A new form of the world

2011/01/01 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Geologia

Africa slowly moves to the north. It does not exceed 3 centimeters per year, but does not remain. At some point it will collide with Europe. The distance between Tunisia and Naples will be only a few kilometers if the movement of Africa does not change. Some experts say that the collision between these two continents will provoke the dryness of the Mediterranean and the creation of a mountain similar to the Himalayas in southern Europe. Perhaps it is so, or perhaps not.

America moves to the west, departs from Europe and approaches Asia. Australia is also moving north, towards Asia, and is rotating as it moves.

In view of all these movements, it seems that all continents will be united in an immense land zone, with the exception of Antarctica itself. According to some experts, that will be the future aspect of the Earth map, although it is impossible to know when and how this situation will arrive.

The current evolution of the continents allows to complete the map of the future. However, experts do not know exactly what it will be, it is a mere speculation. In the long term, at least it is, because the prediction of the continental movement is equal to meteorological prediction, that is, the farther you look at time, the more difficult is prediction. Many factors must be taken into account. It is seen with relative ease the situation that will occur in a few million years, but the time it will take to meet in a single supercontinent is much longer, hundreds of millions of years, and I know how the continental movement changes in that long period of time.

For this reason, there are several proposals on the future situation. Roy Livermore, geologist at the University of Cambridge, has made one of these proposals. It is a great job, we must take into account many factors. However, the result is speculation, only undemonstrable speculation. Livermo laughs at this idea. "The beauty of this research is that there will be no one at that time to see if our predictions are correct or not."

It must be taken into account that the next supercontinent will be created at least 200 million years, according to experts. Not only for the movement of the continents, but also for the portrait of history: the birth of the supercontinents is a cyclical event. It occurs approximately every 500 million years. He is called the Wilson cycle because Canadian geologist John Tuzo Wilson proposed it.

The geologists agree with the hypothesis that in the history of the Earth four supercontinents have been formed and dissolved. Some say this has happened twice, but not all experts agree. To look back, they study the age of stones, fossils and paleomagnetism, but, as with previous predictions, the more you look back, the more difficult it is to predict the distribution of the continents. In addition, it is not clear when the plate tectonics were launched in the history of the Earth. When the planet was young, the geology of the Earth was very different, it is clear that there was still no plate tectonics. The creation and fragmentation of the four supercontinents has encompassed the last 2,500 million years of Earth's history. The geological history of the previous 2,000 million years is too far to know.

But experts are convinced that the last supercontinent, Pangea, was born 250 million years ago. Starting from the current location of the city of Sydney, they could cross Antarctica, India, Africa, South America, North America, Europe and Asia to the territory of Singapore without having to embark at any time.

The pangea broke and its fragments moved to form the present continents. But they are already forming a new supercontinent. How?

There are two main hypotheses. Some experts say that this next supercontinent will be similar to that of Pangea. And others propose a different supercontinent. Also called: Amasia. In principle it is not the only proposal, but in general it can be described as: in the order from west to east would be Africa, Europe, Asia and North America in the north, and the "horn" of Africa (Somalia, etc. ), Antarctica, Australia and South America in the south. A long excursion through Amasia could begin today in the city of Dakar and finish in Ushuaia without crossing the sea.

However, man will not see him. The road between the new Pangea or Amasia is long. Although descendants of the human being endure, it will probably be another species. If it arrives, this neogate must overcome the violent conditions and geological phenomena of the climate until it reaches it. But that's something else.