so mountains of the world where are they located we now explained one of the highest mountain ranges on Earth let's take a look a little bit at the mountains of the earth it's I it's a really cheap map here but really stylized are some some mountain ranges here and let's give you some examples of course we see a subduction zone right along here and right um opposite to the subduction zone which marks an active plate made margin where subduction going on we see of course mountain ranges right there uh Rocky Mountains are part of it by the way our Rocky Mountains are weird we're going to talk about those a little later um we are way too far away from a subduction zone yet we have some mountains outside our our living quarters you know take a look to the west and you see mountains why are they there well there is no subduction zone and there's also no plate Collision that is a little bit of an order story we try to explain somewhat later the Rocky Mountains should not be there where they are but they are and we can enjoy them but it has to do with play tectonics I promise U it's part of it the Andes mountain of course typical can see that one um mountain range right next to the subduction zone but now I have a question the Appalachian Mountains right at this end um there is no subduction there is really no Collision of any sorts going on how come there's a mountain range if mountain ranges are caused by play tectonics nothing is going on here a good question so let's explain this a little bit the video sort of indicated what we're getting after here well what we're going to do is we're going to look at plate movement through the history of the earth now I'm going to give you a very very brief history of the Earth right here um it our Earth history is basically divided into certain time zones we have the Precambrian followed by the Paleozoic uh that followed by the Mesozoic and the youngest time zone is the xenozoic and to give you some kind of an illustrated idea idea when these time zones were developed and when we talk about it by the way the Precambrian is by far the largest time zone the Precambrian um so it's not drawn to scale here the Precambrian is what we often call the time before life it was assumed that in the Precambrian the Earth was pretty much lifeless and we started life um in the beginning of the Paleozoic right down here well we know know this is not quite true there were some lives and softball body Critters right there but basically what we're having here is uh sort of the beginning of very very extensive life in the oceans at first we didn't go on land extensively kind of till the middle of the Paleozoic something like that then we had um uh large plants and forests develop right around here in the Paleozoic no dinosaurs yet by the way guys just that is Paleozoic had no dinosaurs um we had some reptiles that roam the Earth right at the end of the pooo and then here's a break the break between the Paleozoic and the Mesozoic by the way the Mesozoic if you want to give it a name that's the time of the dinosaurs this is where dinosaurs roam the Earth right there in that big block of time but at the end of the Paleozoic we had the largest Extinction event the Earth has ever scene puts everything else into the Shadow and the shame even if we right now talk about oh we extinct you know so many species going extinct and it's terrible the Paleozoic was Far worth we wiped out about um estimated 97 to 98% of all life both on land or in Sea at the end of the Paleozoic and life had literally had to reinvent itself um and then of course at the end of the Mesozoic we wiped out the dinosaurs in a in a global catastrophe get a little bit into this one as well and then we start of course at time of the mammals was this is zenu and this is how the whole story ends now why am I telling you all of this right now right here because you can see this little arrow we're going to slide this little arrow up here and at the same time we will show where the continents are in this animation in relation to this Arrow as we move forward so we're looking at about a billion years of Earth's history crammed into 15 seconds as a slider moves up and you can watch the continents literally breaking apart coming together breaking apart coming together uh closing oceans opening oceans all over the place so here we go it's kind of mesmerizing until we eventually end up what we see today and I let it cycle through a few times because I want you to observe something and you can see we have all kinds of plate collisions going on and then later it's ripped apart again and so every time you have a collision you create a mountain range um we call this an active Mountain building event by the way the technical term for a mountain building event is an [Music] orogy orogen is that term there that's an active mountain building event um and what happens is basically we're slamming a continent together we're creating a mountain and we rip it apart and the old the old Collision is still visible in the form of an what we call a passive mountain range there's no active Collision going on right now but there was one and this is why there is a mountain range present so with other words we have active and passive mountain ranges active mountain ranges are formed right now because of plate collisions passive mountain ranges were formed in the past by a once active pleate Collision in this area so even the mountain ranges were not at a plate boundary right now can trace their history back to a plate Collision Once Upon a Time so other words if we take a look at mountains around the earth um here is one you can see this one there is an active plate boundary as my trench I kind of drawn this one out so very very active stuff is going on there so we call this an active plate margin and mountain building is happening right now at active plate margins we can measure these mountains are actually growing every year the Himalayas active plate boundary are growing every year by about half a centimeter to a centimeter as they are being pushed upward by these incredible forces now what about this fantastic mountain range on the East Coast some of you maybe from the East Coast like to hike the Appalachian and mountains in this area right these are usually the younger mountains these are on the passive plate margin here in this area right and the plas of plate margins an of often older there once was a collision by the way this Collision happened in the devonian time perod 300 million years ago that created the Appalachian Mountains and the first Proto Alps and and in Europe um but that has long moved on since and but we can still see the the evidence that that happened now by the way later we kind of sutured open the Atlantic Ocean and actually this uh northeast corner of the Appalachian mountain range continues over in Ireland and in Scotland so the Scottish Highlands are actually the Appalachian Mountains continued over there um ripped apart by another plate boundary that opened up and basically split up up that mountain range and moved part of it Eastward the other part Westward and we we have the bigger part the Scots have the smaller part of the whole thing all right so our mountain ranges can be traced back to PL tectonics I'll show you a whole map here we already talked about this a little bit there's some other mountain ranges we're just pointing this out Himalayas of course active mountain range um right there suture line somewhere around there is where India and um the Eurasian continent that's slamming together um there it is kind of try to draw this in that's somewhat the the edge of these two continents very very active the eurals on the other hand in Russia are passive that is a leftover from a collision quite a while ago and they are also going away they are eroding there's no more uplift going on there what about the Alps we don't see is there anything going on Alps are actually fairly active there are several suture lines of one between Africa and Eurasia kind of going on creates volcanoes in Italy there and also created the Alps um up in that direction so that they are actively uh moving what about the Ethiopian Highlands the Ethiopian Highlands are there that's just a mountain range yes but but they are formed differently this is not a collision generated mountain range it is where two plates are pulling apart and these are mostly volcanoes in these Terraces that are kind of at the edge of what's pulling apart um and there we have a divergent plate boundary right there so this are all converging plate boundaries see that one here and this is a diverging plate boundary uh causing the EOP Highlands to develop right now until the middle part of this Divergent system is low enough so ocean water can Rush In And and create a new ocean right so that is a divergent plate boundary the other ones were con converging systems all right so high mountains or by the way carcasses mountains are also out there um they are semi active it's kind of extension of the Alps kind of curving down there and there's still a little bit activity going on in that direction okay so highest peak on Earth Mount Everest um little bit over 29,000 ft that's incredibly High um very little oxygen up there I'll give you background are there other high peaks around the world absolutely are giving you kind of a count count down basically from the highest peak down W the second highest peak in the world is uh um well the second highest peak in the world is still in Mount Everest and if we take the next highest peaks in the world uh not Mount Everest in the Himalayas in next highest peaks they're all in the Himalayas kind of brothers and sisters of Mount Everest but the next highest peak outside of the Himalaya so it's stated this way next highest peak outside of the Himalayas is in the Andes and it is Mount AK kaga and it clocks in at 22831 FT and then if you go outside of the Andes um we found Mount McKinley or Mount Denali I don't know what they name it right now they're switching back between Denali and mount McKinney back and forth I think they went back to Denali in Alaska uh 20,320 ft that is of course outside of the Andes out sort of in a in a North American area um that's the highest peak there we can move on in Africa highest peak is Mount Kilimanjaro which is a volcano a little bit shy of 20,000 ft up there [Music] um and then if we go to Europe the highest peak there is mon Blanc at 50771 FT um compar this to our Rocky Mountains right we have a lot of 14ers here um so it's it's a pretty pretty high mountain if we compare it to that every single one of these mountains we can trace back to plate tectonics what about rivers what we're pushing things up when we're creating a mes so uh are Rivers related to plate tectonics where they flow and where they exist well Rivers depend of course on rainfall well you know you need to have some kind of precipitation to create a river that come come down somewhere um but the direction and where rivers go is often the secondary result of PL tectonics and we can almost explain every river on on Earth with PL tectonic so here's our map again and basically we have to look at drainage you know we um if you lift something up like a mountain then water runs off that mountain and it runs in a certain direction so what we have there is in C in Central North America we have a a gigantic drainage basin where we both get the Watershed from the um um western side of the Appalachians and the Eastern side of the Rocky Mountains kind of going toward the middle of the United States and Canada and we getting regenerating What's called the Mississippi drainage and all the all the tributaries and so forth end up in the Mississippi drainage of course which drains then out in the in the Gulf um by New Orleans hits on the the Gulf of Mexico there but we have other drainage areas created by these uplifted mountains either with passive or active mountains right now we have of course the Andes the Andes have the tendency to shed of course in both Direction but one major maor major Watershed is there the um the Eastern side of the Andes right here in a very equatorial region which means a lot a lot of rainfall and of course that is all caught what we call here the Amazon drainage basin that tinin drains out in the Atlantic Ocean and and of course is the reason why the Amazon is Flowing there Amazon um is a huge supplier of fresh water I mean it's an enormous system a lot of fresh water moving in that direction um the Ethiopian Highlands also have drainages uh we can to actually generate two rivers from that drain AG um kind of toward the the Western area we have once we have the Congo drainage which the famous Congo River on the de deep jungles of Africa right there and we also have the spawning or the start of the Nile of the Nile drainage which of course goes northward and then that is a good thing because then we are hitting the desert areas and the Nile is of course lifeblood for a lot of these these uh otherwise dry arid arid areas um show you some other ones the Himalayas drain into three directions you know we get of course uh the famous Indus and Gangi drainage through India and Pakistan a lot of watershed goes down there then some goes uh actually northward uh there the north Asian drainage which causes a lot of these rivers that flow through Russia and Mongolia being spawned and and starting and of course for China the southeast drainage very important with some of their their main main rivers that they absolutely need for their industry to thrive and that's yansy is one of the river that kind of um flows out there the reason why they all move in this direction is of course because of plct tonics and the uplift of the mountains I can see the the drainages uh just for fun a little bit about you know the the rivers and I was thinking about what list should I give you of the the top rivers and it's more like a fun activity I went by length that may not be the best metric to do this but the Nile clocks in at uh 4,145 miles as the longest river right um and so it's a significant drainage system that comes of the Ethiopian Highlands here and feeds the Nile uh we have the Amazon um that's a little bit sh 3,95 miles just give you some some ideas of the length of these Rivers the yansy absolutely important for China at 3,900 miles so this is some some very very formidable Rivers going through Mississippi not bad 3,741 miles that's a that's a total as our drainage here from these two mountain ranges just give you a little bit of a background Congo River a little shorter right but it is a it's also significant River 2715 miles a Ganges uh flow through a lot of populated areas gets much much shorter but it's also significant River around the world um touches a lot of Economic and cultural aspects of the life there in in the Indian region and then of course I had to throw in a German river in the danu 1,771 Miles by the way Just for kicks if you ever want to have a fantastic vacation that is somewhat cheap and you see a lot of history in it um they have completed a bike trail that follows almost the whole length of the danu 1,771 miles you can fly over to starts in Germany a beautiful beautiful pristine bike trail go slightly downhill so not heavy duty biking and you can um get little bed and breakfasts along the way and they actually take your luggage and they they transport it to the next bed and breakfast while you do the bike tour of I don't know 50 kilomet per day um and you end up in an exp breakfast and So you you're moving along that beautiful bike tray and you can make it all the way to the Black Sea and then do a little summer vacation there so it's kind of an an an interesting um impetus if you ever want to have a little different vacation is an very very well-developed uh bike bike system if you're into that um and it's it's not heavy duty biking like mountain biking and you need to be trained and have a very expensive bike you can even rent bikes over there uh by the way ebikes are all over Europe everybody has an ebike um and you have charging stations everywhere you go to supermarket there's a little bike rack in start charging station right there and a lot of people using using ebikes of course in a pandemic that slows down a little bit all right so Rivers drainage basins also related to PL tectonics well let's move on world or deposits the world or deposits how are they related to PL tectonics where are the Treasures of the earth um let's take a look here um there's a map of South America and I don't know if you know that but the Andes are full all of mineral deposits the largest copper mine in the world sits in the Andes Mountains second's largest is actually here in the United States it's over in Utah um the Bingham Canyon copper mine um but this one is a um a very very large mine so they have gold mines Silver Mines the end these are incredibly full of these rich mineral resources um and the question is are is somehow related to PL tectonics and I'll show you a little map snippet so this is a map right here um that little map snippet and all these dots are a certain commodity you can see the mineral deposits of gold silver copper lead zinc antimony iron tin tungsten coal others and know all kinds of stuff and if you look closely let's look at the the kind of the purplish dot they seem to make a somewhat of a line of an alignment the gray ones here the Silvery gray ones here also seem to make a line and that was in a significant Discovery um if a breakout zone so copper is here's it's a line here it goes a little bit across the whole thing I'm just going to plot a few for you on here um and gold but it's not it's sort of along this area here not over where that that main copper belt is and silver kind of overlaps gold but it's also somewhat in the line and this lineation of mineral deposits intrigued some exploration companies uh the Canadians were sort of in the Forefront of this stuff it's saying can we predict from plct tonics where the next mineral deposit should be where the next gold could be found for example so uh there's somewhat of this lineation going on I think I have that that antimony here the purple one makes a really really beautiful line you can see it here the neat part about these lines is the lineation they really parallel my PL tectonic um boundary well if you look at the worldwide distribution of ore minerals and where they are they really follow more or less plate boundaries well few exceptions here but then this was an old plate boundary long time ago it's still there there's a plate boundary going on you know plate boundaries from the Himalayas right there there plate boundaries and you can see a lot of or deposits are basically related to plate boundaries now the the Canadians it's a natural natur resources of Canada the Canadians kind of figured this one out they basically uh predicted new mineral deposits by finding out how steeply a plate is subducted if the subduction is very steep we need to move our mineral exploration closer to the coastline if it's very shallow we can go further into the continent and we can about with high probability tell you where new gold deposits new silver deposits new zinc or copper deposits should be located um all dependent on the steepness of the angle of the subduction of my subducting plate so that is a big big breakthrough I just wanted to show you this map a little bit of that they really follow more or less with a few exceptions my um plate te plate boundaries my plate tectonics right so here is my you can see this very nicely you're going to draw one of these boundary lines again or my my trench which basically marks the boundary line cor nicely and you see how close these mineral deposits are located to this active plate Mar margin so mineral deposits and volcanoes go hand in hand here's another one you can see that mineral deposit right there where they are just a little bit when I do this over there see beautiful mineral deposits right there there again for cashing in um we can zoom into South America to make it kind of evident um you can see that one and then this is what the Canadians figured out so closer to the coast you have iron and copper is some gold and um see this in both both of these continents the North American and the South American continent and then uh more or to the central part you have copper mum and gold and silver and the furthest away at the trailing edge of the whole thing uh would be your tungsten uh bismo tungsten and Lead would be furthest away and they could literally predict where where in the mountains you should look for some of those depending on the subduction angle of the plate now brings us to the last plate boundary that is my so-called transform boundary with a horizontal movement here is some of a map view you're looking down at the map right there and what's happening well my plates kind of slide past each other sort of uh something like this if you would build a road across it your road would move we're going to talk much more about something like this a horizontal move movement of plates um and you can see that here but this is plat sliding past each other um the so-called Transform boundary system now how do we get a transform boundary the thing what happens because we have a round earth the cracks in the crust are not straight they make little jogs all over the place so you have a plate a and a plate B and this is a diverging plate boundary you can really see this one so plate a moves to the left here plate B moves to the right and because of the way they crack they make little jogs sometimes the jogs goes uh in One Direction you know like a little stair step sometimes it comes back again I those kind of the tendency of those things to crack now as you can see those two plate a and plate B moving away from each other well if you make a jog somewhere and you still have the same movement you can see what happens right in this area or in this area right here you are sliding now two plates past each other and you're creating in this edge here a transform boundary right there one of the longest and most interesting Transform boundary is right here it's called the San Andreas fault it is actually a connection you see that that jog a very very long long ridge that goes right past San Francisco and all the way down to um to LA in the area and we have a relative motion the North American Plate here moves toward the um that edge toward the southeast uh while the side was a on it moves toward the um Northwest and we have that San Andreas fault which of course generates a lot of earthquakes in that motion sliding past each other and that's a transform boundary for you on the picture looks something like this right a crack doesn't make big mountain ranges but you can you can see it you can drive across the San Andreas fault I've done it many many times is interesting you notice sometimes the road is a little bit buckled because of the movement of the fault right there um they have to patch it a lot where it crosses the San Andreas fault and the transform boundary movement now let's take a look at World earthquake locations here we go this this kind of an interesting map that's bouncing in I will show you the map in another lecture again but if we plotted earthquake epicenters for 10 years in this case from 1980 to 1990 that had a magnitude of five or greater on the RoR scale we're going to create this um Red Dot map and you can see what's happening these red dots are not randomly distributed all over the Earth they follow more or less my plate boundaries now if I would have incre ined it to account to include magnitude earthquakes with four or three then all my plate boundaries he indicated in yellow would be basically plastered with red dots so where you have a plate boundary you will also have earthquakes there's no way around that these will happen and one of the indicators is that there's an interaction going on with crestal features in that particular area so we can bounce in a little bit you can see here the earthquake epicenters again just in South America remember we had a plate boundaries right around here and it is rid with earthquakes remember the West Indies Arc uhuh another plate interaction riddled with earthquakes um here's my mid ocean ridge divergent plate boundary all the way up into Iceland riddled with earthquakes so you can really follow the played boundaries by looking at these earthquake epicenters and this is where they occur now how many earthquakes do we have and how often does that happen along these plate boundaries well I tell you we have over a million earthquakes every day that may come as a complete shock to you and said what but they're small you won't register instruments can register them but there are little earthquakes you know magnitude of two or three and by the way um if you go above three this is when you start feeling the earthquake a little bit I think for people really to pay attention it needs to push a four um above four then then then you will notice it but even at three some people don't notice it that you have an earthquake so these small earthquakes one two three on AR Richa scale we have quite a quite a lot of them you know Millions per the one or less they really Millions per per day going on and then as um the magnitude increases the less earthquakes we have and it's is a given per year so a two about a million per year then the three about 100,000 per year for about 12,000 and so forth um really big ones the absolute destructive ones um we have less than one um Niner per year it's often a 10year cycle when we get a nine very very huge earthquake around around the world and here's the energy release equivalent you know equivalent kilograms of explosive how much energy comes out of it you can imagine you know a Niner is incredibly High um the biggest earthquake ever measured was the one in Chile in 1960 um clocked in close to 9.5 uh followed by the one in Alaska so give you some some idea um also on this Edge a little bit of comparison of earthquake energy to you know um um lightning bolt Oklahoma City Bombing was about a three large lightning bolt average tornado um hirosima atomic bomb bouncing hens are the world's largest nuclear test and a catur eruption so it gives a little bit of a of a equivalent there so earthquakes are a common occurrence around the earth and it makes total sense where plates interact with each other right in their boundaries you are bound to generate earthquakes so let's look at the magnitude um little bit the largest earthquake ever measured 1960 in ch 9.5 we will tell you more just give you a little bit of you know fun fun facts here um biggest earthquakes in the world Alaska was the second highest in 9.2 and then we had the infamous uh Christmas tsunami of 2004 uh spawned by that earthquake with a Niner um um yeah about death of about almost quarter million people died in the tsunami that was spawned by that one um one of the deadliest earthquake was in tangshan China in 1976 killed 255,000 people um was an a Peru 7.8 here well just counting down in 1970 so give you some some of the strongest earthquakes that killed a lot of people 1990 Iran um 7.7 killed 50 ,000 part of it if you've don't have a building code that mitigates earthquakes you are having a problem Pakistan 2005 7.6 that's giving a sampling that big earthquakes as they appear um really impact our lives and cost lives in many places of the Earth all right so now dangerous place on Earth as far as geology is concerned the infamous Ring of Fire why because you know you get the triple whammy there you have not only the deepest spots on the earth kind of along the the ring of fire but you also have um active earthquakes and active volcanoes so if you are afraid of earthquakes or afraid of volcanoes this is not a place to move to go go somewhere else just to keep you safe if you're really freaking out some people say no I want this adventure Bring it on I can't wait to travel again and go to these places okay now a little bit about volcanoes around the earth um we're going to do a whole lecture on volcano but just to give you a little introduction here some beautiful sparkly looking volcanoes um they all erupt a little differently um where are they located here's another map and this map has red dots and these red dots all indicate an active volcano and you can see on the Andes Mountains have quite a few there a lot of active volcanoes here in our Northern Cascades Alaska a lot of active volcanos going to Japan active volcanoes active volcanoes active volcanoes all around the ring of fire um here active volcano you see that one here there are a few active and semi-active ones um I don't don't know why they put these ones as active these are more hot spots actually a lot of active volcanoes here in Iceland but you also see some odd ones far away from a play boundary Hawaii for example shouldn't be there um there are some some odd ones kind of pop up out of the middle of nowhere right um so let's look really quickly at the world's major volcano as you can see them here um and uh they all have created um sometimes impact with human life we will do a much more thorough investigation of that but I give you some that are very famous vus in Italy the 79 ad eruption um where we actually can see the death toll we had the Tambora in Indonesia 1815 we're going to talk about all of these in the future um one of the more catastrophic eruptions that the world has seen in modern civilization katua Indonesia 1883 um also a little picture here just a little sampling of it mount pise on Martinique In 1902 that was a very uh awful grotesque eruption that cost a lot of lives of people um they all are related to PL tectonics every single volcano that you see Mount St hens in 1980 um just to give you an example of of a few that erupted around the world 1991 in the Philippines um we will talk more about volcanoes later on I just want to make the point play tectonics play an incredible role in generating these volcanic eruptions now what about these volcanoes not on plate boundaries there something else going on we sometimes have in the earth Crest a place that is incredibly hot and think about it as an equivalent to a sunspot an equivalent into a sunspot sunspots are these these dots on the Sun that are hotter than the surrounding plasma of the sun we have something similar in Earth except you know they are not immediately obvious if you don't know what they're looking for necessar by just looking at the Earth like we do with sunspots but they're in the mantle and they are hotter than the surrounding mantle and they often burn through the crust and create a volcano right right above it so something like that um as the plate moves across because these spots are stationary they are fixed and as my plate moves across it creates of course um little or big volcanoes that often create islands that then um as a plate moves create a string of islands with one of these being an active volcano and the other one being all extinct volcanoes because they moved off the hot SP spot Hawaii is one of the best examples for that in a hot spot around the world so something like this here's my hot spot it is fixed my plates moving and all these little things are volcanoes that were created when the plate was right above that particular Hot Spot there as it moved across um to show you the difference between a Hotpot generated volcano and an island arc generated volcano I'll show you this little video chains of volcanic islands can form by two completely different plate tectonic mechanisms the animation on the left illustrates how volcanic island arcs are formed at subduction zones the animation on the right shows creation of linear chains of oceanic volcanos above hotpots far from plate boundaries well so so that is an island arc for comparison right a lot of active volcanoes in parallel in a island chain like in Hawaii um we have just one active volcano right here or actually two it's a little bit of an active volcano he's fizzling out right there and it's a new seamount forming right in front of it and then whatever follows behind is all inactive and they starting to erode go away let's watch the video again and see if you can spot the difference of how they form chains of volcanic islands can form by two completely different plate tectonic mechanisms the animation on the left illustrates how volcanic island arcs are formed at subduction zones the animation on the right shows creation of linear chains of oceanic volcanoes above hotpots far from plate boundaries so hot spots are these fixed mantle plumes that basically burn through the crust and leave their evidence behind uh like you see here so the Hawai hotspot is probably the most famous one if you look at the ages right now the oldest one island is Kawaii it's about 4 million years old Wahu 3 million years then we have Maui at about 1 million years and the main island of Hawai is actually fairly young with some of the older spots being only 100 ,000 years old and this is where my active volcanoes or the hot spots are right now sitting and there is a new island forming right out there in the Pacific Ocean the lii sea mount and eventually that will breach surface and become the new Hawaiian island have to wait a few million years okay so hot spots around the world how many are there um these mantle plumes quite a few here's kind of the the ones we know about I just give you a quick sampling the ones you should know at least is Hawaii right we discussed that it is not in the plate boundary uh it is kind of in the middle it's a hot spot the other odd one here is of course Yellowstone it sits in the middle of our continent um Burns right through it um this is a hot spot uh something else the azors are in the Atlant that's often the the Hawaii for the British so the British like to vacation there on this tropical island of the azors it's also a hot spot um the Galapagos Islands is interesting the Galapagos Islands are close to a plate boundary but they on the wrong side subduction is here so the volcanoes should be here but the Galapagos are on the other side so this is also a hot spot as will give you some idea and Iceland is actually not only a divergent plate boundary it's also a hot spot this is why it raised up above sea level so it's a double whammy you have a hot spot and it it coincides it sits actually right below a divergent plate boundary so what will happen in the future if you want to bank on the future where will we go what will the earth look like well if you project the Earth out in 50 million years out we will have a ginormous Atlantic Ocean far away takes much longer to fly across the Mediterranean will be closed with a mountain range kind of going across here I can see that anarctica will come out of a cold spot and will start warming up and probably was going to be inhabitable at this point and Australia is kind of migrating also closer toward the equator and in the meantime slamming in all these little Islands to the north and creating mountain ranges right there right so if you move forward to 150 million years ago kind of give you some idea all right what's happening now Antarctica and Australia will most likely combine according to our model um we are now creating new Rifts and South America is pivoting back toward um the African continent um and the African continent is rotating and moving toward South America so we basically closing at this point the Atlantic Ocean again uh creating new mountain ranges Mediterranean is long gone and then if we do one more and project it in 250 million years we basically started Where it All Began another super continent with an interior sea there uh now you don't need to fly any anymore you can drive almost everywhere in the world um and Arctica and Australia are a a happy couple they are both put together so that is sort of the introduction to geology in play tectonics