Current Plates
Depending on how they are defined, there are usually seven or eight "major" plates: African, Antarctic, Eurasian, North American, South American, Pacific, and Indo-Australian. The latter is sometimes subdivided into the Indian and Australian plates.
There are dozens of smaller plates, the seven largest of which are the Arabian, Caribbean, Juan de Fuca, Cocos, Nazca, Philippine Sea and Scotia.
The current motion of the tectonic plates is nowadays revealed from remote sensing satellite data sets, calibrated with ground station measurements.
Read more about this topic: Plate Tectonics
Famous quotes containing the words current and/or plates:
“It is not however, adulthood itself, but parenthood that forms the glass shroud of memory. For there is an interesting quirk in the memory of women. At 30, women see their adolescence quite clearly. At 30 a woman’s adolescence remains a facet fitting into her current self.... At 40, however, memories of adolescence are blurred. Women of this age look much more to their earlier childhood for memories of themselves and of their mothers. This links up to her typical parenting phase.”
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“What I’ll be seeing more of in the years
To come as here I stand and go the round
Of many plates with towels many times.””
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