Most of us now accept the idea that all the continents of the earth were once part of a single enormous terrestrial mass. This was not the case at the beginning of nineteen years, when the geologist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) first published his theory not only of the Supercontinent pangea, but also of the phenomenon of continental drift This made him separate in the series of forms that we all know about the cards of the class world. But as explained with humor in The video of the men's map aboveWegener did not live to see these ideas convince the world. It was only after his death that other scientists determined how geological barattage below the surface of the planet caused the separation of continents in the first place.
With this information in place, Pangea no longer seemed to be the concept of Crackpot he had when Wegener initially offered it. The determination is less widely appreciated than, as men say, “pangea, far from being the original supercontine, was in fact the eleventh to have formed in the history of the earth”.
It seems that continents separate cyclically and meet again, without any sign of the process stopping. When, then, are we going to find ourselves on a supercontinent? Perhaps in about 250 million years, according to the “NovopangeaModel explained in the video, which closes the Pacific Ocean while Australia is displayed in East Asia and North America while the Antarctic drifts to the North.
Other models also exist, especially AURICA“Where Eurasia is divided into two, and the oceans of the Pacific and the Atlantic are getting closer”; Pangea Ultima“Where Great Britain is getting closer to America”; And Cluster“Where all the continents gather around the North Pole, with the exception of Antarctica” (whose drift models give the impression that “the most lazy continent”). On this type of time scale, small changes in basic hypotheses can lead to very different supercontinents indeed, and not that one of us is there to see how the next pangea really takes shape. Nevertheless, at this time when we can barely spend a week without meeting predictions of the imminent extinction of humanity, it is refreshing to find a subject which even allows us to consider looking at a quarter of a million years later.
Related content:
A billion years of tectonic plaque in 40 seconds: a rapid overview of how our world has taken shape
Map showing where the countries of today would be on pangea
Pangea to our day in the future: look at animations showing 500 million years of continental drift
Paper animation tells how a meteorologist theorized Pangea & Continental Drift (1910)
A website that allows you to find your personal address on pangea
Based in Seoul, Colin MArshall Written and broadcastTS on cities, language and culture. His projects include the substack newsletter Books on cities And the book The stateless city: a walk through Los Angeles from the 21st century. Follow it on the social network formerly known as Twitter in @ColinmArshall.
