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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We actually don’t know. Well, we know how statistics works and whatnot, and that’s sort of why, but we actually don’t know the mechanism. There is a simplified version though that I’ll try to give her, but just know that this is not rooted in theory, it’s more of a hypothesis that we have.
Take a sphere, and put two panels on it, next to each other. These are your continental plates for this experiment. Now for each one, pick a direction, and start moving it. Eventually they will hit each other again. It does not matter which directions or speeds you choose, eventually they will hit. Alternatively, take those plates, move them away half a sphere, and then have them follow the same path back. Of course they will hit again. These two mechanisms are the statistics of why plate tectonics will produce super continents: eventually it’ll all end up together again anyways.
The problem is that this explains that it happens, but not why it happens. We just don’t know why it happens as often as it has on earth, and it could simply be coincidence, but scientists don’t like that as an explanation. There could also be an underlying mechanism regarding the viscosity of the mantle or the angular velocity of the earth or Cthulhu just moving around pieces like a toddler playing with cars or something we don’t know really. It is interesting to not that we thought we knew, but then, we found out that the super continents may have formed differently than we thought they did.
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