extend plate 1 and 23 down to plate 6.

Also don't be afraid to break up plate five if you need to it is huge and it will also give you some space if you need it.

One other thing, this is what I do to get the east and west sides to line up. I take my origianl image and add two inches. I then copy the right (or left) side and paste it to the opposite side. I then change the lines and make general adjustments to make sure they line up. I noticed this might be of use to you do get the boundaries of the polar plates 14 and 15 to line up with each other, cuz right now they don't. It will also most likely mean that your boundaries near the boarders are going to change a little.

I did a paint over to give you an idea of what you could possibly do.


Best of luck

[groovey]

Hi ascanius, thanks for taking the time to illustrate your suggestions, I agree it's a very neat solution, but what worries me is that plate nº23, Pixie (see post #43 and replace nº2 by 23) told me, helps explaining that triangle shaped sea btw 1 and 3, so I'm not sure altering 23 like that wouldn't mess up with that sea's origin?

[ascanius]

Hi ascanius, thanks for taking the time to illustrate your suggestions, I agree it's a very neat solution, but what worries me is that plate nº23, Pixie (see post #43 and replace nº2 by 23) told me, helps explaining that triangle shaped sea btw 1 and 3, so I'm not sure altering 23 like that wouldn't mess up with that sea's origin?

I don't think it would mess up plate 23. It's that southern portion that is being subducted by plate 6 but plate 23, 7 and 3 are still spreading apart. I think of it along a timeline. First that divergent boundary forms pushing apart those two plates. then the divergent boundary forms south of plate 6 pushing it north where it subductes the southern part of plate 23 as time passes the last divergent boundary to from is that between plate 7 and 3.

I don't know if that makes any sense but that's the way I look at it.

[groovey]

Yeah, I guess it could work just as well. I'm terribly busy these days, so I'll fix that when I have the time.

Thanks!

[ascanius]

yeah, I hope it works, I might be out of it for a few days to a week. Managed to f'up my wrist arm wrestling and i'm not a lefty.

[Pixie]

Hi again groovey (and co.)

Here's my take on plates 23/6/7: either leave plate 7 as it is in groovey's version, and that point between 23, 7 and 3 is a divergent triple point (which is very plausible) or... prolong the oceanic ridge (like ascanius suggests) but have a continental land mass at the north end of plate 6, this could be a breakaway portion of the continent on plate 15, and provide the islands groovey wants for his novel.
I think groovey's solution - the triple point - seems better balanced.

All the rest looks very good. I am going to have a look at your plate movements with a stereographic projection, groovey, once I have the time, but at first sight, everything seems fitting to me.

[groovey]

Hello Pixie!

Glad to hear from you again, and glad to hear the new version of the map it's working, even if it needs polishing. I'll appreciate you doing that check up, but don't feel pressured to hurry, I'm a bit busy these days anyway, and I've also started to revise the outline for the novel, which takes some work too, so I've got stuff to do while you have the time to do the checkup.

By the way, Pixie, with the revised outline, turns out the continent on plate nº9 plays a much bigger role as a setting than I initially thought, so now I'm even more glad than I already was about your first suggestion for nº9/8 and the islands in between, many pages ago.

About plates 23/6/7: I like how ascanius' suggestion would allow me to have a small land mass so near plate 1, would be juicy for world-building purposes for the novel, but if the current version works and since I get volcanic islands btw 7 and 6 to help with the novel's purposes, I'll just leave it, if only because right now I haven't got much free time to play around with it. Thanks you two for helping me to figure out that area.

[su_liam]

Good work!

I have to question one thing from your first post, which I don't think has been brought up.
I assume, when you said Fedgëa has a diameter of 40,000 km, you meant equatorial radius. That would be pretty earthlike. A 40,000 km diameter would be tres hugenormous. Not earthlike at all, and to have human-habitable surface conditions would probably require some unphysical assumptions.

Otherwise, looking very good.

[groovey]

Hello su_liam!

Thanks a lot for pointing that out! I had completely missed that. I'm going to edit that right now.

And thanks for the compliment. I love your blog, by the way, great resource and with links to other great resources, congratulations, not everyone manages to have a truly interesting and useful blog.


Also, I was checking the tectonic map in PShop and then I checked it with the rotation colors on G. Projector, and I'm confused about what's going on at the poles, I suppose because even with ascanius suggestion I'm not sure of how to represent the rotation so that both sides of the poles match without making the change of shape so sudden and weird. What's going on with boundaries btw plate nº5 on both sides and plate 14 and 15? Is the boundary of plate nº5 with nº14 (North Pole) 100% divergent and 100% convergent with nº15 (South Pole) as I thought?

--------------North Pole---------------------------South Pole (Stereographic projections)




Edit: I polished some curvatures on some plates and fixed two issues:

- Added a nº24 microplate under nº4 because on its south it was divergent but nº5 was convergent with it, so it wasn't right.
- Boundary btw nº22 and 11 was a bit messy, so I polished it.

So Pixie, I hope you didn't start doing that check-up yet so you can do it with the little changes, but if you have, since said changes aren't that significant, don't mind them. But honestly, if you are very busy and you think as it is there's nothing terribly wrong with it, just let me know (I know my tectonic model is far from perfect and could be improved giving it a bit more though, but at this point I'm good with a model that works and it's consistent within itself and overall with how tectonics work or Earth).

Edit 2: I had a bit of time, so I quickly set the boundaries colors for the current map, to get a feeling of the balance btw blue (convergent) and red (divergent), so if I need to fix things on the rotation map it's ok, the boundary colors map it's easy to edit.



I know that according to the curvature of nº13 with 12 it should subduct the other way, but since it's a oceanic + continental boundary (with a bit of continental/continental), logic would dictate oceanic sinks under continental, hence why the subduction circles point to nº12. I know that to make it more accurate the coast of nº12 there should be more plain, but I'm willing to live with that, it's one of the issues to face when you have the land masses before the tectonics.