Power and the Building of Continents, Mountains, and the Ocean Basins

The distribution of continental crust has evolved so that the continents and ocean basins form their present structure. Mantle convection produces plates that form at ridges and vanish at subduction zones, so continents are steadily conveyed to subduction zones. There, the continental crust is thickened by lateral compression and mountain building. This is balanced by erosion of the continent surface. The result is that continent elevation has a small value above the ocean surface compared to its thickness, and this makes the ocean basins form a cistern with exactly the correct surface area and average depth to hold Earth’s water. A simple model generates simple formulas that use the volumes of the present continental crust and water for our present Earth to correctly predict the continent crust thickness, ocean water depth, the total continent area, and the total ocean basin area. Using wide ranges of continental crust and water volumes to calculate possible for values early Earth, the crust is invariably more than 24 km thick, the ocean depth is greater than 2200 m, the continent covers more than 25% of the planet, and the ocean covers less than 75%.