- 7 months ago
Scientists have discovered that something unusual is happening beneath North America. Parts of the continent’s deep foundation are thinning and slowly sinking into Earth’s mantle. Tens of kilometers of solid rock have already disappeared, reshaping what we thought was one of the most stable parts of the continent. Animation is created by Bright Side.
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Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
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For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me
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This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.
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FunTranscript
00:00The floor is lava! Haha, just kidding. But honestly, it's kind of falling apart.
00:06You might not feel it yet, but a huge part of North America has already lost 37 miles worth of rock from its foundation.
00:13And no, this isn't about earthquakes or giant sinkholes.
00:17It's about the continent losing pieces of the very thing that keeps the ground from wobbling around like a bad carnival ride.
00:24A team of researchers has just dropped a geological bombshell.
00:29Part of North America's ground is thinning out like a very sad, very slow ice cream drip.
00:35How do they know? They basically gave Earth a high-tech full-body MRI and created 3D maps showing how rocks once considered indestructible are now melting away into the planet's guts, like an upside-down cheese pizza inside an oven.
00:51But to really understand this mess, you first have to meet my old friends, cratons.
00:57Cratons are like the roots of the continents. They're thick, tough, and ancient. We're talking billions of years old.
01:05These bad boys survived meteor impacts, supervolcanoes, and even the tectonic movement of plates.
01:11If the plates got into fistfights, for example, you can bet we would see mountain ranges being born.
01:18If they got a divorce, drifting apart from each other, then a whole new ocean would be born.
01:23All of these things leave scars on the surface of Earth, but the cratons seem to always remain unfazed, like the cockroaches of geology.
01:34And since a craton can basically get punched in the face and feel nothing, scientists always assumed these things were nearly indestructible.
01:42But then, a group of researchers took their fancy machines to the test and realized that, wait, the cratons are falling apart? How?
01:53Enter the Farallon Plate, a really ancient tectonic plate that started to slide under North America's major plate over 100 million years ago.
02:02This is a pretty normal process, actually. It's called subduction, and it's how Earth recycles rocks and keeps itself from overheating.
02:12This subduction thing has been happening for so long that, by now, the Farallon is almost 400 miles away from the craton,
02:20sitting pretty chill at the lower mantle, weirdly close to the outer core of our planet.
02:26But the Farallon has been causing trouble, like that one roommate who moved out but keeps leaving weird stuff in the fridge.
02:33You see, as it sinks, it tugs on the bottom of North America's foundation, stretching it out and causing pieces to fall off into the deep mantle.
02:43And if that wasn't enough drama, the sinking Farallon has also leaked water and carbon dioxide into the surrounding rocks,
02:50making the craton even softer and easier to shred apart.
02:54Thanks, Farallon.
02:56By studying hundreds of earthquakes across thousands of monitoring stations, scientists have confirmed the story.
03:05Big chunks of continental material are dripping downward, thinning the craton by as much as 37 miles.
03:11That's more missing rocks than can fit into a milk carton.
03:15Sounds dramatic, right? But don't worry.
03:18This is happening at a snail's pace.
03:20It'll take millions of years for anything noticeable to happen.
03:23Your great-great-great-great-great-few grandkids from the distant future might still be standing on solid ground.
03:31But don't get too comfy.
03:34This thing may not be an urgent problem, but there's another type of sinking that's happening faster than you can say,
03:40Help!
03:40Here's the thing.
03:42By 2050, at least 32 major cities in the U.S., including New York, Baltimore, and Charleston, could be partially underwater.
03:51And guess what?
03:52This one is mostly our fault.
03:55Scientists noticed that, since 2007, some cities have been sinking into the ground between 0.04 and 0.08 inches every year.
04:04Charleston, in South Carolina, is pulling ahead in the worst way possible, sinking 0.15 inches annually.
04:13Sure, these numbers sound tiny and a bit ridiculous.
04:16But Charleston is barely 9 feet above sea level.
04:20And a little sinking goes a long way when the ocean is breathing down your neck.
04:24On really bad flood days, people there have to abandon their cars and basically swim home.
04:30This whole phenomenon is called land subsidence.
04:34And when you mix sinking land with rising sea levels, you get a disaster cocktail of flooded streets, salty farmland, ghost forests, and a lot of very cranky homeowners.
04:46And it doesn't stop with just homes.
04:49Infrastructure like bridges, roads, airports, and power plants, all things we rely on daily, are also at risk of serious damage.
04:58Flooded electrical grids and sunken highways could cause billions more in economic losses and create major safety hazards for communities.
05:08Now, let's be fair.
05:10Not everything is humanity's fault.
05:12Some of this trouble dates all the way back to the Ice Age.
05:16About 12,000 years ago, massive ice sheets covered the northern U.S.
05:21They were heavy.
05:22Like, seriously heavy.
05:23The weight pushed the land down, and when the ice melted, the ground didn't just pop back up like a trampoline.
05:30Instead, it started playing a weird game of geological seesaw.
05:35The places that were squished started rising, and the places that weren't got pulled down.
05:40This whole process, called glacial isostatic adjustment, try to say that three times fast.
05:46But, of course, humans found a way to make it worse.
05:50Groundwater extraction is a major culprit.
05:53Think of it like pulling the stuff out of the mattress.
05:56After a while, the whole thing just sags.
05:59In places like California's Central Valley, the land is dropping by up to 8 inches a year,
06:04because we keep pumping out water during droughts.
06:07In cities like New York, the problem isn't just water.
06:12Skyscrapers themselves are making it worse.
06:15Yep, turns out if you stack millions of tons of concrete and steel onto soft ground, it tends to flatten.
06:23And in case you're wondering, the total mass of New York City's buildings is around 1.68 trillion pounds.
06:31That's about the same as 3.5 million statues of liberty piled up.
06:35With so much weight concentrated over a relatively small area,
06:40the underlying soils have no choice but to compress over time.
06:45And if you thought it couldn't get messier, think again.
06:49We've been building dams, which stop rivers from delivering fresh sediment to coastal areas.
06:54That sediment is kind of like Mother Nature's way of fluffing the ground back up.
06:59Without it, coastal lands are compacting like an old sponge.
07:03Plus, when wetlands are drained for agriculture or construction,
07:08the peaty soil dries out and collapses.
07:11Honestly, it's like the ground just can't catch a break.
07:16Scientists also noticed that the areas that used to be lush wetlands
07:20are now among the fastest sinking spots in the country,
07:24especially along the Gulf Coast.
07:26Louisiana, for example, is losing about a football field of land
07:31because of this mix of subsidence and rising seas.
07:35So what's the endgame here for us regular people who just want to live above sea level?
07:41Well, it's not looking great.
07:43Ghost forests, which are basically drowned woodlands, are popping up.
07:48Farmland is turning salty and unusable.
07:50And even sunny-day flooding, where streets flood without any rain, is becoming a thing.
07:55Yikes!
07:57Meanwhile, over on the West Coast, California is not exactly winning either.
08:02San Francisco and Los Angeles are both sinking,
08:05which means that rising sea levels could hit them twice as hard and twice as fast.
08:11In some places, like the Palos Verdes Peninsula,
08:14the ground has been sinking so fast,
08:16people over there might as well live like moles.
08:18So, is America turning into the next Atlantis?
08:23Probably not next week, but without serious action,
08:26like cutting back on groundwater pumping and planning smarter cities,
08:30at least 500,000 people are in serious danger.
08:34And the housing damage could easily rack up a jaw-dropping $109 billion by 2050.
08:41In the end, while North America isn't about to sink like a poorly-made souffle,
08:47it's definitely showing some cracks in the crust.
08:50So maybe let's ease up on groundwater pumping,
08:53rethink how and where we build,
08:56and invest a little more in keeping our feet dry.
08:59After all, if the floor really does become lava someday,
09:03we're gonna wish we had at least fixed the leaks first.
09:08The strongest earthquake ever to strike east of the Mississippi River
09:12that happened over 200 years ago
09:14was never over, according to some scientists.
09:18Most earthquakes last seconds to minutes,
09:20and the official record-breaker so far
09:22is a silent one in Sumatra that was going on for 32 years.
09:27This slow-slip event triggered a massive quake and a tsunami.
09:31So if it's true that the new Madrid earthquake
09:33is still sending aftershocks,
09:35we'll have a new top name for this sad list.
09:39The earthquake started in December of 1811
09:42with a powerful quake in a sparsely populated part of northeast Arkansas.
09:47They felt the shaking almost 1,000 miles away in the White House,
09:50and the tower bells were ringing in Boston even further away.
09:54It even made the mighty Mississippi flow backward for a few minutes
09:58over new waterfalls formed by shifted ground.
10:01The town of New Madrid, Missouri,
10:03completely disappeared in the disaster.
10:08The Earth wouldn't stay still until the end of January the following year,
10:12when things got serious again.
10:14A massive quake hit,
10:16this time near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers,
10:20right in the Missouri boot heel.
10:21Geologists believe it was a rupture on the New Madrid Fault,
10:26putting even more strain on the nearby Real Foot Fault.
10:29Just when people thought it couldn't get worse,
10:32another two weeks of trembling passed,
10:34and the Real Foot Fault snapped deep beneath New Madrid.
10:38Down in Tennessee, about 15 miles south of New Madrid,
10:41the ground uplift created Real Foot Lake.
10:45Steamboats were chugging along the river,
10:46with thousands of trees floating and acres of woods torn apart by the quake.
10:52In St. Louis, Missouri, which is 160 miles away,
10:55buildings were badly damaged,
10:57and chimneys fell in Cincinnati, Ohio, 400 miles away.
11:01People all the way in Montreal, Canada,
11:04over 1,000 miles away, felt the Earth shake.
11:09Seismologists have registered about 200 small earthquakes
11:12in the New Madrid seismic zone every year since 1974.
11:18Some researchers believe that up to 30% of those
11:20were aftershocks from those big quakes back in 1811 and 1812.
11:26In parts of the U.S. where there's not much tectonic action going on,
11:30these aftershocks could keep rumbling for years,
11:33maybe even centuries, after the big ones hit.
11:36Aftershocks are the Earth's way of releasing
11:38all that built-up stress from the main quake.
11:41When the ground shakes from the first earthquake,
11:43it puts a lot of pressure on the rocks nearby.
11:46And when those rocks can't take it anymore,
11:49they crack, causing even more shaking.
11:52That's the aftershock.
11:53And they can be pretty intense,
11:55especially right after the main quake,
11:57but weaken over time.
12:01Not all scientists agree that contemporary earthquakes
12:05have to do with those from 200 years ago.
12:07We mostly associate faults with those lines
12:10where Earth's plates meet.
12:12But there's a whole network of those
12:14right under the center of the North American plate.
12:16They're like relics from 750 million years ago
12:20when North America was part of a supercontinent
12:23called Rodinia.
12:24When Rodinia started to break up,
12:27it left behind these rifts,
12:28weak spots in the Earth's crust
12:30that run deep beneath the modern Midwest.
12:33It could explain the earthquake action.
12:35An international team of geologists
12:38decided to take a fresh look
12:39at three major earthquakes that shook North America
12:42and end the debate.
12:44They used a new math method called the nearest neighbor.
12:48It says that if earthquakes are too close
12:50in space, time, and magnitude
12:52to be independent background events,
12:54then one is assumed to have triggered the other.
12:57Depending on how you look at the numbers,
12:59somewhere between 10 to 65 percent
13:02of the recent quakes in the region
13:04could be aftershocks of those historic earthquakes.
13:07And a huge quake that hit Charleston, South Carolina
13:10at the end of the 19th century
13:12might explain up to 72 percent
13:15of the earthquakes in the area since then.
13:17But not all places are the same.
13:20So the scientific debate continues.
13:22In 1774, British explorer James Cook
13:28noticed a glow in the distance.
13:30It was the volcano of Mount Yasser in Venuatu.
13:34This bad boy had been spewing lava and ash ever since
13:38and is quite likely that it's been doing that
13:40for way, way longer.
13:42The volcano has been sitting at alert level
13:44since October 2016,
13:47which means things are really unsettled around there.
13:50They've even marked off a 2,000-foot radius
13:52around the crater to keep people safe.
13:55There have been low to moderate outbursts,
13:57shooting out ash, gas, and steam,
14:00and some bigger blasts,
14:01throwing stuff outside the crater.
14:03Satellite images have picked up
14:05on some hot spots of sulfur dioxide plumes,
14:08showing that Yasser is still cooking up
14:10a big storm down there.
14:13Stromboli, one of the volcanic islands near Sicily,
14:16officially has the Guinness World Record
14:18as the longest continuously erupting volcano.
14:21It has been putting on a fiery show
14:23for over 2,400 years straight.
14:27Ancient sailors nicknamed it
14:29the lighthouse of the Mediterranean.
14:31Most of the time,
14:32Stromboli's just spitting out spatter.
14:34But every now and then,
14:36it throws in some lava flows
14:38or shoots up some moderately high fountains.
14:41Sometimes, you might even catch a glimpse
14:43of steam-driven outbursts.
14:45Over 200 million years ago,
14:49the world went through a major makeover,
14:52with not one, not two,
14:53but four massive volcanic eruptions
14:56changing the game.
14:57It all happened in Renzelia,
14:59a large chunk of island
15:01that used to be a supermassive volcano
15:03stretching across what's now
15:05British Columbia and Alaska.
15:07This volcanic activity
15:08might have helped dinosaurs
15:10grow from cat-sized critters
15:12into giants we saw in Jurassic Park.
15:15It kicked off a 2-million-year rainy season.
15:18It made the whole world hot and humid,
15:20and the dinos just loved it.
15:23Researchers dug deep into sediment layers
15:25beneath an ancient lake in China
15:27to uncover these secrets.
15:29They found traces of volcanic ash and mercury,
15:32clear signs of those epic eruptions.
15:35There were carbon signatures
15:36showing huge spikes in carbon dioxide levels,
15:39making the atmosphere toasty
15:40and the rain pouring down.
15:43It all happened in four separate pulses,
15:45each triggered by those
15:46monstrous volcanic blasts.
15:51There's a spot in a national park
15:53not too far away from Sydney, Australia,
15:55where a fire has been raging deep underground
15:58for at least 6,000 years.
16:00They call it Burning Mountain,
16:02and it's a coal-seam fire,
16:04burning its way through a layer of coal
16:06beneath the Earth's surface.
16:07Once these underground fires start,
16:10they're pretty much impossible to put out.
16:12This ball of fire is up to 30 feet wide
16:15and extremely hot,
16:16but there's no flame.
16:17It's smoldering.
16:19The fire has been creeping along
16:20at a pace of about 3 feet per year.
16:23A local farmer first spotted it in the 19th century
16:26and thought it was a volcano.
16:28The people who have lived here for ages
16:30believe this place is sacred.
16:32They've used it for cooking and crafting tools,
16:34and tell that it started from a widow's tears
16:37or the torch of a hero.
16:39But experts think it could have been a lightning strike
16:42or coal heating up like a summer barbecue
16:45from the interaction with oxygen.
16:50Some say it might have been burning
16:51since before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
16:54No one knows exactly how long this mountain will burn
16:57or in what direction it'll move.
16:59Right now, the coal has enough oxygen to burn for centuries
17:02or even millennia without human intervention.
17:06The fire is heating up the mountain like a giant oven,
17:09making it crack and crumble,
17:11inviting in more oxygen to feed on.
17:13Even if humans decide to take action,
17:16these coal-seam fires need truckloads of water
17:18and liquid nitrogen to tame them.
17:21Several years ago,
17:22explorers noticed that the smolder
17:24was creeping close to a cliff
17:26overlooking a little river.
17:27And depending on what the coal-seam decides to do next,
17:31we could see some dramatic changes
17:33here in the coming decades.
17:35There could be flames with much more heat,
17:37or the coal-seam could go deep,
17:39extinguish itself,
17:41and smolder out.
17:44That's it for today.
17:45So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,
17:47then give the video a like
17:49and share it with your friends.
17:50Or if you want more,
17:51just click on these videos
17:52and stay on the bright side!
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