In approximately 200 million years, Earth is projected to become the residence of a single enormous supercontinent.

The supercontinent referred to as Pangea, in which all the modern continents came together, broke apart around 200 million years ago. It takes roughly 200 million years for a new Pangea-like supercontinent to form, as expected in terrestrial evolution.

Four major theories explaining the future evolution this supercontinent are highlighted in a recent study printed in Geological Magazine.

According to the first-scenario, Atlantic ocean will remain broader and Pacific ocean will begin to narrow down. The Ring of Fire is also found in the Pacific Ocean which is dominated by subduction zones where oceanic plates slide beneath continental plates and into the mantle. This also explains why most major earthquakes occur at the margin of the Pacific Plate, usually referred to as the Ring of Fire.

Continued tectonic activity means that the Americas are slowly drifting away from Europe and Africa, and after a long time colliding with North Antarctica as well as Africa, Europe, and Asia tightly packed to each other. At the same time, Australia will have become part of East Asia. This is expected to lead to the formation of a giant super continent dubbed Novopangea – derived from the Greco-Latin term for new Pangea.

In the kind of world termed as “Pangea Proxima” or “next Pangea,” the Atlantic and Indian Oceans widen and widen until new subduction zones bring the continents together once again. This would result to a clash between Eurasia and the other continents to form a ring like structure with an ocean in the middle.

The Pacific and Atlantic oceans have been in existence for a very long time with Pacific being older than the Atlantic having been formed 200 million years ago while the Atlantic was formed 180 million years ago. But what if both these oceans were to close?In such a case, a supercontinent called “Aurica”, which is a combination of Australia and America, would form.

As João C. Duarte, an assistant professor in tectonics at the University of Lisbon who presented the Aurica hypothesis, we tend to focus on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans only. However, there are other options on the Earth such as Indian Ocean. Thus, according to Duarte, it is possible to close both the Atlantic and the Pacific as both are quite old but a third ocean is needed. The Indian Ocean is relatively young, being approximately 140 million years old, and thus is a perfect fit. Thus, if the Indian Ocean opens in the future while the Pacific and Atlantic close, the seven continents would fuse together into a single continental mass called Aurica with equatorial girth.

Lastly, the “Amasia” theory, which is a blend of “Americas” and “Asia,” indicates that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans stay open while the Arctic Ocean becomes frozen. In this case, all the continents except Antarctica would slowly move towards the North Pole and be located there. This would create an enormous body of water surrounding the North Pole with Antarctica on the other end.

“Once the continents reach a supercontinent state, carbon dioxide emissions from volcanic activity are a major uncertainty.”

In a study that appeared in the Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems journal, the researchers employed 3D Global climate models to analyze the effects that could be caused by Aurica and Amasia if they were to exist. For those who have watched the Netflix’s sci-fi TV series Snowpiercer, a post-apocalyptic dystopian series where the entire world is frozen with the exception of the perpetually moving train named Snowpiercer, these findings should be rather heartening.

If the Amasia scenario where the continents surrounding the North and South Poles merge then the ocean conveyor belt will also be affected. This important system of ocean currents continuously moves warm water from the equator toward the poles. As a result, not only will poles be colder, but they will also be covered by ice all year round. According to the lead researcher of the study conducted in July 2021 Michael Way, a physical scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the ice would reflect heat back into space deepening the cooling effect.

However, the theoretical supercontinent termed as Aurica could possibly be the surfers’ paradise. As mentioned earlier, Aurica lies close to the equator and is expected to be slightly warmer and possibly less humid than the present Earth. This, as explained by Duarte, a scientist involved in the study, is expected to be the most probable reality of a supercontinent. According to these models, warmer earth conditions could result into coasts like those of Brazil characterized by exceptionally beautiful white sandy beaches, beautiful coral reefs and elongated sand dune systems. Moreover, there would be enormous ocean currents in this tropical wonderland.

However, there is a big but. If the Earth is glaciated in Amasia, most of the life forms will be threatened to near elimination except for lives in oceans. It would be like being in the movie Waterworld. However, this does not mean that the more temperate Aurica would be any less demanding to a number of species. If continents are to converge, many of those species would have to struggle hard and fight for their survival. Duarte further notes that in the light of this supercontinent formation, one could expect myriad of extinctions to be in store.

According to Alex Pullen, an assistant professor of environmental engineering and earth sciences at Clemson University in South Carolina, it has its own challenges to consider when looking so far into the future. First of all, it is impossible to predict even the appearance of the vegetation in the scale of 200 million years. “Plants affect the chemical composition of the atmosphere, humidity, cloud formation, and albedo (the proportion of light that gets reflected by a surface),” Pullen explained at Popular Mechanics. “Also, there are uncertainties such as carbon dioxide emission from volcanic activity once the continents achieve supercontinent states.

Moreover, no one can predict what greenhouse gases will be like in future, or how the ocean and atmospheric circulation around Aurica and Amasia will impact these gases Pullen adds. He revealed that “there were no aerosols (microscopic solid or liquid particles suspended in the air or as a gas) in the models at all despite their critical role to climate”.

However, seeing how we treat the planet, Way realizes that there are many things in the world that cannot be foreseen. “We can’t really understand how climate change or filling the oceans with pollution and plastic are going to affect the planet,” he stated. He is negative about man but not the earth. “For the vast majority of the last four billion years Earth has had rather moderate temperatures at its surface during all this time save for a few intervals, and we still cannot quite figure out how the planet has achieved this. ”“The planet is most likely going to get over all the bad things that we have done to it. ”

Maybe people will also exist in some form of an upgraded version at that point in time as well. Mind you, we have been brought up to believe that evolution is a unidirectional process, though.

“Always evolution is in process of improving… ‘Yes we are very intelligent,’ we say,” mentioned Duarte. “Perhaps there will be superintelligence someday, but Duarte goes on, that is an assumption that more intelligence is inherently better. There are theories stating that the emergence of smart species is accompanied by a menu of self-annihilation. “We have the capacity to bring about nuclear war capable of annihilating the entire human population,” Duarte comments in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War. For a post-human species 50 to 250 million years into the future to survive, you need more than intelligence: as Duarte states, you must survive in tandem with the environment air in the vicinity.

However, such changes will not happen in our lifetime, our grandchildren’s lifetime, or 1,000 grandchild’s lifetime, as what Way posited. But they are in progress already. We cannot sense it , but reality is a state of constant slow and unnoticed transformation.

“We have mountain-building on Earth. Volcanic activity is forming new islands in the Pacific. The plates are still moving on the planet and there’s a Richter-6 earthquake everyday somewhere on the planet,” shares Way. We are most likely right now at 50 percent in a major round of the evolution of planets, and we are not even aware of it.

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