• alpine_jim@piefed.social
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    20 hours ago

    Iceland shouldn’t be on this, it didn’t exist until ~20 million years ago. Pangaea broke up ~200 million years ago.

    Probably lots of others, like most of Japan shouldn’t be labelled either.

  • jaaake@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Every time I see Pangea, I have the same thought. Before I say it, I should preface that I know nothing about plate tectonics or geology or planetary physics or any other related science.

    Are we sure that’s how it was? I mean the whole one continent and the rest of the globe is ocean. Is there a chance that in addition to the super continent, the planet was also way smaller? Like maybe that continent wrapped around the majority of a smaller sphere instead of just one clump on one side of the current size of the sphere.

    • cloudshouter@lemmy.zip
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      11 hours ago

      Yes, they have a very good idea on accuracy. For the record, I was originally a young earth creationist but curiosity got the better of me. Geologists are very obsessive about rocks so it’s just a case of puzzling out what rocks match perfectly despite distance, accounting for things like erosion or volcanoes, and lining up the various ages of rocks for when they were made and when other rocks filled in. Then add fossils to check connections and weather conditions. There is obviously more than this, but it’s something a person can get real deep into.

      The planet would not be noticeably different in size. The last time the earth got a noticeable rise in mass we ended up with a moon. There is evidence of objects in the lower mantle that are most likely old sunken tectonic plates, but I don’t recall details.

    • xia@lemmy.ca
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      10 hours ago

      What should we call the mysterious continent on the dark side of pangea? It should evoke an aire of mystery.

    • humorlessrepost@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Not sure if troll, too lazy to respond just in case.

      If not troll, tldr: no, the energy required would liquify (or worse) the earth.

      • jaaake@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        Not trolling, just ignorant on most related sciences.

        Honestly, that much continental drift (Pangea to modern geography) seems so unbelievable to me. For some reason it’s easier to wrap my head around the globe expanding from a roughly Pangea sized sphere and the cracks between the continental shelves filling with water as the sphere got bigger.

        I feel like to someone who is familiar with this science, this probably sounds like me saying “Yeah, but a flat earth just makes more sense.”

        • Spice Hoarder@lemmy.zip
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          14 hours ago

          I think part of the issue is that, you are right in a way, but your timescale is just so off. The earth did start off very small, and over the course of the entire life of the universe, it’s changed into what you see today. Obviously there’s no photos of Pangaea, but we have the plates themselves as evidence.

        • Grail@multiverse.soulism.net
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          15 hours ago

          Yeah it does sound like that lmao

          If the world were to get, say, twice as big, that would require a lot of matter, like smacking into an equally sized protoplanet. Your first problem is, such a collision would impart a lot of energy and turn the earth into a smoking mass of lava and volcanoes like it was when it formed. But the second problem is: How would the continents all be the same shape, and only the low-lying water regions have expanded? This would imply all the new matter went down inside the sphere of the current continents.

  • mirshafie
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    13 hours ago

    I find it a bit surprising that almost every major country is mapped to Pangea. Notably Iran is split down the Zagros mountain range.

  • infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net
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    23 hours ago

    Today: Nothing but ocean in front of the US west coast.

    Back then: Nothing but ocean in front of the US west coast.

    • DarkSirrush@piefed.ca
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      22 hours ago

      I’m actually pretty sure the west coast wouldn’t exist, didn’t the Rockies get formed by the pacific plate hitting the North American plate while pangea was unforming?

    • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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      22 hours ago

      Yeah. Just a single vast expanse of ocean that makes the modern-day Pacific look small and cramped. Just think how lonely it would be in a boat on the other side of the earth…

      Oh, and the hurricanes will be absolutely gargantuan sometimes, having such a large ocean to strengthen over before finally hitting land.

    • DarkSirrush@piefed.ca
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      21 hours ago

      With my high-school tectonic plate knowledge, they were probably more ocean, or much wider and flatter.