Is it true that our continents of our planet is moving?
And is it true that someday the continents of our planet will join together?
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answers:
someg say: Yes. It will happen in 2023.
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Sharon say: continental drift has had the continents joined in the past, and will again in the future
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Lord Bacon say: Yes, the surface of the earth is constantly in motion, but incredibly slowly.
All the land USED to be a single huge land mass millions of years ago but it split up.
Gradually, some of the bits have crashed into other bits - very slowly so there is no crash as such.
Eventually, it might all bump into each other and form one big land mass again.
The biggest mountain ranges on earth were caused when bits of land pushed up against each other, squeezing the land upwards.
Movements of the earth's surface are mostly only noticed when they cause earthquakes.
The process of land moving around on the surface of the earth is called 'plate tectonics'.
The edges of land masses are called 'plate boundaries'.
Volcanoes can occur at plate boundaries.
There is more to it than that but that's he basics.
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Nancy say: Yes, it's true they're moving. They're moving very slowly. The Americas, for example, are moving farther and farther away from Europe and Africa at a rate of about one inch per year, meaning North America is moving towards Asia at about the same rate of speed. That means in about three million years, the North American continent will collide with Northern Asia as Alaska and Siberia become a contiguous landmass, making for the first time in a few hundred million years that no ocean separates the continents that presently make up the Western and Eastern hemispheres. If cars are still around, you'll be able to hop in your car and drive from New York to Paris.
From archaeological studies and finding rock formations in Brazil that exactly match rock formations in Africa (meaning we've found rocks broken in half in Brazil for which we've found its other half in Africa) and rock formations in the United States that exactly match rock formations in Europe, we know that there used to be no Atlantic Ocean at all and the Americas and the continents of Europe and Africa were flush against each other. At that time, Australia was also flush up against Southeast Asia and Antarctica was pressed up between Africa and India. All the continental land in the world was in a singular continental landmass, a supercontinent, which we call Pangaea.
From what we can tell, there have been many Pangaeas. And there will be many more. Earths surface, including not just what's above water but also what's underwater at the bottom of the ocean, may seem like it's all one piece, like the shell of an egg, but it's actually broken into seven huge pieces, which we call "tectonic plates." Going back to the egg example, imagine an egg that's still intact but been cracked so the shell's no longer all one piece but instead is seven different pieces with the cracks being where the pieces meet up. That's what the Earth's like, except, unlike the egg where the pieces of shell stay put, the seven pieces of Earth's shell constantly move. They move because Earth's inside is so hot. Like when you see water boiling in a pot and steam rising to the top pushing water from the bottom to the top with it as it does, the rock deep inside Earth gets so hot it melts and boils and rises to the surface similarly where, like boiling water will break through the edges of a lid covering the pot, it breaks through Earth's surface, pushing the land apart where it does just like that boiling water will push the lid around on the pot. That boiling rock always pushing the land apart in the same places, along those cracks, causes the tectonic plates to move and so the land, the continents on top of them, also to move in the direction of a smaller crack that's not wide enough to let as much land through and push back as hard, so the edge of the shell where the crack is over there gets pushed under the piece of shell it's up against.
Because the Earth is round, whenever anything heads away from something, it's also heading towards something else. So, that process over her billions of years, creates a continuous cycle, a cycle in which Earth's continents all come together into one mass and then split apart again and then come back together again and then split apart again, on and on and on.
The next Pangea will have the largest ocean in the world be the Atlantic and will have the Americas pressed against East Asia, Australia pressed against Antarctica and Antarctica pressed up against the Southeast Africa.
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John say: Yes, they have combined into a supercontinent a few times in the past (many millions of years ago), and because history does not magically stop at the present time, they will form another supercontinent millions of years from now, long after all remnants of humanity have disappeared into the mantle.
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