(MULTI) Why Antarctica and South America Look Almost Identical

Bright Side

Have you ever looked at Antarctica and South America and thought… wait a second, they kinda match? 🌍 What if it’s more than just a weird geographical coincidence? This video dives deep into ancient supercontinents, plate tectonics, and one shape mystery no one’s really talking about. You’ll never look at a map the same way again. 🌎 Could this connection hold clues to Earth's ancient secrets? Hit play and get ready to have your mind reshaped—literally.  Animation is created by Bright Side.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV  Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Our Social Media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00See how the Antarctic Peninsula looks just like South America, but upside down?

00:05This isn't just a coincidence. It's the ghost of a 30-million-year-old breakup.

00:11These continents were once connected, but their divorce gave birth to an ocean current so powerful,

00:16it was capable of completely freezing Antarctica and shaping its landscape.

00:21Here's how it went down.

00:24Tectonic plates pulled a sneaky move and cracked open a ridiculously narrow passage in the ocean.

00:28About only 500 miles wide, forcing 4.5 trillion cubic feet of water to flow inside this geological straw.

00:37This was the birth of an ocean current stronger than the Amazon River.

00:42This ocean current, called the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, by the way, flows in a circular motion,

00:49going clockwise because of the strong winds that blow over there.

00:52This circular motion around Antarctica caused erosion, shaping the landmass of the continent into a circle,

00:59except for that stubborn peninsula, which is being slowly dragged east like a kid refusing to leave a playground.

01:06Wait, South America and Antarctica used to be one?

01:10Yep, a long time ago, South America, Australia, and Antarctica were all part of a supercontinent,

01:16called Gondwana, which also included Africa at some point.

01:22Back then, South America and Antarctica used to be basically joined at the hip by a land bridge called the Antarctic Land Bridge,

01:30which just so happened to be a lush green forest, and also a great dinosaur highway.

01:35Yeah, you heard it right.

01:38Dinosaurs.

01:39A 95 million year old dino, whose name I can't pronounce, sorry, was discovered in Australia,

01:45and scientists found out it had actually been a distant cousin of Argentina's Sarmiento Soros.

01:52Same jaw, same chiseled teeth, same everything.

01:56These guys were like identical twins, separated by an ocean.

02:00How?

02:00Because back then, Antarctica wasn't a frozen wasteland.

02:05It was a temperate rainforest, like Oregon, making it a pretty nice travel route for a dino family.

02:11But the land bridge wasn't just for dinosaurs.

02:14About 40 million years ago, the ancestors of Australia's marsupials waddled to the land down under all the way from South America,

02:22taking the Antarctica route, another proof that these continents used to be connected.

02:27Things remained somewhat peaceful for the dinoes and the marsupials until Earth's ground started moving.

02:34This is what a German scientist called the Continental Drift Theory, back in 1912.

02:40Our German friend here basically looked at the coast of South America and went,

02:44Hey, this looks like it could fit into the coast of Africa.

02:47Like a scientific Sherlock Holmes, he noticed what others had overlooked for centuries.

02:52The continents were clearly pieces of a larger puzzle.

02:57And he was right.

02:59Here's the deal.

03:00Planet Earth is made of many layers of rocks and metals, like a cosmic onion.

03:05The outermost layer, the lithosphere, is divided into pretty solid tectonic plates

03:09that move atop a layer of softer, somewhat molten rocks, like slippery ice.

03:15This is why the plates move.

03:19In fact, they've been rearranging Earth's face for billions of years,

03:23with supercontinents forming and breaking apart in cycles,

03:27like a slow-motion game of bumper cars.

03:29This movement might be pretty slow since most tectonic plates only move 0 to 3.9 inches every year,

03:37except for the Nazca plate, racing ahead at 7.8 inches, about as fast as your hair grows.

03:43But don't let their snail's pace fool you.

03:46These shifting slabs are the ultimate planet shapers.

03:49Their slow dance gives us everything from earthquakes that build mountains, like the Himalayas,

03:55to rifts that birth oceans, like the Atlantic.

03:58All because the oceanic crust is dense and sinks like a stone,

04:02while continental crust floats like a cork.

04:06It's this density difference that explains why continents exist at all.

04:10Without it, Earth would be completely covered by shallow seas.

04:15This slow-motion planetary renovation project is exactly what tore South America and Antarctica apart 30 million years ago.

04:24The plates under these continents started to drift apart in a process called crustal extension.

04:30It's like the lithosphere was pizza dough being slowly stretched until it thins and splits.

04:35As the crust stretched, it became thinner and weaker,

04:39eventually cracking like the surface of a drying lake bed.

04:43This whole thing gave birth to a new tectonic plate, the Scotia plate,

04:47that emerged between South America and Antarctica, like a geological divorce lawyer.

04:53For a while, parts of this plate stayed above water as the last gasp of the Antarctic land bridge.

04:58It was Earth's version of that one thread still connecting your hoodie after the zipper breaks.

05:04These final connections might have persisted as chains of islands,

05:07but just like that fraying hoodie, the connection couldn't last forever.

05:12Eventually, this small but mighty plate became the final nail in the coffin of the land bridge connecting the two continents.

05:18Just like all the tectonic plates, this one was also on the move.

05:23As it expanded eastward, it opened a new passage of water called the Drake Passage,

05:29slowly covering the Antarctic land bridge with ocean water.

05:33The process was like pulling open elevator doors, at first just a crack,

05:37then wider and wider until the connection was completely broken.

05:41This geographical divorce had chilling consequences.

05:44The new Drake Passage allowed the Antarctic circumpolar current to form,

05:50creating an endless loop of cold water that isolated Antarctica,

05:53shaped its land, and even cooled the entire planet.

05:57This current acts like a wall around Antarctica,

06:00blocking warm water and invasive species while regulating global climate.

06:05Eventually, Antarctica turned into an icebox that is 98% covered in ice sheets,

06:11and that holds about 61% of Earth's freshwater.

06:16Nowadays, this continent holds the title of the windiest, driest, and iciest place on Earth.

06:22It's a frozen desert, where temperatures plunge below negative 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit,

06:28cold enough to freeze your breath mid-air.

06:32A layer of ice there can be more than a mile thick,

06:34and it expands even further in winter to cover an area larger than the continental United States.

06:41Today, if you want to travel to Antarctica,

06:44the quickest sea route is through the Drake Passage,

06:46a 500-mile-wide body of water that is narrow enough for the winds to scream across thousands of miles,

06:53transforming into monstrous waves that can tower up to 49 feet,

06:58though calm days create waves only 13 to 16 feet high.

07:03Still twice as tall as Atlantic waves, mind you.

07:06This is probably why sailors call this stretch of ocean the Drake Shake.

07:12But tectonic movement isn't just about shifting continents.

07:16It's Earth's ultimate life support system.

07:19You see, about half of our planet's heat comes from radioactive decay in the core.

07:24Thanks, Uranium-235.

07:26Something like nature's nuclear reactor.

07:29This heat is behind everything from volcanoes to the very plate motion that once connected Antarctica to South America.

07:37And it only comes out of the core because of tectonic movement.

07:40Without this internal heat engine, Earth would be just like Mars.

07:45When the plates move and release heat, they also release CO2 gases into the atmosphere,

07:52regulating the temperature of our planet.

07:54And when the plates move underwater, they take a lot of this CO2 back to Earth's interior,

08:00recycling all this gas.

08:02This is why the plates can change our air, climate, and even the evolution of life itself just by moving around.

08:10But billions of years ago, these plates were not moving around.

08:14Back then, it was like Earth was wearing a solid ceramic shell with many cracks.

08:19But even without tectonic movement, the heat managed to escape through these cracks in a process called

08:25stagnant lid tectonics, kick-starting all life on Earth.

08:31And no, tectonic movement is not a thing of the past.

08:34Earthquakes are the living proof that it is not just happening today,

08:38but might repeat again on a more dramatic scale in the future.

08:42You see, to form supercontinents like Pangaea, smaller megacontinents have to dive beneath another.

08:49And scientists predict that a similar process might create a new supercontinent

08:54called Pangaea Proxima in 250 million years.

08:59By then, humans might be extinct or living on Mars,

09:02but Earth's tectonic dance will continue, even without us.

09:06Not bad for something that moves more slowly than a traffic jam.

09:11Turns out, Antarctica and South America used to be BFFs before all that tectonic drama split them up,

09:19like a messy breakup that literally froze one of them out.

09:22Now, they just awkwardly mirror each other from across the Drake Passage.

09:26Classic Axis.

09:28That's it for today.

09:29So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,

09:32then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

09:34Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.

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