Our planet is continuously in motion. Continents are floating on tectonic plates at different speeds from 1 to even over 10cm a year. Recently Australia had to shift its geographic coordinates by*1.5m (4.9ft) as the global GPS coordinates didn’t match the real world (Australia shifts 7cm a year north-east).
The idea that continents drift*dates back to the beginning of XX-th century when German geophysicist Alfred Wegener noticed huge similarities between fossils found on various continents which suggested that the land masses might have been connected. Additionally, he could clearly see*that shapes of Africa and South America were*fitting together really well.
At that time there was no evidence to support*Wegener’s continental drift*theory and few people liked it. It was only in 1950s and 60s when the geoscientific community accepted plate-tectonic theory after discovering underwater mountain ranges and validating seafloor spreading phenomena.
The ocean floor map (Credit: The Protected Art Archive/Alamy)Studying the contemporary movement of the land masses, scientists concluded that approximately 175 million years ago a single supercontinent (named Pangea) begun to break apart and the process continues until today.
Now researchers try to model how the continents will look like in the future. There are a few theories but most of them have similar conclusions: all continents will collide again and form another supercontinent. Take a look at these visualizations:
It’s also interesting to see how Earth’s continents looked like millions*of years ago:
The post How Earth will look like 250 million years from now appeared first on Geoawesomeness.
The idea that continents drift*dates back to the beginning of XX-th century when German geophysicist Alfred Wegener noticed huge similarities between fossils found on various continents which suggested that the land masses might have been connected. Additionally, he could clearly see*that shapes of Africa and South America were*fitting together really well.
At that time there was no evidence to support*Wegener’s continental drift*theory and few people liked it. It was only in 1950s and 60s when the geoscientific community accepted plate-tectonic theory after discovering underwater mountain ranges and validating seafloor spreading phenomena.
The ocean floor map (Credit: The Protected Art Archive/Alamy)Studying the contemporary movement of the land masses, scientists concluded that approximately 175 million years ago a single supercontinent (named Pangea) begun to break apart and the process continues until today.Now researchers try to model how the continents will look like in the future. There are a few theories but most of them have similar conclusions: all continents will collide again and form another supercontinent. Take a look at these visualizations:
It’s also interesting to see how Earth’s continents looked like millions*of years ago:
The post How Earth will look like 250 million years from now appeared first on Geoawesomeness.