Revealing Earth’s evolutionary potential in the future

A recent study suggests that in the next 200-250 million years, Earth may continue to evolve, transforming scattered continents into a supercontinent.

According to The Guardian, over the next 250 million years, Earth’s scattered continents will come together to form the next supercontinent. At that time, the Sun will shine a bit brighter, and the Earth’s rotation speed will slow down, resulting in a day that is about 30 minutes longer than it is now.

Michael Way, an expert at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and his colleagues used computer models to study Earth’s evolutionary possibilities. Scientists have proposed two scenarios that could occur in the future.

In the first scenario, the current continents will gather together and form a supercontinent that will develop over the next 250 million years from now. This landmass is referred to as “Aurica.”

In the second scenario, the supercontinent “Amasia” will form from other continents pushed northward along the equator, along with a small continent near the South Pole, over the next 200 million years from now.

The research results, published in the journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, indicate that the landmass in Amasia will promote snowfall and the creation of ice sheets. Meanwhile, Aurica will have less snow or ice, with an average temperature of about 20 degrees Celsius. The Guardian suggests that understanding how Earth develops will benefit researchers studying planets beyond the solar system in the search for potentially habitable nearby planets. According to The Guardian