It’s been estimated that in all of Earth’s history, there have been 7 supercontinents, with the most recent one being Pangaea.
The next supercontinent (Pangaea Ultima) is expected to form in around 250 million years.
Why is this the case? What phenomenon causes these giant landmasses to coalesce, break apart, then coalesce again?
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The top comments here are all correct, and even more broadly speaking this has something to do with the formation of the moon – as far as we know a large mercury sized object slammed into early Earth, threw off a bunch of material that eventually coalesced into the moon, and basically blew a hole in the early continents and “cracked” the crust, plate tectonics are essentially the million year long ripples of this event. That’s an unbelievably simple picture of it, but this is ELI5.
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