Alright class, listen up!
How many continents do you know there are in the world?
Seven, you say?
Well, what if I told you that in the future, we might just be a couple continents short?
Let’s see what our planet has in store for us!
I’ll start from the very beginning.
Well that would be the Big Bang.
Hmm.
How about 1755?
Yeah.
That year there was a huge earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal that had catastrophic consequences.
The city was almost demolished by the shaking and pounding, which ended in a massive tsunami
that finished the job.
After that, everything went quiet, and for more than 200 years no more natural disasters
happened.
But then, in 1969, another earthquake shook the west of Portugal — this one milder,
and the country was better prepared for the shaking, but it was still considered very
powerful.
It was then that marine geologist João Duarte started looking at the tectonic plates beneath
Portugal.
He was concerned with those earthquakes for a single reason: they were not normal.
But before we go into detail here, we need to understand what a “normal” earthquake
is, exactly.
You see, quakes happen when two tectonic plates meet, and one of them is forced underneath
the other because of gravity and pressure.
The area where this occurs is called the subduction zone, and it’s basically a fracture — or
a fault — in the Earth’s rocky fundament.
Now can you imagine a tectonic plate?
(Remember those things in school too?
You know, the big pieces that make up the puzzle that is our planet!)
Let’s take one of the biggest of them to understand the sheer size of those things.
Take a world map and find North America on it.
It’s part of the North American Plate, but not all of it — far from it, in fact.
The plate beneath the continent of North America spreads to the northeast and covers the whole
of Greenland and its coastal waters.
Huge?
Sure is.
But that’s not all.
It also stretches to the far north, goes over the Arctic and down the other side of the
world to take in parts of Eastern Russia and Japan.
Now that is more than huge — it’s simply ginormous.
And what’s more, it’s never really in one place; the plates are constantly on the
move, floating on the planet, if you will.
So, now that you realize the scale, picture this: a plate the size of the North American
one bumps into another equally big one, say the Pacific Plate and one of those plates
goes under the other along the West Coast along the famous San Andreas Fault.
Since both plates are right beneath our feet, we can’t help but feel their collision.
That’s how earthquakes form, and not only them — volcanic eruptions are also the result
of tectonic movement, thus the infamous Pacific Ring of Fire -- as well as mountain formations
and ocean trenches.
So what’s so unusual about an earthquake in Portugal, then?
The thing is, this country is far from any tectonic fault, and the plate it sits on is
flat.
The chance of a quake there should be close to zero, and yet it happened twice in just
about two centuries — that’s like a few seconds on a geological scale!
According to what we know, it’s a complete puzzle.
At least it was until João Duarte, who I mentioned earlier, found the answer.
He and his team have been monitoring the area under Portugal for over 10 years using state-of-the-art
technology to solve this earth-shaking riddle.
And finally, in May 2019, Duarte published the first results of his research…and it
looked like bad news…
Duarte’s team found that the plate they were looking at has been undergoing the process
of serpentinization.
Nope, that has nothing to do with snakes — it’s a natural process when the rock in the seabed
absorbs water.
It literally snakes inside the cracks and fissures in the tectonic plate, and the pressure
from it makes the rock weaker.
When it reaches a certain level, though, the seabed basically becomes unhinged.
If the cracks inside the plate are big enough, water finds a way into each and every one
of them, making the layers of the rock peel away from each other.
Let me give you an example: say, you’re driving on a bright sunny day.
You just got brand new tires so they’ve got a good grip on the road.
But then, all of a sudden, it starts raining, and in a blink of an eye, it’s already pouring.
The road is quickly covered in a thin layer of water, and your tires start losing their
grip.
If you’re not careful, you can easily fly off the road because the thin film of water
between your tires and the road is actually enough to lift your vehicle and send it hydroplaning!
The same thing happens when water gets between the layers of a tectonic plate.
They have different density, so they’re naturally divided already.
Water, in its turn, separates them even further, making the top layer slide off the bottom
one.
Given the size of the Eurasian plate, which Portugal is part of, such movement can be
compared with two tectonic plates going one under the other.
And, like I said a bit earlier, when this happens, earthquakes are bound to occur.
So, mystery solved, right?
But what about the peeling off of a tectonic plate — what will happen to the planet when
the top layer finally slides away?
Well, Duarte has his own hypothesis about that too, and he was really excited to share
it in several interviews.
You see, when tectonic masses move around, they eventually bump into each other.
For now, there’s a set number of those plates, and they’re moving at a verrrry slow rate.
But if a new one happens to appear in the future, it’ll fill in the space between
the existing plates and create even more bumps with them.
It’s not hard to guess that it’ll cause a lot more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions,
but that’s not even the worst of it.
Though maybe “worst” is not the best word here — it’s better to say “most exciting.”
The brand new tectonic plate will go underneath the Atlantic Ocean and collide with several
other plates at once.
It’ll be pushed under some of them and above others, but the result will be all the same:
more and more subduction zones will start appearing, causing natural disasters… and
the eventual disappearance of the Atlantic Ocean itself.
Wait, what?!
Okay, here it goes: imagine you’re in a bathtub made of rock.
The bottom of it is solid enough, and the water is kept at the level you want.
You’re nice and cozy, alright (well, comfortable enough for someone sitting on a bunch of rocks!).
But then something moves beneath you, and you feel one of the stones in the rocky bottom
shift from its place.
And a big stone it is!
It turns and pushes several other stones to different sides, and then you see cracks appearing
between them.
Naturally, water from your nice warm tub starts seeping right into the cracks, leaving you
in a dry rocky bed after some time.
Aww, no more bath time fun…
You get the point, right?
If some newcomer shifts all the rest of the tectonic plates, it will eventually lead to
water seeping away from the Atlantic Ocean.
But the process here is a bit more complicated: the missing water will find its way to some
other place on Earth — Duarte believes it will be the Pacific.
And while the movement of the plates continues — and it will go on until there’s space
for that — the landscape of our planet will continue reshaping.
So one day, when the new plate finally finds a comfortable place for itself, we’ll have
a new supercontinent: Aurica!
Hmm, I like “Eurmerica” better, but, hey, they didn’t ask me…
In fact, you might know already that our planet hasn’t always been separated into seven
continents.
Once upon a time, it was all one huge supercontinent called Pangea.
And it was broken up exactly because of the same geological process: tectonic movement.
The plates just shifted around, moved away from each other, and new continents formed
from Pangea, which was simply torn apart.
But the movement didn’t stop, so it’s pretty logical to assume that we might get
to live on a single continent in the future!
On top of that, there are several more theories about how exactly our planet will come to
this supercontinent thing.
The most likely one for now is called Novopangea.
Today, scientists believe that the Atlantic Ocean is opening, while the Pacific, on the
contrary, is closing.
If this tendency persists, then both American continents will go join the club with Africa
and Eurasia.
As a result, a huge landmass will form, surrounded from all sides by a new, even more humungous
ocean.
Don’t worry, though: this all might sound really cool, but geological processes take
a lot of time.
And by a lot, I mean millions of years.
Tectonic movement is a slow thing, and even if the researchers are correct, you and I
won’t get to see it with our own eyes.
Bummer, and here I was hoping I wouldn’t have to make another long uncomfortable trans-Atlantic
flight ever again!
Oh well.
So, how about you?
Would you like to see what our planet will become in a few million years?
Let me know down in the comments!
If you learned something new today, then give this video a like and share it with a friend.
But – hey! – don’t go moving your continents just yet!
(Hey, if you went too far, would you then be “incontinent”?)
I don’t have a clue about that, but I do know that we have over 2,000 cool videos for
you to check out.
All you have to do is pick the left or right video, click on it, and enjoy!
Stay on the Bright Side of life!