Super Continent

[Brian37]

Fast And The Furious, Tokyo Drift? 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Fast And The Furious, Tokyo Drift? 

I have Super 8 film of a friend standing on the crease at the bottom of the Great Rift Valley. His legs appear to be spreading apart and he's screaming about falling into the crevasse. Local beer is to blame.

[Anomalocaris]

Really? The evolution of the earth is a super continent? That divided itself through plate tectonics? Really?

Please 'splain the impossible!

Yes all the land we see now was one giant continent. REALLY!

And it happened more than once.  Pangaea was just the most recent instance when vast majority of earth’s continental mass clearly assembled into a single enormous contigous land mass popularly called supercontinent.

Pangaea began assembly around 400 million years ago when Proto-North America closed the ancient lapetus ocean and slammed into proto-africa.  We can actually use paleomagnetic techniques to trace backwards the movements of the major parts that came together to assemble Pangaea, and map out their movements before Pangaea assembled.  We can use rock formations and evidence of ancient rifting and mountain building to verify which parts were connected to which other parts at what time.

As it turns out, vast majority of the parts that came together to assemble Pangaea had been all connected together before on several prior ccasions to assemble earlier supercontinents before Pangaea.  

About 600 million years ago, or 250 million years before Pangaea formed, all the major continent parts of the earth were assembled in another elongated contigous land mass roughly centered around the South Pole.  It is believed that the assembly of a supercontinent near the Pole allowed vast amounts of snow and ice to accumulate, increasing the total reflectivity of the earth and reducing the total solar energy earth absorbs.  So the assembly of this supercontinent at South Pole probably contributed to snowball earth which happened at the same time.  This supercontinent is called Pannotia.   For various reasons not yet satisfactorily explained, Pannotia was short lived, coming together and than separating in less than 100 million years, compared to pangaea’s 200 million years.

Keep tracing back the movements of the parts before the start of Pannotia, and the parts come together again 750 million years ago.  In fact the parts seem to have stayed together roughly from 1.1 billion years ago to 750 million years ago in an even earlier, Long lived supercontinent called Rodinia.  

Before rodinia, the picture gets more hazy due to passage of time and obliteration of evidence.  So specific movement, shape and location of earlier continental land masses become more difficult to reconstruct.  But there are hints that majority of continental mass on earth were assembled into large supercontinents periodically on at least 4-5 earlier occassions before Rodinia, going back 3 billion years.

[Whateverist]

Uh, no.  Your picture of the earth's composition is a bit simplistic.  It isn't a static billiard ball.

Try this for a quick catch up:





https://youtu.be/uLahVJNnoZ4

How do you get a ball out of a ball unless it is a ball? You didn't start with supercontinent that broke apart, you started with ocean without a "supercontinent"! Please start from the "beginning"! Do you get it? You cannot start a ball without a ball! 'Splain me the ball without a stupid fucking' "supercontinent" non-ball! You can't! Because no one can 'slain a ball outside of a ball! Duh!

So, how do you 'splain this ball we live on which has always been a fuckin' ball right?!

You know that I love you right? I know that you love me! We're cool!

But, stupid is stupid! And "supercontinent" is stupid! It is stupid because it is not a ball!

No one is saying that a supercontinent was a starting condition.  When the earth first formed it would have been very hot and there would have been no surface water.  The force of gravity on a body the size of the earth is sufficient to keep the material in the center very hot and in a liquid state.  With even more mass it could result in spontaneous fusion as on the sun, but of course we're not that big.  But we're really really big.  Did you look at that video in my last post?

Irregularities in the surface of the earth - mountain peaks, ocean trenches, continental masses - actually amounts to very little. The earth is actually more nearly a perfect sphere than your average billiard ball.  What irregularities there are can be attributed to the extreme heat resulting in circulation of molten material which disturbs the surface.

The supercontinent is not the starting state.  It is merely a relatively recent prior state which accounts for the neat fit between some continents which have been split apart by new material thrust up in ocean trenches.

The World Pool-Billiard Association Tournament Table and Equipment Specifications (November 2001) state: "All balls must be composed of cast phenolic resin plastic and measure 2 ¼ (+.005) inches [5.715 cm (+ .127 mm)] in diameter and weigh 5 ½ to 6 oz [156 to 170 gms]." (Specification 16.)

This means that balls with a diamenter of 2.25 inches cannot have any imperfections (bumps or dents) greater than 0.005 inches. In other words, the bump or dent to diameter ratio cannot exceed 0.005/2.25 = 0.0022222
The Earth's diameter is approximately 12,756.2 kilometres or 12,756,200 metres.
12,756,200 x 0.0022222 = 28,347.111
So, if a billiard ball were enlarged to the size of Earth, the maximum allowable bump (mountain) or dent (trench) would be 28,347 metres.

Earth's highest mountain, Mount Everest, is only 8,848 metres above sea level. Earth's deepest trench, the Mariana Trench, is only about 11 kilometres below sea level.
So if the Earth were scaled down to the size of a billiard ball, all its mountains and trenches would fall well within the WPA's specifications for smoothness.

However, it should be also be noted that if the Earth is not a perfect sphere. It is an oblate spheroid and should therefore also be tested for conformity to WPA specifications due to its shape. The distance between Earth’s poles is shorter than its diameter at the equator by approximately 43km. The maximum deviation with the respect to the Earth’s average diameter is half that distance, or 21.5km, which is within the scaled up WPA tolerance of 28.3km.
It can therefore be seen that the Earth would conform to WPA specifications for billiard balls if it was scaled down to the appropriate size, and it could said to be smoother than at least some billiard balls that would be permitted by the WPA.

http://www.curiouser.co.uk/facts/smooth_earth.htm


http://www.curiouser.co.uk/facts/smooth_earth.htm

[drfuzzy]

As much as I love the explanations, I think Haipule is trolling.  The OP proposes that plate tectonics and super-continents are impossible just to start the conversation.  
C'mon, he keeps mentioning he's in Hawaii.  Surely he knows about the formation of the islands.  Surely he knows that the Leeward Islands were once much larger, and that 
Loihi is rising.  Surely he knows that the movement of plate tectonics is being constantly measured, in fact, GPS is taking measurements.  A quick Google search will show 
that the Cocos and the Nazca plates are moving 4-6 inches each year.  The continents "float" on magma.  Hawaiians know this.  He's trolling.

[Anomalocaris]

As much as I love the explanations, I think Haipule is trolling.  The OP proposes that plate tectonics and super-continents are impossible just to start the conversation.  
C'mon, he keeps mentioning he's in Hawaii.  Surely he knows about the formation of the islands.  Surely he knows that the Leeward Islands were once much larger, and that 
Loihi is rising.  Surely he knows that the movement of plate tectonics is being constantly measured, in fact, GPS is taking measurements.  A quick Google search will show 
that the Cocos and the Nazca plates are moving 4-6 inches each year.  The continents "float" on magma.  Hawaiians know this.  He's trolling.

I try not to attribute to malice what can be explained by indefatigable ignorance.

[vulcanlogician]

She makes a good point though. The guy lives in Hawaii. Knowledge of plate tectonics is a matter of practical concern there.

[Anomalocaris]

She makes a good point though. The guy lives in Hawaii. Knowledge of plate tectonics is a matter of practical concern there.

Practicality of knowledge never dissuaded the willfully ignorant.  Otherwise you wouldn't have evolution deniers in the era of gene engineering.

[Minimalist]

I looked at the OP real fast and thought it said "Super Incontinent."  I think they make an extra absorbent Depends for that.

[Catholic_Lady]

Hahahahaha!!