Earth 'shudder', signaling the birth of a supercontinent?

The continents of the earth have many times carved in - out. And yet another import to create the hypothetical supercontinent Pangea Proxima seems to be starting.

In early 2019, a research team from Curtin University (Perth - Australia) redrawn the violent history of continents thanks to the evidence they have of Mirovoi - a swallowed super ocean.

The study recorded the oldest part of Earth called Nuna , a single supercontinent surrounded by a single super ocean that spans the rest of the planet, lasting 1.6-1.4 billion years. before. But the Earth suddenly shakes: there seems to be a monster hiding under the super ocean, swallowing it so hard that the land is pulled towards being swallowed, tearing Nuna into continents. To keep the balance, the monster did not forget to release several small oceans, interspersed with Nuna.

Image of Earth 240 million years ago with the supercontinent Pangea reigning - (photo: Ancient Earth Globe).

The "monster" of the Earth is actually a plate tectonic activity called "sinking" . Subduction occurs at the convergence boundary of the tectonic plates in the Earth's outer crust, causing one array to move below the other, almost being swallowed into the earth's mantle. Conversely, somewhere on Earth, there will be other tectonic plates from the depths rising up.

900 million years ago, the sinking monster rose again, swallowing small oceans intermingled continents, pulling the land together into a new supercontinent named Rodinia surrounded by the super ocean Mirovoi. 320 million years ago, the monster appeared again in the middle of the super ocean, but this time it was so strong that it not only tore Rodinia but also pulled the torn parts in the opposite direction of the earth, forming a new supercontinent. Pangea. 200 million years ago, submerged recurrent between super oceans, born 6 continents today.

Incidentally, right after the aforementioned study, two other studies published in May and June 2019 respectively said that the Earth . began to sink again.

The first work, led by the Dom Luiz Research Institute at the University of Lisbon (Portugal), has uncovered a peeling Earth crust off the country's coast. A tectonic plate is changing, pulling the land mass in Europe closer to Canada.

Another study from the Center for Earth's Evolution and Dynamics of University of Oslo (Norway) found that the Earth's deep-water cycle is clearly imbalanced: our planet is continually "eating away". some water every year.

While the only thing that was eaten was water, the scientists linked it to the greatest deepwater cycle imbalance that occurred 200 million years ago: when the Pangea supercontinent was torn apart by subduction. At that time, the Earth has released the oceans it has swallowed, but also less or less cropping caused global water level dropped to 130 meters.

The aforementioned groups of scientists believe that these events may be evidence that the earth "shudders" again , preparing to unite the legendary Pangea Proxima . But you should not be too worried about it causing something in your life. Because supercontinent formation is extremely slow . If Pangea Proxima was indeed born, it would take at least 50 million years to form, too long for the history of any species that ever existed on Earth.