What Happened On Earth In March 2018? - Tectonic Plates Problem

planet earth has existed for around 4.5 billion years much longer than humans have been around and it's not always looked the way it does now the earth is dynamic constantly changing and its land masses have been shifting and colliding over millions of years and have so far left us with the seven continents we see today but scientists have recently seen some alarming things and to become concerned that huge catastrophes are coming in fact there have been major volcanic eruptions huge cracks have opened up in the Earth's crust overnight before our very eyes and even the formation of a new ocean is happening right this moment throughout time the continents have been smashed together and pulled apart more than once like something exploding and imploding over time it might seem like things are calm depending on where you live but the earth is a geologically violent planet if you have any doubts about it then you need to look no further than places like Yellowstone National Park in the USA covered by beautiful forest and natural geological formations lies a massive supervolcano just waiting to wake up Yellowstone supervolcano crater is so big that you could fit Tokyo the world's largest city inside it if it erupted it would spew hot volcanic ash for miles across the USA damaging everything in its path wiping out crops and would shut down power plants there would be mass chaos unlike anything we've witnessed damages would be in the billions of dollars and it's likely the country would never survive in Hawaii we have recently witnessed the incredible destruction of an erupting volcano when Kilauea began erupting on April 30th 2018 cracks in the earth started to form before the eruption lava from a point on the volcano known as fissure 8 erupted on May 27th and lava spewed out along the coast and destroyed hundreds of homes this volcanic eruption has created a new Peninsula and the volcanic eruption could go on for years there have been massive earthquakes that have caused incredible devastation such as the March 2011 earthquake in Japan off the Pacific coast of Tohoku which was a magnet to 9.0 to 9.1 on the Richter scale it triggered tsunami waves as high as a hundred and thirty feet and flooded the Fukushima nuclear power plant causing a catastrophic disaster these things have been going on since the beginning of time but the question is will things get worse it could be very possible as nothing is set in stone when it comes to the formation of continents and the violent geological activity of the earth the planet Earth is geologically active because its internal heat keeps the outer core and the lithosphere molten which causes plate movement and volcanic activity think of these as huge slabs of rock miles thick surfing over the top of the superheated upper zone of the mantle inside the earth a solid core of iron spinning in a molten outer core causes the movement of the magma which causes the tectonic plates to move in all directions but those same tectonic plates didn't always exist either it is believed that the earth was once completely molten on the surface during a period called the late heavy bombardment era where the planet was violently pummeled by leftover planet building rocks comets and asteroids which lasted between 20 million to 200 million years there are now 12 main plates on the Earth's surface and the plate boundaries are where two plates come together there are three kinds of plate boundaries convergent boundaries were two plates collide to form mountains or a subduction zone a divergent boundary where two plates are moving in opposite directions as in the mid-ocean ridge and the transform boundary where two plates are sliding past each other such as the San Andreas Fault in California we can only get so far back because of the constantly changing landscape but one of the first super continents called nuna and Hudson land is thought to have existed approximately 2.5 to 1.5 million years ago this supercontinent consisted of proto cratons that made up the cores of the continents by the way a kraton is a stable portion of the continent crusts from regions that are more geologically active and unstable for example one of these ancient crayons is the Piedmont of the central Appalachians the bedrock of the plateau formed about 470 million years ago when a volcanic island arc collided with the North American continent and the Himalayas were created about 55 million years ago when the continental plates of India and Asia clashed the ancient noonas supercontinent began to fragment and there was widespread magmatic activity over billions of years this supercontinent broke apart there is an area around Georgetown in northern Queensland Australia that consists of rocks that originally formed part of the nuna 1.7 billion years ago geologists magic rocks from opposite sides of the globe have found that this same part of Australia was once attached to the North American continent 100 million years later this landmass collided with what is now northern Australia at the mount ISO region these colliding land masses created the supercontinent Rodinia which existed between 1.1 billion and 750 million years ago when it broke up through plate tectonics and reformed to create Pangaea and Gondwana this ancient continent is so old and it's incredibly hard to study as the earth is good at erasing much of its old geological history it is thought that Gondwana became the largest piece of continental crust of the Paleozoic era which covered 39 million square miles and merged with la Russia to form a larger supercontinent called Pangaea Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed around 300 million years ago during the late Paleozoic an early Mesozoic period but during the Triassic period some 250 million years ago earthquakes began to rock the spot where New Jersey was once nestled against Morocco and volcanoes spewed huge amounts of lava and gas the region literally began tearing itself apart parts of the continent trust that were stretched and thinned drooped and formed valleys so deep that ocean water rushed in this region continued to spread and is where the Atlantic Ocean was formed one of the oldest geological places on earth is called the Great Rift Valley in East Africa the valley is 3500 miles long and slices through the land south from Ethiopia to Mozambique it is thirty five million years old and still growing the area is said to be the cradle of humanity and sparked an explosion of life the rift began deep below what is now Ethiopia 2,000 miles below the surface crust close to the molten outer core of the earth extreme heat and pressure forced a giant bubble of molten rock to the surface where it swelled and pushed against the Earth's crust in an area 1,000 miles wide this tore the land apart and left behind a volcanic wasteland in Northeast Africa that overlaps Ethiopia Djibouti and Eritrea it is a desolate and barren wasteland called the Danakil depression the Earth's crust here has been so stretched and so mangled by the rifting process that the whole landscape has sunk there are places down five hundred feet below sea level we're cooling winds can't get to which makes the Danakil depression not only one of the oldest but it's the hottest place on the surface of the earth the earth is still evolving and the same plates that have moved around since the beginning are still in very slow motion and move 1/2 to 4 inches per year on one hand it might not seem like much but over billions of years it adds up to great distances of movement recently geo physicists have discovered something startling about tectonic plates when they are under extreme stress their movement can accelerate in speed up to 20 times on the other hand were lucky the continents didn't move more than they do now imagine movements of four inches a month it's very likely that humans would not be able to survive because the earthquakes would measure more than 15 magnet on the Richter scale there would be huge volcanic eruptions and tsunamis would be miles high and would wipe out everything it's now known that the continent of Africa will split into two pieces and the smaller continent will include present-day Somalia parts of Ethiopia and Tanzania while the bigger one will include everything else in 2005 a 37 mile crack opened in Ethiopia and continued to split open 30 feet wide in some places over a period of 10 days hot molten rock from deep inside is trickling to the surface and creating the split underground eruptions will continue until ultimately the Horn of Africa will fall away and a new ocean will form parts of the region in a far-our now below sea level and the ocean is only cut off by a 65-foot block of land in Eritrea eventually it will drift apart and the sea will flood in creating the new ocean it will pull apart and sink down deeper and deeper until eventually parts of southern Ethiopia and Somalia will drift off creating a new island and the earth will have a smaller Africa this is not the only time that cracks have opened in the surface of the Earth's crust overnight in March of 2018 another huge crack opened in Kenya's Rift Valley in some places the crack was 50 feet deep and 65 feet across at its widest some scientists say this crack has many thousands of years old and was just making its way to the surface the crack is still growing as the nubian and Somalia tectonic plates under Africa rearrange themselves and begin to split in two it's hard to say what the earth will look like in 100 million years because the massive tectonic plates seem to alter their course unexpectedly some researchers believe that all the continents will eventually all join together again in 250 million years to form yet another supercontinent but until then about 50 million years from now the Atlantic Ocean will be much larger while the Pacific Ocean will be much smaller North and South America will have moved farther west with California moving north that is if the San Andreas Fault doesn't push California into the ocean sooner than researchers claim the western part of Africa will rotate clockwise and crash into Europe causing the building of massive mountains the far eastern region of Africa will rotate eastward toward the Arabian Peninsula and Australia will move farther north into the tropics and New Zealand will move to the south of Australia of course these are just predictions because as we mentioned earlier the movement of the plates is unpredictable because a major earthquake or volcano could shift a tectonic plate in any direction one thing is certain we are living in exciting times when we can experience the earth moving beneath our feet and see oceans being born so what do you predict the earth will look like in fifty to a hundred million years what new mountain ranges will form and where will new volcanoes erupt let us know in the comments what you think we hope you enjoyed the video to make sure you know the 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Channel: Destiny

Views: 830,420

Rating: 4.580555 out of 5

Keywords: destiny, space, earth, earth tectonic plates, tectonic, tectonic plates, earth crust, geology, active planet, volcano, volcanoes, volcano eruption, science, research, universe, scientists shocked, interesting facts, scientists couldn't believe

Id: 5Mnxw6MnTt0

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 20 2019