Can't we hold the Tectonic Plates in a technical way??

Question

when tectonic plates slide over each others, they may collide as well.. a lot of energy is created thus, which may result in the Earthquakes.

Has this "sliding" of plates of any significance?

Can't we hold the Tectonic Plates in a technical way??

Answer 1

Yes, the sliding of plates has ALOT of significance. Plate sliding results in strike-slip faulting (most of the faults in California and Japan), normal faulting (prevalent in areas like Nevada, Utah, and Idaho), and the mother of them all: subduction zone faulting (cause of the 2004 great Sumatra EQ and resulting tsunami).

There is no way that we could prevent plate tectonics from occurring. The energy released by the 2004 Sumatra EQ was roughly the same as if you detonated about 800 thermonuclear bombs at the exact same time.....and this was just one quake! If humans did somehow manage to prevent plate tectonics from occurring in one region of the world (...and they never possibly could because the forces that we're talking about here are WAY bigger than humans could control), all of the tectonic stresses would just get transferred somewhere else and cause massive earthquakes to occur in areas not accustomed to having them.

However, instead of being villified, plate tectonics should be respected and recognized as one of the greatest contributors to the physical world as we know it.

Answer 2

The tectonic plates are, unfortunately, way too large to be able to impact them in any way.  Physics tell us that we would 1) need something larger then them or 2) find a place where we could counter the size with leverage, despite them, actually, "floating."  The tectonic plates are, at times, larger then all of North America.  That would take an awfully large dump truck.  Roughly the size of Asia...

Answer 3

Why would you want to?  It is part of the geologic process and how we get mountains, valleys, etc.  I admire your concern for people in earthquakes but human activity is insignificant to the tectonic driving force of the Earth.   Plate tectonics is not just the earthquakes but volcanoes and associated events as well.  Get rid of plate tectonics and no Hawaii, no yellowstone,  etc...    People just need to be smarter and not build on active fault lines.