Tektonic movement of the USA.

[anotherlife]

Which way is it? I hear the rockies stopped growing, so is the US turning back east? And how about South America? That too? I know that Australia is approaching the US. Is it drifting north-east faster than North America to the east? And if there becomes a speed difference between North and South America, then will the Central American land bridge break and open up the sea currents again, to end all ice caps and bring earth's temperature back to the normal 25 C average? What do you think?

 

[freedombecki]

Which way is it? I hear the rockies stopped growing, so is the US turning back east? And how about South America? That too? I know that Australia is approaching the US. Is it drifting north-east faster than North America to the east? And if there becomes a speed difference between North and South America, then will the Central American land bridge break and open up the sea currents again, to end all ice caps and bring earth's temperature back to the normal 25 C average? What do you think?

I think snails move faster than the tectonic plates.

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The theory states that Earth's outermost layer, the lithosphere, is broken into 7 large, rigid pieces called plates: the African, North American, South American, Eurasian, Australian, Antarctic, and Pacific plates. Several minor plates also exist, including the Arabian, Nazca, and Philippines plates. [/FONT]​

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]The plates are all moving in different directions and at different speeds (from 2 cm to 10 cm per year--about the speed at which your fingernails grow) in relationship to each other. The plates are moving around like cars in a demolition derby, which means they sometimes crash together, pull apart, or sideswipe each other. The place where the two plates meet is called a plate boundary. Boundaries have different names depending on how the two plates are moving in relationship to each other [/FONT]​

• [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]crashing: Convergent Boundaries, [/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]pulling apart: Divergent Boundaries, [/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]or sideswiping: Transform Boundaries [/FONT]

Earth Floor: Plate Tectonics