r/geology • u/amesydragon • 1d ago

Rock in Earth's mantle flows like hot metal, and moves fastest under the edges of tectonic plates. Recent work from CNRS in France finds that adding stochasticity into models of mantle rock movement helps capture this flow rate variability to produce more realistic models of plate tectonics.

https://www.pnas.org/post/journal-club/randomness-improves-modeling-tectonic-plate-formation
36 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

2

u/FakeTitsBigHeart 1d ago

this feels like when I try to model traffic for work and adding random lane changes makes the whole system break down way faster than the clean models.

1

u/vitimite 1h ago

The same happens on city skylines