The possibility that Earth could have a supercontinent that would occupy two-thirds of the planet's surface in a couple of hundred million years' time is just one of the geological projects being investigated by an international team of academics.
The five-year project is sponsored by UNESCO and the International Union for Geological Sciences (IUGS) and will investigate the Earth's evolutionary 'supercycles' involving both tectonic plates and its deep mantle.
Curtin University Institute of Geoscience Research (TIGeR) ( http://geodynamics.curtin.edu.au ) geologist Professor Zheng-Xiang Li will work with project co-leaders Yale University Professor David Evans, University of Colorado Professor Shijie Zhong and University of Saskatchewan Professor Bruce Eglington.
"The project will assemble a multidisciplinary team of hundreds of scientists and research students from around the world to establish new concepts, tools, maps and global databases to assist the modeling of global changes and the discovery of new Earth resources," Prof Li says.
Twenty years ago Prof Li was involved in uncovering the evolutionary history of Rodinia which is the precursor to the well-known supercontinent Pangea.
"Global GPS measurements of plate motions tell us that the Atlantic Ocean has been [and still is] widening by a few centimetres a year, whereas the Pacific Ocean is becoming narrower at a similar rate," Prof Li says.
"If such a trend continues, within the next one or two hundred million years, the Pacific Ocean would close up to bring the Americas to collision with the Eurasian continent while the Australian continent is set to join this future supercontinent 'Amasia', by moving around seven centimetres per year toward Asia."
http://phys.org/news/2015-04-australia-path-supercontinent-amasia.html
(Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Thursday April 30 2015, @04:10PM
It's a interesting thought, I wonder how this affects the super-accurate GPS Measurements used for surveying?
A couple of centimeters a year isn't that much when compared to the size of the ocean, but it's a LOT when you're surveying property lines.
Without some sort of correction factor, highly accurate GPS coordinates surveyed today will be out almost a meter within one persons lifetime, this could have serious consequences for property line encroachments and right-of-way calculations.
Anyone in the surveying business know how they compensate for this?