Pangea & Rift.

When someone asked me, “What do you know about Pangea?”
I had actually heard the word for the first time only recently.

I discovered that scientists believe all the continents on Earth may come together again about 200 million years from now and form another supercontinent.

Depending on how Earth’s internal forces move the continents, this future landmass could be called either Pangaea Ultima or Amasia.

Pangaea Ultima(팬지아 울티마) is one possible scenario where the continents gather near the equator around the Atlantic Ocean.

Amasia(아마시아), on the other hand, would form around the Arctic region in the far northern hemisphere.

What fascinated me most was learning that Earth has been repeating this cycle for billions of years.

Every 300 to 500 million years, the continents merge into one giant landmass, split apart, and slowly come together again.

Right now, we are living in a period about 200 million years after the breakup of the original Pangaea, when the continents are spread farther apart than ever.

Some isolated pieces of land, like New Zealand, volcanic islands, or even Antarctica, might remain alone and never fully join the next supercontinent.

And because of the complicated flow of magma deep inside Earth, the continents do not move in straight lines.

They zigzag, rotate, and drift in unexpected ways, so the next supercontinent will probably look completely different from the old Pangaea.

While reading about this topic, I suddenly remembered my trip to Iceland several years ago.

At the time, I simply thought the scenery was beautiful.

But after learning about continental drift, I became much more interested in something called a rift.

A rift is a huge valley formed when Earth’s tectonic(지각변동) plates are slowly pulled apart.

One of the most famous rift zones in the world is in Iceland, and I actually walked through it without fully understanding what it meant back then.

So I went back to my old travel photos in my blog and found pictures from Þingvellir National Park, one of Iceland’s most famous rift areas.

The signs there explained that the park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site where the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate are slowly moving apart every year.

What amazed me was this thought: even as tourists including me casually walk along the pathway, deep beneath their feet the Earth is constantly moving and cracking little by little.

As I read more about Pangea, I could suddenly remember the cold Icelandic wind, the rocky landscape, and the feeling of standing between two continents.

In a way, that journey continues every time I revisit those memories.