There’s no geological artist quite like Earth’s plate tectonics. Thanks to this ongoing operation, we have mountains and oceans, terrifying earthquakes, incandescent volcanic eruptions, and new land being born every single second.
But nothing lasts forever.
Eventually, the mantle will cool to such an extent that this planetwide conveyor belt will grind to a halt. At that point, you can say farewell to the carbon cycle, as well as the constant reshaping and reshuffling of landmasses that have been big drivers of evolution over eons.
Quiming Cheng, a mathematical geoscientist and president of the International Union of Geological Sciences, is the latest to take on the prophetic role of predicting when this bleak day may arrive. He calculates that the shutdown will arrive in about 1.45 billion years. That’s well before the sun is expected to swell into a red giant and consume us in its death throes roughly 5.4 billion years from now.
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There’s no geological artist quite like Earth’s plate tectonics. Thanks to this ongoing operation, we have mountains and oceans, terrifying earthquakes, incandescent volcanic eruptions, and new land being born every single second.
But nothing lasts forever.
Eventually, the mantle will cool to such an extent that this planetwide conveyor belt will grind to a halt. At that point, you can say farewell to the carbon cycle, as well as the constant reshaping and reshuffling of landmasses that have been big drivers of evolution over eons.
Quiming Cheng, a mathematical geoscientist and president of the International Union of Geological Sciences, is the latest to take on the prophetic role of predicting when this bleak day may arrive. He calculates that the shutdown will arrive in about 1.45 billion years. That’s well before the sun is expected to swell into a red giant and consume us in its death throes roughly 5.4 billion years from now.