Bungie Weekly Update - 10/18/2013 (Destiny)

by roland , Monday, October 21, 2013, 14:22 (4054 days ago) @ kidtsunami

At the point that you're changing atmosphere/gravity, plate tectonics seems par for the course. Changing gravity would involve drastically changing the mass let alone move it around a bit.

I beg to differ....

Traveler's To-Do List

#1 Change planet's atmosphere
Method: Acquire a bunch of gas, deposit onto planet

#2: Change planet's gravity
Method: Acquire a bunch of super dense materials, bury them all over the place

#3: Add tectonic plates
Method: Read Warlock School textbook on Planetary Geology, "A tectonic plate isn't just a feature, it implies a certain history... specifically that a planet has/had a mobile, fragmented lithosphere and a viscous asthenosphere, which are caused by some combination of residual heat of accretion, radioactive elements, and that the resulting subduction of crustal rocks causing them to melt and re-solidify through volcanic/plutonic processes."

Long story short, you need a variety of things to get "plates" and on Earth it most likely wouldn't even be possible to melt crustal rocks without very large bodies of water to lower the melting point of the rocks. The moon isn't massive enough to have much residual heat of accretion or radioactive elements, and there is no evidence there were ever large bodies of water on the moon.

So... if you want to "add" plate tectonics you basically are saying that the moon isn't even the moon anymore, it's something else entirely.