Friday video: Earth in flux
On a human time scale, few things are more permanent and immobile than the Earth’s surface. Visible signs of change are relatively rare and noteworthy: hillsides roaring down onto highways, the neat lines of fences or roads disrupted by earthquakes, the tops of volcanoes blowing off and new volcanoes sprouting from underwater. However, we know that these are not really lapses in an underlying stability, except if you think solely in terms of human time scales. When you consider a longer time scale, the face of the planet transforms itself restlessly. This video simulation condenses 650 million years of plate motion (from 400 million years ago to 250 million years in the future) into 1 minute and 20 seconds. I like the serene majesty of the music (from Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite) accompanying the motion of the continents.
huh, i had no idea pangea was projected to be reunited one day! can’t help wondering whether homo sapiens or a descendent will still be around then.