Supercontinent

Pangaea Ultima | Future supercontinent | Christopher Scotese | Mind Blowing Theories

• Report rights infringement
• published: 24 Apr 2016
• views: 607

Pangaea Ultima is a possible future supercontinent configuration also called Pangaea Proxima, Neopangaea, and Pangaea II. Pangaea Ultima could occur within the next 250 million years. This potential configuration, hypothesized by Christopher Scotese, The surface of the Earth is broken into large pieces that are slowly shifting -- a gradual process called "plate tectonics." Using geological clues to puzzle out past migrations of the continents, Dr. Christopher Scotese, a geologist at the University of Texas at Arlington, has made an educated "guesstimate" of how the continents are going to move hundreds of millions of years into the future. According to the hypothesis"Pangea Ultima" will form as a result of the subduction of the ocean floor of the North and South Atlantic beneath eastern North America and South America. This supercontinent will have a small ocean basin trapped at its center , the original concept being based on previous calculations on the tectonic plates movements, as well as a natural inability to project geologic change past 50 million years in the future, it is unlikely for Pangaea Ultima, as we know it, to form. "It's all pretty much fantasy to start with", Scotese has said. "But it's a fun exercise to think about what might happen. And you can only do it if you have a really clear idea of why things happen in the first place." As Yogi Berra might say, it looks like "deja vu all over again" "It's about as fast as your fingernails grow. Maybe a little bit slower," Scotese said. Still, over millions of years that minute movement will drive the continents apart. Around 50 million years from now, North America is predicted to shift slightly west and Eurasia would shift to the east, and possibly even to the south, bringing Great Britain closer to the North Pole and Siberia southward towards warm, subtropical latitudes. Africa is predicted to collide with Europe and Arabia, closing the Mediterranean Sea. A long mountain range would then extend from Iberia, across Southern Europe the Mediterranean Mountain Range, through the Mideast and into Asia. Some are even predicted to have peaks higher than Mt. Everest. That collision has pushed up the Alps and the Pyrenees mountains, and is responsible for earthquakes that occasionally strike Greece and Turkey, Similarly, Australia is predicted to beach itself on the doorstep of Southeast Asia and a new subduction zone is predicted to encircle Australia and extend westward across the Central Indian Ocean. . Australia rotates and collides against Borneo and south China sort of like India collided 50 million years ago and gets added to Asia. Australia is also likely to merge with the Eurasian continent. And About 150 million years from now, the Atlantic Ocean is predicted to stop widening and begin to shrink because some of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge will have been subducted. In this scenario, amid-ocean ridge between South America and Africa will probably be subducted first; the Atlantic Ocean is predicted to have narrowed as a result of subduction beneath the Americas. The Indian Ocean is also predicted to be smaller due to northward subduction of oceanic crust into the Central Indian trench. North and South America may be pushed back southeast, and southern Africa would almost hit the equator and have reached the Northern Hemisphere. Australia may join back to Antarctica, meeting the South Pole. At 250 million years in the future, the Atlantic and Indian oceans are predicted to have closed. North America is predicted to have already collided with Africa, but be in a more southerly position than where it drifted. Antarctica would then once again be at the South Pole and the Pacific will have grown wider, encircling half the Earth. Tens of millions of years later, the Americas would come smashing into the merged Euro-African continent, pushing up a new ridge of Himalayan-like mountains along the boundary. At that point, most of the world's landmass would be joined into a super-continent called "Pangea Ultima." The collision might also trap an inland ocean, Scotese said. As the sun continues to grow hotter over the next 1 billion years due to increased luminosity, so will the Earth, and by 250 million years forward, this will become frightfully apparent. In a similar fashion to Pangaea 250 million years ago, massive deserts will begin to form, as moister from the sea will be unable to reach the inlands of the supercontinent, And with an increase in volcanic activity over the next 100 million years (again, speculation), the greenhouse effect will continue to see the planet's average air temperature rise. According to some estimates, the boiling temperatures of Pangaea Ultima's deserts range from, on average, 40ºC to as high as 70ºC Image courtesy and research information from the thesis of Dr. Christopher Scotese.