Tectonic activity bends rocks all the time, even hard ones like granite. That takes a ton of heat, pressure and time. It also makes sense that in the right conditions, sheets of rock simply don’t have the room to shatter so they must bend.

Have we been able to do the same in a lab and would it have any commercial use? Bending a random bit of hard rock would be an interesting novelty, for sure.

    • @[email protected]OP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      15
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Rocks bend and it’s mind boggling to see the scale that it can happen at.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fold_(geology)

      In these cases the rock may be hot, but it’s not molten. I was even just reading that many rocks will not have any internal stresses from being bent because of the forces and the time that is involved.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      38 months ago

      Nope. The mantle is mostly solid. It’s just so huge and, under intense pressure and heat, bendy, that it still facilitates moving continents and ocean plates.