There's a Lost Continent 1,000 Miles Under Europe (vice.com) 30
Scientists have reconstructed the tumultuous history of a lost continent hidden underneath Southern Europe, which has been formally named "Greater Adria" in a new study. From a report: This ancient landmass broke free from the supercontinent Gondwana more than 200 million years ago and roamed for another 100 million years before it gradually plunged underneath the Northern Mediterranean basin. Researchers led by Douwe van Hinsbergen, a professor of global tectonics and paleogeography at Utrecht University, have been piecing together Greater Adria's past for a decade. The team collected rock samples from Spain to Iran, looking for the last material remnants of the continent that are accessible to scientists. The results were published this month in the journal Gondwana Research, and include an animated summary of the lost continent's birth, life, and death. Unless you live in an earthquake zone, it can be easy to forget that Earth is constantly cannibalizing its own landmasses. The map of our world morphs over the eons, as continental plates shift around, bump into each other, and undergo subduction, which occurs when one plate slides underneath another.
I'm picturing this in my head (Score:2)
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I'm in Europe, and I can picture Morena Baccarin [fandom.com] under me.
Atlantis . . . ? (Score:3)
I immediately looked under my sofa cushions. You can't imagine the stuff that I find under there.
A lost continent of Atlantis would fit into the program.
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That dude? It's Paul Harvey, you swine.
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"There's a lost continent under New Pangea..."
Reminds me of an incident in the 1970s.
When traveling with some friends (and mid-century fellow radicals), we passed a little industrial building to the west of Ann Arbor. Closed for the weekend. Company name was "Industrial Tektonics".
One of my companions made up a great great rap about how they'd been hired by "The Committee to Reunite Gonwanaland" to accelerate continental drift and speed the reformation of the pangean supercontinent (or at least it's south
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It's been a few years since I've been over there, but - there used to be a few "Reunite Gondwanaland" posters in the geology department here at UW, back when it was a separate department.
I wouldn't exactly call that a continent. (Score:1)
It's just some land mass.
Of course that doesn't generate the kind of headlines that lures in enough idiots for the fraudulent lying criminals ("(dvertisers") to have a filling meal.
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The key aspect is that the land mass is carried on its own tectonic plate, unlike the UK+Ireland.
There are loads of smaller tectonic plates, and over great periods of time they come and go. Rifting creates them (the linked article clearly shows this Greater Adria plate rifting off North Africa and slamming north into/under Europe, scraping the top layers off into the mountain ranges that exist there now. Looks like Spain used to be its own little plate as well.
1000 miles ? (Score:4, Insightful)
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That [1,000 miles] is a bit of a stretch. It's only 4000 miles to the center.
I suspect that, like "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", they're talking horizontal distance, not depth.)
atlantis is about 1000 miles down! (Score:2)
atlantis is about 1000 miles down!
Say what? (Score:2)
I would have thought rock, 1000 miles down, even 60 miles of it, would have melted in the mantle over tens of millions of years.
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The thermal conductivity and heat capacity of solid rock is high enough that melting takes considerable time. Further, liquid rock in the mantle is the exception and not the rule. The mantle is essentially solid.
Earth thinking to itself (Score:2)
One down, seven to go...
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They taught plate tectonics in school in the 80s. (Score:2)
Wasn't that part of everyone's curriculum? Do they not teach this today? You shouldn't need to live in an earthquake risk region just to know this basic knowledge about the earth you live upon. Education!
I would imagine that lost continent is gone, reabsorbed into the mantel.
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Since you bring up school, did your school(s) teach you how to spell "intact" and "mantle"?
I'll never understand so many educated people who can't spell....
Its subducted oceanic crust, not a continent. (Score:2)
Continental crust does not usually subduct, they usually accrete to the edge of another continent. Too bouyant. Its probably a section of oceanic crust that went down into the mantle ahead of or behind a section of continental crust that was acreted to the southern edge of Europe. The continental fragment in question was originally on the other side of a sea and began to move north, with subduction of oceanic crust ahead of it.
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(I was just going to point out that the continents float, so the plate would have gone under (and melted) while the continent ended up ground up on the shore from the collision. But you said it more accurately.)
Best deal ever, believe me! (Score:2)
And Trump offered $20b for it.
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Step 2: Profit.
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FTFY:
Step 1: Accept the $20bn.
Step 2: Pay off hookers to STFU.
Let's get there ASAP (Score:2)