Red, orange and yellow regions are where mixing occurs. The red surface at the center indicates the top of the outer core. Tectonic plates, whose boundaries are traced as white lines on the surface, move and change shape during the simulation. At the end, plate movements have produced a more complex sinking pattern under the northwestern Pacific Ocean crust, as visualized in a second snapshot inside the Earth. Including plate information is helping the group recover the current pattern of hot and cold regions inside the mantle.
Motion is everywhere inside the Earth.
There is no way to get that information from observations alone. Baumgardner is exploring the possibilities now, albeit on a regional scale. John Baumgardner is applying his mantle and tectonic plate knowledge to a San Francisco Bay earthquake simulation project. He coordinates with the University of California, Berkeley, on a San Francisco Bay Area earthquake simulation project. The software concept includes the crust, upper mantle and a network of faults.