Extrapolating from current tectonic movements, the future state of the continents has been predicted. Apparently, we’ll get a new Pangaea back again in about 250 million years.
I’m thinking I may have to hang around long enough to witness that. Who’s with me?
wow. I expected naively, the Atlantic would expand, the Pacific subducted under California to reform Pangea as Asia bumps into California. Not squish Atlantic so America hits Europe.
gosh I know nothing, like John Snow.
It looks like the UK is the (ocean view) place to be to avoid major tectonic action over the next 250 million years.
Just make it to 2029.
I am! Ray Kurzweil assures me that I’ll be immortal soon, and he’s never, ever wrong!
The UK is gonna get COLD tho’. Also: sell those Mediterranean coastal properties.
Oooohhhh… so THAT’S how the animals got to Australia from the ark!
The mildly deranged penguin is trying to get in contact with Plate Regulation And Tectonic Controls (PRATS) in Atlantis, either to check on the authenticity, request a change in plans, or order more cheese — it’s not entirely clear which, she’s currently screaming at the French phone system (as one does, even when it makes a mistake and works) — but did point out there hasn’t been any price changes on the Next Oceans And Himalayas exchange (NOAH)…
I don’t have much hope that humans would still be extant at that time, but just think what that would do to politics!
I wonder what will happen to that shrunken remnant of the Indian Ocean in the center of Neo-Pangaea. It’d be nice if it survived as a larger version of the Caspian Sea, but I suspect it will instead dry out completely like the Mediterranean Basin a couple million years ago. Being stuck between two massive continent-spanning mountain ranges is not going to do wonders for its rainfall.
Sea levels should be interesting as well. They’d be lower in general because of the reformation of Panthalassa Ocean, but they might be considerably lower if plate tectonics is slowly sucking away the surface water into the mantle.
As I recall, if magma cools by a fair amount, water leaves the magma via exsolution and becomes available again.
Of course, if the magma rapidly reaches the surface, it’s immediately available as steam.
If it becomes available in the chamber and the magma’s path to the surface, the increased viscosity is somewhat countered by a blanket of steam, which lubricates the magma’s path to the surface, where it’s still released as steam.
Heh, back when I was in school, magma was considered dry, no water content possible. Then, some enterprising students measured lava water content and a professor made his own magma from rocks and added water into the mixture (which the students dutifully measuring).
It’s amazing what one can find, when one actually bothers to look, rather than assume. :)
There’s a line in one of John McPhee’s books on geology which has always resonated with me. A geologist he was with was asked what is the most significant fact regarding plate tectonics. The geologist said something to the effect that the top of Mount Everest is composed of marine limestone. Little movies like this demonstrate how that comes to be.
So, the Iberian peninsula, Morocco, West Sahara, Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia are going to be arctic or subarctic.
“I’m thinking I may have to hang around long enough to witness that. Who’s with me?”
No can do. That’s recycling day. Gotta be home.
I’m disappointed that the Atlantic doesn’t get to be Panthalassa 2. The Pacific has already had a go!
I’m curious why their model has continents reversing course and subduction zones suddenly turning into expansion rifts?
250 million years seems reasonable, but only if I can have the occasional 500,000 year nap.
Interesting how (the major part of) Antarctica is looking a bit like “Australia 2.0” before everything converges.
Oh great, this will bring in a huge influx of invasive species. Not only that, Donald Trump’s decendents will have to increase the length of his wall.
One used (probably still…haven’t checked in years) to be able to get bumper stickers at SF cons that said:
Reunite Gondwanaland
I need to take another look at the animation to see if they account for motion in the East Africa Rift Valley and San Andreas Fault system (do they run the Baja California peninsula down the Aleutian Trench?).
But, but, but with all the land on one side of the earth, it’ll be lopsided and go all wibbly-wobbly!
Look, the last time I got a politically motivated item, it was a tee shirt that said, “Free Gondwana!”. Honestly, look how far that they took it.
I think getting involved again might cause planetary dissolution, so I’ll sit this one out. ;)
Deep time really sealed the fate of faith, It is all well and good that math and instruments you measure the time of the stars but they are just lights in the sky which we can not touch. What we have learned is only a story that fits with what we see (it is said) and can be seen as such.
We can hold in our hands the fossils from a long gone sea taken from rocks far from any ocean. We have filmed the geothermal vents on the mid ocean ridges and measured the movement of the continents and seen for ourselves the truth of deep time that is all around us. Making the stories from the priests quaint echos of the magical thinking of little children.
uncle frogy
@uncle frogy, we’ve also held virgin, new rock, fresh from the fiery bosom of the earth – well, held it in a shovel until it cooled.
With that, proved volcanism is indeed a major part of geology and the source of igneous rock.
As for touching stars, personally, I say that it’s just as well. I really have to draw the line at trying to touch plasma in a strong magnetic and gravitational field.
The weather on a Pangea world would be really weird as well, one big ocean full of storms, one nearly infinite coastline, and a central plateau that is mostly desert. Tough place to live.
Wait – all of Florida remains above sea level until we (a spit of sand & seashells) penetrate Angola?
Ken Ham voice/
Will you be there?
/Ken Ham voice
The Pangaean Reunification Front- the worlds most pointless terrorist organization.
@epawtows #28, wasn’t that the incompetent group that set loose a bunch of velociraptors in the tyrannosaur preschool?
The ‘raptor’s terror was short lived, however the students then had to go on a minor weight loss program.
What makes the Americas change direction in +125?
Caine #8, I don’t think we’ll have to wait that long for “interesting” (in the Chinese sense*) politics. The climate & water wars probably aren’t far off.
* There’s a Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
epawtows @ # 28 – Not when compared to the Reunification Front for Pangaea, you, you, splitter!
250 million years eh? A mere snip. The key is to keep yourself occupied, don’t go Wowbagger.
On the plus side, you’ll be able to get good Indian food in Aussieland ‘soon’…..
I live in Perth Australia. Australia is going to collide with China. I’m going to Beijing in October. Should I wait till I’m able to drive there?
bachfiend
Bring mountain climbing gear, the WAlpine Way will have developed some wrinkles.
Sorry PZ, I just spent the weekend in Boston, and the human race only has about a hundred years before the climate gets us.
@Pierce R. Butler,
The anti-Pangaea Liberation Front were the real splitters.
Re: unclefroggy @ #23….
Reent news article about Australia redoing all their geographic locations because they’ve moved 5 feet in the last 22 years since it was done. Two takeaways to me…first; the place is moving rather fast, as plate motions go, and 2; it is now so common to have sufficiently precise geolocation devices that 5 feet actually matters.
I would also point out that the time involved in the animation–250 million years–is very close to that since the Permian Terminal Event aka “The Great Dying”.
Making Pangaea great again is gonna be disastrous. Remember the Late Permian extinction event? Caused by all the continents cosying up together…
To think of it, “Making America great again” would also be disastrous…
@petrander, that second part is just silly talk.
Making America great by expanding Canada southward would not be disastrous. Making more of America polite and sane can never be considered a disaster. ;)
No, there isn’t.
@25: “The weather on a Pangea world would be really weird as well, one big ocean full of storms, one nearly infinite coastline, and a central plateau that is mostly desert. Tough place to live.”
Life will have plenty of time to work on that problem. (Also, I don’t think that oceanic storms have a huge effect down near the vents, in case we have to rely on the Life 2.0 development team. But maybe there are deep storms?)
Has no-one noticed the one major location that remains separate from the new SuperContinent? Although it had to happen sometime.
It looks like New Zealand is the place to be…
Today I read where researchers have found a 340-million-year-old ocean crust that could date back to Pangaea.