Whenever
there is a big earthquake we are reminded that the continents are on the move
and at a surprisingly fast rate. What we see now is the result of the break up
of Pangea, but that is not where it all started. First there was Nuna which
morphed into Rodinia prior to Pangea.
As
Pangea broke up, our rafts drifted apart to where we work, play and fight today.
The big question is where are we going now? One possibility is that the big
break in Pangea could heal. This model is known as introversion and would mean
Europe and Africa snuggling up to the Americas as the Atlantic trench closed
up.
The
more popular model is for the drift to keep going and for the Pacific to get
squeezed out into the Indian and Atlantic as America joins up with China with
Amasia as the new supercontinent. This model process is known as extroversion. (I guess Walmart and their colleagues would be able to reduce prices due to
lower transport costs.)
In
a letter to Nature this week, Mitchell, Kilian and Evans from Yale U have been
busy measuring magnetism in old rocks in order to plot out the correct old
routes of our land rafts (1). This work brings them to a new model that they
call orthoversion as our route is off at a right angle to the previous ones. The
Canadians will end up living in close proximity to the Russians.
In
the end it seems we’ll all be living around the North Pole. Any oil left up
there will end up very deep. The Australians and New Zealander will be heading
north too and switching the Southern Cross for the Great Bear.
