In the next 300 million years, all continents on Earth will collide together to form a new supercontinent called Amacia, in which the Pacific Ocean will close.
At least, this is the conclusion of a new study published last week by researchers at Curtin University in the National Science Review that portrays the mid-term geological future of the planet. "In the past 2 billion years, continents on Earth have collided every 600 million years, forming a supercontinent known as the supercontinent cycle," Hong Chuan, the first author of the study, said in a press release. "This means that the current continents will gather together again in hundreds of millions of years."
To establish a time frame, the researchers used 4D geodynamic modeling of the Earth's tectonic plates, determined to find out why previous supercontinents formed in completely different ways.
In these ways, introversion is one of the two main modes, and introversion occurs when the continent is enclosed on the inland sea formed when the previous supercontinent splits. The opposite is extroversion, that is, the continent is closed outside and was previously a super ocean. If this rock history can be figured out, researchers can better predict the next supercontinent collection.
Researchers found that the strength of the ocean lithosphere determines the form of the combination and concluded that extraversion will be the cause of the next supercontinent. "The resulting new supercontinent has been named Amacia because some believe that when the Americas collide with Asia, the Pacific Ocean will be closed (as opposed to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans). "Australia is also expected to play a role in this important Earth event, first colliding with Asia and then connecting America and Asia after the Pacific shutdown."
If their conclusions hold, these amazing discoveries will provide us with a glimpse into the future of the planet. But this is still just one of many hypotheses about continental transfer, including the Pan-Continental Proxima model, which believes that the aforementioned Atlantic and Indian Oceans will be closed.
