The next supercontinent

• Autores: Stephen Battersby
• Localización: New scientist, ISSN 0262-4079, Nº. 3147, 2017, págs. 34-37
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Battersby asks on what will be the formation of the new mega land mass called Aurica, looks like. That's what João Duarte calls it, who is a geoscientist at the University of Lisbon, Portugal, that has own distinct vision of how Earth may look 250 million years from now. He joins a band of fortune tellers gazing into the distant future, all with different ideas about how and where the next supercontinent will form, and what cataclysms might strike along the way. For more than 20 years scientists have recognised that Pangaea was just the latest in a series of supercontinents, says Brendan Murphy at St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Canada. Which implies that there will be another one in the future and it is unclear how that vast land mass will form. Moreover, three kinds of cataclysmic event can change the course of this smooth voyage of the continents include a subduction zone can swallow a spreading ocean ridge, as is happening today off North America's west coast, where the Juan de Fuca ridge is slowly being consumed. Or a pair of unsinkable continents can collide and how to start new subduction zones.