3218: Subduction Retrieval
| Subduction Retrieval |
 Title text: Aww, the oceanic crust and the continental crust are getting married! |
Explanation
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This is one of 74 incomplete explanations: This page was created recently by a SUBDUCTION LICENSE. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
This comic is a public service announcement (PSA) telling the reader to stay out of the Pacific Ocean on the current day. The reason for this is explained to be that someone has lost their wedding ring in a subduction zone. This is a boundary where two tectonic plates in the Earth's crust collide, and one plate dives beneath the other into the Earth's mantle. The ring can be seen glimmering on the upper surface of the subducted oceanic plate, in the accretionary wedge below the continental plate. Given that the rate at which this occurs is of a few centimetres per year at most, and assuming that the characters shown are drawn to scale and are of average human stature, it can be estimated that the ring has been in the subduction zone for about 200 years. Possibly this time has been needed to localise it and then deploy the heavy engineering displayed.
As a result, the USGS (United States Geological Survey) is "pulling the plate back up" to retrieve the ring. This would be a ridiculous idea, since no man-made machine is capable of moving entire tectonic plates [citation needed]. Even if it were possible, it is unlikely that the USGS, a national organisation, would invest the time and effort required for such an operation for the relatively trivial purpose of retrieving a wedding ring, particularly for people who are presumably long since dead.
The title text jokes that since the wedding ring lies on the lower (oceanic) plate, the oceanic crust and continental crust are "getting married".
Transcript
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This is one of 44 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page! |
[Caption below panel:] PSA: Please stay out of the Pacific Ocean today. Someone lost their wedding ring in a subduction zone and USGS is pulling the plate back up to retrieve it.
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I win. 2603:7080:5240:fa00:f571:792f:a287:3b07 (talk) 03:21, 12 March 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
- I lost The Game. 2A04:4E41:320E:C27C:0:0:885F:A27C 04:47, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
- @&$! 47.146.30.92 05:33, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
- Nope - you are disqualified for not signing your post. 82.13.184.33 09:14, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
By some coincidence this article https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy03jw0pwx1o was on the BBC news website Wed 11th March (UK)- the evening before (9pm local time) this was added 2A00:23C7:B524:F801:4041:29F9:A548:6CDE 06:08, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
I added my first explanation on this website! Please feel free to correct/improve it. 2401:D002:8404:C900:E8CD:26D1:3D16:F675 06:33, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
A rough estimate of how fresh this news is would be 200 years: size of people allows to estimate ring has been carried down 12 m, and then I used 6 cm/year subduction rate. 152.77.153.162 08:04, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
- This underestimates the time span IMO. Considering the folds in the crust below the crane, work obviously has been going on for quite some time already. The actual time of the ring going underground must be at least one order of magnitude higher, i.e., *ages* ago. Wait a minute ... the guy who claims to have lost the ring, does he go by the name of Sauron, by any chance? 2.201.115.145 10:28, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Chances are that the ring melted being down that far. Dogman15 (talk) 08:58, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
- Depending upon the (unreliable, but article-assumed) scale, not really.
- Gold melts at ~1000°C (any diamond in it would melt at ~4000°C, though any solder/etc used in its construction would presumably do so at lower temperatures). At least before the effects of pressure modify that.
- At a subduction zone, the rock is relatively cool further down, as the 'surface' plate being subducted starts of cool and can soak up a lot of the heat from the 'hot cushion' it's being drawn down into. Even if we assume the humans aren't to scale, the junction should be no more than a few hundred degrees C (an additional 10C° per km of depth is one estimate, with some variation and a lot of unknowns that apply in an active subduction zone).
- Presuming the ring landed in oceanic silt that is 'immediately' inexorably dragged down under the lip of the overlying plate, the effects of temperature would be minimal compared to a mid-plate depth (where it gets uncomfortable for miners). In addition, the water in the sediment would eat up the heat energy, given its extremely high enthalpy of vaporisation, up until the pressure drives that higher than the mineral/metal melting points (if indeed it does), further keeping the ring's neighbourhood cooler than it should be.
- Pressure might be the big thing, depending on if the sediment layer that it lies in acts as a constant matrix to spread the load (i.e. not crush the ring), although you'd expect a mudstone-like process of compression (then metamorphic transition, once enough heat passed into it, probably before the gold suffered from pure temperature effects), so it might he distorted. But if it found itself being dragged through a thin enough faultline that the underlying and overlying bedrock were essentially rubbing together (the soft-stuff significantly squeezed out, but for some reason not the ring), then it'd be more like putting the ring between two millstones (but more so?), and it'd fragment and/or smear the gold ring. Any diamond might last longer before being shattered, however much it might gouge the passing rock away whenever it jammed, depending on how it was actually encased in other material. But various types of granite (as examples of the rock) melt at far less than half the temperature of diamond, lower still in the presence of water and pressure (possibly below gold, in those conditions?), so if a diamond (or even its ring) mechanically survives the process, it's probably going to still last a bit longer than the rock that's clearly still present and solid in the comic.
- But it probably needs the attention of a good jeweler/repairer, at the very least.82.132.238.116 13:11, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
Given the vast forces at play here, standing on the section that's being drawn out seems... particularly inadvisable. 82.13.184.33 10:59, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
There's a wedding ring in this cOmment. All comments above are one tectonic plate. and all the ones below are in another. 45.178.0.43 12:09, 12 March 2026 (UTC) Add comment
