Dr. Anjana Khatwa

We'll look upon that event as this marker in time.

You know, we will be in a new geological epoch where we begin to witness the birth of our planet through a new lens.

We're hearing the oceans coming in and flooding into that void.

The North American plate is about several thousand kilometres wide and about 200 kilometres thick.

So what we're going to see is the exposure of the mantle underneath that continental crust that has been vanished entirely.

And as the oceans flood into that void...

that semi-molten liquid mantle is going to begin to cool down immediately, at least the upper parts of it.

So we're going to see the formation of a very thin crust, but it's going to be covered over very quickly by the oceans that flood into that void.

There is going to be a lot of steam.

There is going to be a lot of water vapour.

But also there's going to be sulphur dioxide and all of the toxic fumes coming out of lava that is cooling.

The beauty that we see in North America today, that will all be gone.

It will just be this jagged mass of black rock.

You're right, because I think what we will see is the exposure of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and that is an active volcanic area.

This is the North American plate pulling apart from the Eurasian plate.

And then those lavas are all sorts of interesting rare earth minerals.

And I think what you might see is this hunger for exploration of what was previously inaccessible to us.

Well, we've lost enormous amounts of gold and silver and limestone and huge deposits of salt that you find in the southwestern states.

Limestone takes at least 50 million years to form.

We do get other reserves across the world, but not as much as we have in North America.