Continue reading »]]> The cracks in the ground are caused by stresses within a single tectonic plate. But when two tectonic plates meet they cause a different kind of crack. They create a huge splits in the ground called faults. And some faults can be very bad news indeed.

At 12:51 on 22nd of February this year. The cathedral spire in Christchurch, New Zealand falls as an earthquake leaves 182 dead. Less than a month later on 11th of March an even bigger earthquake struck Japan. It produced a tsunami with waves of up to 98 feet high, killing perhaps 25,000 people. And on the other side of the pacific just a year earlier, 562 people died in powerful quake in Chile. The Pacific Rim is an area of intense earthquake activity. In fact, over the last 50 years there have been dozens of major earthquakes along the coast of North and South America.

The fact is tectonic plates do move all the time. And the evidence is in a stadium just across the bay from San Francisco. The Golden Bears are the American football team of the University of California, Berkeley. Their home ground the Memorial Stadium is one of the oldest and most iconic football grounds in the US. But the way things are going, the stadium may not be here for much longer. Stands are crumbling, Walls are fracturing. Something strange is going on there. Geologist Roland Burgmann says that its all down to a fault called the Hayward Fault, which runs right underneath the city of Berkely. The fault goes straight through the middle of the stadium. It is literally splitting in the middle. The western half of the stadium is being dragged north west of four millimeters a year.

Since it was built nearly 90 years ago, the two halves of the stadium have been pulled apart 14 inches. Yet the real worry for the Golden Bears is that the fault line is moving too slowly. Its moving by four millimeters a year but that’s not enough. It should be slipping by ten millimeters per year. Its not doing the full amount of slip which is called slip deficit. What that means is, it has to catchup at some point. And we know the way the catchup will happen in a big earthquake. Its been 140 years since last earthquake and we are due one now.

The Hayward Fault that runs through the stadium is of the much larger San Andreas fault system. All the hills and valleys have been created by the constant movement of the land. A view from the air and seeing the fault round woodlands and round hills, one just gets a sense of how massive it is.

Millions of years ago, when the San Andreas fault tore apart the land, a lake was formed. It filled with water, was extended and is now used a reservoir for the whole Bay Area. When the San Andreas fault shifts just a few feet it can cause a quake. But the land is always on the move and over millions of years, the distance it travels is quite extraordinary. Rocks found in northern California started life hundreds of miles away in southern California. This is part of this sort of 20 odd million years trek, that whole slab of land has made, inching its way along as it creeps. And that means the changes to the landscape will be dramatic.

San Francisco and Los Angeles sit on two separate tectonic plates, either side of the San Andreas Fault. Over 9 Million Years LA will move 350 miles north, so you won’t need to drive between the two cities because they will be side by side. There is one thing though that might not be here after the next big quake hits. The symbol of San Francisco, the Golden Gate bridge. There’s a big debate among engineers if its built safe enough for a big earthquake. But its a bit late now, as its been built.

The Golden gate bridge may not survive a major quake. But on the other side of the bay, the Golden Bears have taken dramatic steps to protect their stadium. They’re cutting it in half. When the work is finished, the stadium will rest on separate free-floating blocks of concrete, so if a quake hits, the whole stadium will roll with the punches. One side of the stadium is going to be a completely separate structure from other, and the two sides can move independently, even in a large earthquake. The two sides of the stadium are just going to move their separate paths, thereby there will be much less destruction. The job is going to take two years to complete. It’ll cost the Bears a cool $320 million to carry out.

So when the big one hits there’s one place in the Bay Area that Roland thinks will be more than ready. According to him, the work that’s been done on the stadium right now, it is going to be one of the safest places to be in the next large earthquake.

Continue reading »]]> Flying past the earth after it was formed we see a vast gray ocean beneath a red tinted sky punctuated by volcanoes and small land masses. As unlikely as it seems life may have gained a foothold already. That life in the oceans that gave birth to it may actually be vaporized many times by cataclysmic bombardments which have slowed by not yet stopped. Earth has begun to make up its final form, A crust; A skin so think it would be less than a sheet of paper were the size of a basketball and under that a molten solid state mantle that boils in extreme slow motion. And finally two cores, A liquid iron core pulsing out magnetic field that help shield the earth from deadly cosmic wind from our sun and A solid nickle and iron inner core.

By now, the remarkable process of plate tectonics has kicked into gear, though how and when it started we do not know. For what follows next, you might want to strap yourself . Its going to be a bumpy ride. Here’s how it might have happened, At first about 3,000 million years ago continent called Ur had the planet all to themselves, then around half billion years later Artica took shape. About another half a billion past the Artica formed, the continents roam separately until about 1.8 billion years ago Artica collided with what is now the eastern end Artica to form Nina. Then Nina Artica and Ur collided about 1 Billion to 400 Million years ago forming a super continent.

After about 300 Million years later, the 3 landmasses separated and came back together in a new configuration called Pangea. It came apart too, when it split Ur and Artica split-up too. If you’re confused, join the club, even the earth seems confused. All of this movement made a host of unlikely neighbors way back when. North America’s eastern seaboard once rub shoulders with chile. California and Australia were neighbors if not connected. And Brazil was either connected to Nigeria or very close. Run the earth time machine backwards and you can see why. But no matter how many times you run the demolition derby of the continents, A question remains. What the hell is driving that ? …. Hell apparently; The force driving the plates is the slow movement of the super hot semi solid mantle that lies below the rigid plates. Like hot soup magma boils in slow motion. Superheated magma rises towards the surface, begins to cool and then sinks back down to the bottom of the pot where it is reheated and rises again. This cycle is repeated over and over to generate what scientists call convective flow. But where is the heat keeping our earth soup performing circular gymnastics. Well most of it is left over of the spectacularly energetic collisions and gravitational crushing that created the earth to begin with. Its still trapped down there and it wants out.

There is something else in the molten depths that makes it really hot real estate; that is radio active material. The belly of the beast have plenty of uranium for radio active elements, all of which release heat as they decay. That decay have significantly slowed the rate at which the earth is cooling. So what does this mean at the surface ? Two things, Magma being burp up along the ridges, those places like Iceland where the earth is tearing itself asunder is pushing the plates back to its respective continents apart.

What goes on at the other of the plates, the collision zone may be equally important. That is the place where heavier plates dive under the lighter ones yanked downwards by gravity. They haul along their plates back into the oblivion of the mantle. That’s what we know or what we think we know, but the details of what’s going on in the deepest parts of the earth that drives the engine of plate tectonics, We may never know.

Continue reading »]]> Earth’s land is never the same, its always shifting due to the collisions and dragging of tectonic plates, therefore its contentiously evolving, even today and it will continue to evolve in the future.  We will first start off from 600 million years in past carefully pieced together the map based on years of evidence collected by scientists. These pictures depicts the best possible picture of the world how it looked like in the past and how it will evolve after 100 Million years.
Paleogeographic Views of Earth’s History provided by Ron Blakey, Professor of Geology, Northern Arizona University.

This is how today’s continents are thought to have evolved and will evolve in the future.

600 Million Years Ago: Pre Cambrian Era

540 Million Years Ago: Cambrian Era

470 Million Years Ago: Ordovician Era

400 Million Years Ago: Devonian Era

280 Million Years Ago: Permian Era

240 Million Years Ago: Triassic Era

200 Million Years Ago: Jurassic Era

120 Million Years Ago: Cretaceous Era

50 Million Years Ago: Eocene Era

20 Million Years Ago: Miocene Era

1.8 Million Years Ago: Pleistocene Era

Earth Today:

Earth 100 Million Years from Now:

Its really amazing to visualize how our earth might look like in 100 Million years. One can only imagine what our civilization will look like in this long period of time. It might look like a lone time for us, but its nothing when compared to the age of the earth which is 4.54 billion years old and it will look even more shorter if you compare it to the age of the universe which is approximately 14 billion years old.
Also watch this video if you want to see more detailed transition of landmasses.