WORLD INFO
All You Need to Know About Continents: Facts and More
A continent is defined as one of the larger area or large continuous or vast or great division of landmasses of the globe including both dry land and continental shelves or land separated by large water bodies. Earth surface has seven largest to smallest continents (chronologically) such as:
1. Asia
Credit -Freepik -amanitasilvicora
These continents make up a total of 57 million square miles of land.
The more than two-thirds of the earth’s surface is covered by water. Asia and Africa are the two biggest continents.
How were the continents formed ?
Through the movement of tectonic plates, over million years ago the world seven continents have been formed.
Important Geophysical Phenomena
In Context
A recent study that appeared in the journal Nature suggests that the continents on Earth may have formed as a result of massive meteorite impacts.
More about the study
According to the study, Earth’s continents were formed by massive meteorite impacts that were common during the first billion years of our planet’s four and a half billion-year history.
Meteorite impacts released enormous amounts of energy, resulting in the formation of oceanic plates, which later evolved into continents.
The process:
According to the study, the giant meteorite hit Earth and melted the outer shell of the Earth, or the lithosphere, releasing pressure on the underlying mantle. As a result, the mantle melted, resulting in an oceanic plateau.
Significance:
• Earth is the only planet known to have continents, and scientists are fascinated by the evolution and formation of the continents, making it the most researched field among planetary scientists.
• It is well known that numerous such impacts have hit the planet since archaic times, but this research provides the first solid evidence that the processes that eventually formed the continents began with giant meteorite impacts, similar to those responsible for dinosaur extinction but occurring billions of years earlier.
• Understanding the formation and evolution of continents is important because it is the key to reserves of metals such as lithium, tin, and nickel, which are required to develop batteries, according to the study.
Meteorites impact other planets as well, so why is this phenomenon unique to Earth?
By the time the flux of effects decreased, other rocky planets and the moon had little or no water.
• An impact event occurs when two astronomical objects collide and cause measurable effects. Impact events have physical consequences and are observed on a regular basis in planetary systems, though the most common involve asteroids, comets, or meteoroids and have little effect.
• Significant physical and biospheric consequences can occur when large objects collide with terrestrial planets like Earth, though atmospheres mitigate many surface impacts through atmospheric entry.
Major impact events have shaped Earth’s history, playing a role in the formation of the Earth- Moon system and the evolution of life.
The origin of water on Earth, as well as a number of mass extinctions.
Alfred Wegener developed this concept from the 1950s to the 1970s, the hypothesis of plate tectonics is the cutting edge update to mainland float, a thought originally proposed by researcher Alfred Wegener in 1912 which expressed that World’s landmasses had “floated” across the planet over the long haul.
Wegener didn’t have a right clarification for how landmasses could move all over the world, yet specialists do now.
The Earth has a rigid outer layer known as the lithosphere, which is typically about 100 km (60 miles) thick and sits on top of a plastic (moldable, partially molten) layer known as the asthenosphere.
Plate tectonics is the hypothesis that World’s external shell is partitioned into enormous chunks of strong stone, called “plates,” that skim over Earth’s mantle, the rough inward layer over Earth’s center.
Earth’s strong external layer, which incorporates the covering and the highest mantle, is known as the Lithosphere.
Below the lithosphere is the asthenosphere — a thick layer kept flexible by heat profound inside the Earth.
It greases up the undersides of Earth’s structural plates, permitting the lithosphere to move around.
The Earth’s Lithosphere is partitioned into seven very large continental and ocean-sized plates, six or seven medium-sized regional plates, and a few small plates.
These plates move in relation to one another.
They move at a rate of 5 to 10 cm (2 to 4 inches) per year and interact along their borders.
They converge, diverge, or pass each other.
Major Plates:
The Antarctic Plate (and its surrounding oceanic plate).
The Plate of North America (with western Atlantic floor separated from the South American plate along the Caribbean islands).
The South American Plate (which is separated from the North American Plate by the Caribbean Islands).
The Plate of the Pacific.
The Plate between India, Australia, and New Zealand.
Africa, including the eastern Atlantic floor Plate.
Eurasia and its neighboring oceanic Plate.
Minor plates of note include:
Cocos Plate: Located between Central America and the Pacific Plate.
South America and the Pacific Plate is located between the nazca plate.
Arabian Plate: The landmass of Saudi Arabia.
The Philippine Plate is located between the Asiatic and Pacific plates.
Caroline Plate: Located north of New Guinea, between the Philippine and Indian plates.
The Fuji Plate is located to the north-east of Australia.
Juan de Fuca Plate: Located south-east of the North American Plate.
Three types of tectonic boundaries are formed by the movement of the tectonic plates:
Convergent plates move into one another
Divergent plates move apart.
Transform, in which plates move sideways relative to one another.
Mountain formation is caused by plate motions where plates push together or converge.
Oceans form where plates pull apart or diverge, and continents fracture.
The continents are embedded in the plates and drift passively with them, resulting in significant changes in the Earth’s geography over millions of years.
Although earthquakes and volcanoes can occur in plate interiors, such interactions are thought to account for the majority of Earth’s seismic and volcanic activity.
Evidence of Plate Tectonic Theory:
• Continent Puzzle: Pangaea is formed by the continents fitting together almost like puzzle pieces (one super-continent).
Prehistoric evidence:-
Fossils from different continents are similar to fossils from previously connected continents.
Different life forms evolved as the continents separated.
Rock distributions: The majority of rock distributions within the Earth’s crust, including minerals, fossil fuels, and energy resources, are a direct result of the history of plate motions and collisions, as well as the corresponding changes in continent and ocean basin configurations.
Important Geophysical Phenomena –
Why in News?
As per another review, the world’s landmasses were shaped by enormous shooting star influences that were common during the initial billion years of our planet’s four and a half billion-year history.
What are the Highlights of the Study?
About:
Meteorite influences created enormous energy to frame maritime plates, which later advanced into landmasses.
The hypothesis that goliath shooting star influences framed mainland’s had been around for quite a long time, however as of recently, there was minimal strong proof for its help.
The Current hypothesis is the most regularly acknowledged hypothesis set up that credits mainland development to the development of structural plates.
Proof for Shooting star Effect Hypothesis:
Zircon crytals in Pilbara Craton: The analysts searched for proof in zircon precious stones implanted in rocks from the Pilbara Craton in Western Australia. This craton is the leftover of an old outside layer that started shaping multiple a long time back.
Zircons are shaped by the crystallization of magma or are tracked down in transformative rocks.
They go about as minuscule time cases, recording the time of geologic movement. Fresher zircon adds to the first gem over the natural course of time.
The investigation of the variations or isotopes of oxygen inside these gems i.e., oxygen-18 and oxygen-16 and their proportion assisted with assessing past temperatures.
Older grains of zircon had the lighter oxygen-16. The more youthful ones contained the heavier oxygen-18.
Cratons: A craton is an old and stable piece of the mainland lithosphere, which comprises of Earth’s two highest layers, the covering and the highest mantle.
Need for Understanding the Formation of Continents:
Understanding the arrangement and development of landmasses is significant, as it is the way to stores of metals like lithium, tin and nickel.
Most of Earth’s biomass and most people live on these bodies of land, so understanding how mainland’s structure and advance is essential.
1. Continental drift theory is concerned with the distribution of oceans and continents.
2. Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist, proposed it first in 1912.
3. According to the theory, all of the continents formed a single continental mass called Pangea, which was surrounded by a massive ocean called Panthalassa.
4. Around 200 million years ago, Pangaea began to split into two large continental masses known as Laurasia and Gondwanaland, which formed the northern and southern components, respectively.
5. Laurasia and Gondwanaland subsequently split into the various smaller continents that exist today.
Prominent Evidence in Support of Continental Drift Theory
• South America and Africa appear to fit together, particularly the eastern bulge of Brazil, which appears to fit into the Gulf of Guinea and Greenland appears to fit in with the Ellesmere and Baffin islands.
• The west coasts of India, Madagascar, and Africa appear to be appropriate.
• The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is formed by North and South America on one side and Africa and Europe on the other.
Alfred Wegner studied ancient plant and animal fossils, geographical features on the continent’s borders, and mineral resources, and discovered similar results on the boundaries of other continents.
What is the purpose of capital in all nations?
You may wonder why nations require capital in the first place. What is the importance of a capital city?
The term ‘capital’ is derived from the Latin caput, which means ‘head’.
The capital of a country serves as the state’s highest point.
It is an excellent community for any administration-related administrations or offices.
Individuals sitting in the capital, which represents power, largely constrain the organisation of the nation.
Nauru is the only country on the planet without a government capital.
It was previously known as Wonderful Island. It is the third-smallest country in terms of region and the second-smallest in terms of population. Whatever the case may be, Yaren.
Nauru, an island in the Pacific Ocean, is the world’s second-smallest republic—but it lacks even a capital city.
Land and seas:
The beach is located where the land meets the ocean. It gets even more interesting beyond the beach. The beach is a minor component of the Continental Shelf, which is a broad, relatively shallow underwater terrace that forms part of the continental crust.
As you move away from the coast, you will come to a cliff at the end of the terrace. The slope is known as the Continental Slope, and it runs from the shelf to the ocean floor. Following the underwater scarp leads to the Abyssal Plain, a vast flat seafloor area hundreds of kilometers wide and thousands of kilometers long, at depths ranging from 3,000 to 6,000 meters (10,000 to 20,000 feet).
Coastal Zone with coastal plain (on land), continental shelf (under water), continental slope and abyssal plain.
Land Transfers
Plate tectonics is the process by which continents move. During this process, the Earth’s rigid outer shell, the lithosphere, glides over the asthenosphere, the hot upper layer of the Earth’s mantle, which is rather soft, highly viscous, and less dense.
It takes a long time for continents to form; it takes millions of years. The lithosphere’s various plates move at a rate of 3 to 20 cm (1 to 8 inches) per year relative to one another. The forces that cause continents to move across the Earth’s surface are not completely understood.
Theory 1: Large scale convection currents in the mantle generate enough power to move the plates due to the heating and cooling of mantle matter.
Theory 2: Plumes, jets of partially molten rock material rising to the Earth’s surface between mid-ocean ridges, adding matter to the crust and pushing the plates in opposite directions.
At oceanic ridges, tectonic plates may move apart, collide at subduction zones, or slide past one another along fault lines.
Zealandia is a portion of a continent that is mostly underwater in the Pacific Ocean and was formerly a component of Gondwana. It split from Australia between 60 and 85 million years ago. Australia’s size is roughly split in half by Zealandia. The parts of the continent that are not under water are called New Zealand, together with its neighboring islands, New Caledonia, and some Australian island territories like the Lord Howe Islands and Norfolk Island.
Even though Zealandia only has a few islands, geologists from New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Australia determined that it meets all the criteria to be classified as a continent* and would be the tiniest continent in the entire globe.
A vast, continuous, distinct mass of land is referred to as a continent.
The island of Mauritius was formed by volcanic activity about 8 million years ago, making it relatively young geologically.
Yet, the discovery of old zircons on the island—about 3,000 million years old and far too old to be from the island—suggests the existence of a “lost” continent beneath Mauritius.
Mauritius is located at the southern extremity of the Mascarene Plateau, which resembles a continental shelf but doesn’t have a continent, according to a chart of the area’s ocean floor.
The Seychelles archipelago is located near the northernmost point of the plateau. Granite rock, which is extensively dispersed throughout the continental crust, makes up several of its islands.
Mauritia is thought to have been a small, wedged-in continental piece.
There are how many continents in the world?
Six continents, however there is no accepted definition of how many there are. Many children in Europe learn about the six continents, which include one America made up of both North and South America. These six Australia/Oceania, Asia, Africa, America, and Antarctica continents are six .
There are at most seven continents, which are Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America.
Today, many scientists and geographers refer to six continents, combining Europe and Asia.
Oceania—is it a continent?
Actually, the South Pacific Islands of Oceania aren’t a continent under the definition of a continent as a sizable continuous stretch of land. Even yet, one may still claim that they are part of a continent; for instance, Oceania is occasionally considered a part of Australia’s continent.
The Olympic Rings, a symbol for the five (inhabited) continents of the world: Oceania/Australia, Africa, America, Asia, and Europe.
The modern Olympic Games’ “father,” Pierre de Coubertin, created the rings in 1912.
The roots of the continent’s name.
The origins of the names for the continents.
Land continens, the “constant land,” comes from the Latin “continere,” and that signifies “to keep intact.”
Africa:
The northern region of Africa, known as Africa Terra (Latin for “African Land”), was a component of the Roman Empire. Roman Latin’s transliteration of the Phoenician word Afryqah, which means “colony,” suggests that the Roman name may have its origins there.
The USA:
Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian navigator who made two (or four) voyages to America with Spanish and Portuguese expeditions, provided the inspiration for the term America, which was first used in 1507 by the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller in his work “Cosmographiae Introductory.” Vespucci was the first to understand that America was a separate continent from Asia.
Asia:
Latin and Greek beginning – the “Eastern Land,” it is guessed to be from the word asu “to go out, to ascend,” regarding the sun, in this manner “the place that is known for the dawn.”
Australia:
Latin – Land Australis incognita the “Obscure Southern Land,” a fanciful, speculative mainland, a huge body of land in the south of the Indian Sea, the alleged partner of the Northern Side of the equator.
Europe:
Latin and Greek beginning. Europe, Europe, frequently made sense of as “expansive face,” from eurys “wide” and operations “face.” Some recommend a potential semantic beginning by the Sumerian expression erebu with the significance of “murkiness” and “to go down, set” (concerning the sun), which would resemble Situate.
Oceania:
From the French Expression Oceanie, the southern Pacific Islands and Australia imagined as a mainland”.
Antarctica:
Old French: antartique, in Current Latin: antarcticus, in Greek: antarktikos, from against: “inverse” + arktikos: “of the north.”
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