250 million years ago there was only one continent, Pangea it has been called, there might once again be only one. But as long as the 'engine' at the earth's core is still running, that too will evenutally break up.
Pacific plate ping.
We are fast approaching a tipping point -— in less than ten years -— where we won’t be able to reverse this catastophic trend.
Or not...
Great news — I’m going to call and cancel my earthquake insurance.
Man. What kind of world will this be for my great x 642,150,423 grandchildren?
It’ll cease for sure when Sol goes nova....
Gonna get worse than that before it’s done. If the plate tectonics stop it will mean that the earth’s core will be running out of fuel and the magnetosphere will fade. then the atmosphere will begin to be stripped away and radiation will give us all real bad sunburns.
In other news the Earth will eventually be swallowed up by the Sun.
The volcanic activity caused by the subduction zones, for example the Cascade mountains, is a key step in the carbon cycle. If this stops then Earth might become lifeless. Mars does not have plate tectonics and from what I read the lack of a carbon cycle might of killed life off that planet.
Sweet! I can take the train to London.
And plate tectonics, in turn, is driven by heat caused by radioactive decay taking place deep in the Earth - primarily by a radioactive isotope of potassium.
At some point in the far distant future, the radioactive isotope will be depleted to the point that the molten mantle will cool enough to congeal, and tectonics will slow down and stop. But we might not be around to see that happen.
This would not be the first time that radioactive elements on the Earth have decayed to the point of altering their activity. Millions of years ago, uranium had a higher concentration of U-235 relative to U-238 - in other words, it was “enriched” enough that in a very places we have found excessively depleted uranium deposits, which indicate that at some time in the past, ordinary water (instead of heavy water, or deteurium oxide) was able to act as a moderator and slow fast neutrons down to where they could sustain a low-level chain reaction in a rich uranium ore bed. Look up the Oklo reactor in Gabon for more info.
Yeah, when continents merge and form a supercontinent, they can't break apart.
Whoops, the last one did just that. Is this dude telling us that something is going to change so dramatically in the next 350 million years that a process that has run for 4.5 billion years will halt?
ate tectonics may have already taken a global hiatus 900 million years ago, when several continents collided to form the supercontinent Rodinia. The team says various geological indicators suggest that during Rodinia's 140-million-year existence, the world's plates were at a standstill.
140 million years ain't diddly in geological terms.
Rep. Clyburn just issued a statement that said that plate tectonics disproportionately affect the minority community.
250 million years ago there was only one continent, Pangea it has been called, there might once again be only one. But as long as the 'engine' at the earth's core is still running, that too will evenutally break up.
(350 million-year old Sandra Bullock) - "We've got to somehow slow down these continents from crashing."
(350 million-year old Keanu Reeves) - "WHOOAAA!"
Only after there's been 1.4 billion quarterly fundraisers.
...sorry...couldn't resist.
I was wondering when Al Gore would get around to tackling that pesky continnetial drift problem.
In less than half the time it takes for that to happen, Earth will be irrelevant to the human race. If there still is a human race. We might well evolve to something considerably different in a tenth of that time.
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