{"id":182797,"date":"2024-02-16T01:24:50","date_gmt":"2024-02-16T07:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/how-do-oceans-start-to-close-new-study-suggests-the-atlantic-may-soon-enter-its-declining-phase"},"modified":"2024-02-16T01:24:50","modified_gmt":"2024-02-16T07:24:50","slug":"how-do-oceans-start-to-close-new-study-suggests-the-atlantic-may-soon-enter-its-declining-phase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/how-do-oceans-start-to-close-new-study-suggests-the-atlantic-may-soon-enter-its-declining-phase","title":{"rendered":"How do oceans start to close? New study suggests the Atlantic may \u2018soon\u2019 enter its declining phase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-do-oceans-start-to-close-new-study-suggests-the-atlantic-may-soon-enter-its-declining-phase2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new study, resorting to computational models, predicts that a subduction zone currently below the Gibraltar Strait will propagate further inside the Atlantic and contribute to forming an Atlantic subduction system\u2014an Atlantic ring of fire. This will happen \u2018soon\u2019 in geological terms\u2014in approximately 20 million years.<\/p>\n<p>Oceans seem eternal to our lifespan, but they are not here for long: they are born, grow, and one day close. This process, which takes a few hundred million years, is called Wilson Cycle. The Atlantic, for example, was born when Pangea broke up around 180 million years ago and will one day close. And the Mediterranean is what remains from a big ocean\u2014the Tethys\u2013 that once existed between Africa and Eurasia.<\/p>\n<p>For an ocean like the Atlantic to stop growing and start closing, new subduction zones\u2014places where one tectonic plate sinks below another\u2014have to form. But subduction zones are hard to form, as they require plates to break and bend, and plates are very strong. A way out of this \u201cparadox\u201d is to consider that subduction zones can migrate from a dying ocean in which they already exist\u2014the Mediterranean\u2014into pristine oceans\u2014such as the Atlantic. This process was dubbed subduction invasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new study, resorting to computational models, predicts that a subduction zone currently below the Gibraltar Strait will propagate further inside the Atlantic and contribute to forming an Atlantic subduction system\u2014an Atlantic ring of fire. This will happen \u2018soon\u2019 in geological terms\u2014in approximately 20 million years. Oceans seem eternal to our lifespan, but they are [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}