Terrawatch: supercontinents and the search for habitable planets

Models of how the Earth could look in 250m years, with huge land masses and longer days, can help exoplanet huntersIt ’s unlikely humans will be around to see it, but in about 250m years Earth’s land masses will have moved together to form the next supercontinent. By this time the sun will be a little brighter and the Earth’s rotation will have slowed down, making a day about 30 minutes longer than now. So ho w will it feel to live on this future Earth?Michael Way, from the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and colleagues have used computer models to travel forward in time. They investigated two plausible scenarios: Aurica (a low latitude supercontinent developing around 250m years from now) and Amasia (a high latitude northern supercontinent plus a smaller Antarctic subcontinent about 200m years from now).Continue reading...

Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - September 1, 2021 Category: Science Authors: Kate Ravilious Tags: Science Geology Space Source Type: news