this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2025
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xkcd
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If that picture is to scale, those bolts are ~5km thick. Put enough of them and it should hold.
That said, the crust probably starts crumbling somewhere else creating new mountains or islands
After a certain point, the material around the bolt is more brittle than the bolt itself.
Often is, but you can alleviate this with large washers like in the picture, and also by adding more bolts closer to eachothers
Would you say tectonic plates are more like wood or metal? There are different standards for both.
I'd think they're more like cookies, but idk I'm not really a geologist 😅