• Question: Hello, i was just wondering if any of you could tell me with the earths crust moving all of the time, where will the United Kingdom be situated on the planet in another million years time.

    Asked by heavyrain to Clare, Dave, Glo, Sean on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sean Clement

      Sean Clement answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Well, we are currently sat on the Eurasian Plate along with half of the Atlantic Ocean seabed, Most of Europe and Asia and half of Iceland. We’re being moved Eastward by the the spreading of the Mid-Atlantic ridge at around 2cm per year. It’s unlikely that the UK itself will move from its current position on the Eurasian plate, (i.e. it won’t get any closer to Norway or any further away from France than it is at the moment) so we’ll probably be about 2 million cm east of where we are now! This works out as about 2000km east of where we are now, or just over 1200 miles. The Earth will probably look a lot different by that point though as Sea levels may have changed and some parts of the country will have been eroded away by the sea. Of course, this is all rough guesswork and there maybe some Geologists out there who can prove me wrong…

    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Yup, think I’d agree with everthing Sean has said there!

    • Photo: Gloeta Massie

      Gloeta Massie answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      Going to have to defer to Sean on this one. I did find this cool video: http://www2.nau.edu/rcb7/index.html, but I couldn’t find out where they sourced their future maps. (The paleogeo maps are on this cool website: http://www2.nau.edu/rcb7/index.html).

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