Thursday, 13 August 2015

America and Eurasia - We Never Were Going to Get Close

Whilst in Iceland last week we twice visited the divergence zone of the North American and Eurasia continental plates.  They are zooming apart at up to 25mm per annum.
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We visited the wonderful spot, Þhingvellir where there are amazing cascades of water from America to Eurasia - over a 40m drop.  This is the best spot on land to see the spreading mid Atlantic ridge.

Below you can see, on the right, the high and mighty N American plate, and to the left, the humble - yeh, right - Eurasian one. My girls were standing on new shiny 9000 year old ground (and slightly newer board walk) here.
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A few days later we visited another site of this divergence zone: a good map is at the USGS site.  We were in the far south west of Iceland at Reykjanesbær and visited the bridge at Sandvík.  This bridge was built recently in 2002 as a symbol between America and Europe (here right and left).
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It was windy in the gap.
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Do you think we'll ever meet and make up?

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