Experts have predicted that Japan may sink in the Mariana Trench in the future. Is that true?

The earth is a rocky planet. Since the Triassic period 234 million years ago, the United Pangea continent was divided into six plates. Due to the friction between plates, the number of earthquakes caused by the movement is too large to be estimated. Some of the earthquakes are very strong. Once they happen, they are the scene of ground fissures and mountains shaking, and the damage is huge.

Therefore, the location of human survival is most afraid to be at the edge of the two plates, because the probability of an earthquake at this location will be relatively large. If it is not done well, an area will be destroyed in the earthquake and fall underground. Although people all know that it is very dangerous to live on the edge of plates, for various reasons, there are still countries and human beings living on the edge of plates.

If you want to ask which country has the highest earthquake frequency in the world, I believe many people will answer that it is Japan. Yes, Japan is a country located at the junction of plates. It has frequent seismic activities all the year round. We often see the ground cracking during the earthquake in Japan, but the Japanese are used to earthquakes.

The Japanese also know that they are in a very bad position, and the earthquake will threaten their survival at any time. However, because there are too many Japanese, and that is the place where they have lived for thousands of years, it is impossible to easily abandon the place where their ancestors lived and move to other safe places. Although Japan has frequent earthquakes, the power of science and technology is also powerful.

With the help of science and technology, Japan’s housing structure is either very simple, even if it collapses, it will not have great power to threaten people’s lives; or it is very strong. At present, Japan’s high-rise buildings are built according to the seismic coefficient above 8.0. And such buildings are mainly steel structures, so the seismic system can reach 8.5 or even 9.0.

From this, we can see how strong Japanese architecture is, which is probably the strongest architecture in the world. Therefore, although earthquakes often occur in Japan, we rarely see a large number of casualties. The geological changes in Japan have been very active since ancient times. Is it good or bad for a geologically active place in the marginal zone of the plate?

Scientists have another worry about Japan’s future: the Mariana Trench. As we all know, the Mariana Trench is the deepest ocean in the world, with an average depth of 8000 meters, and the deepest can reach 11034 meters. Mount Everest can’t fill it here. The Mariana Trench is only 200 kilometers east of the Japanese archipelago.

Therefore, next to Japan is the Mariana Trench. If this trench is a relatively stable and inactive structure, scientists naturally have nothing to worry about. However, through a large number of exploration, we found that the Mariana Trench is very active, where geological activities are frequent, and the deepest part can affect the mantle layer. Scientists have learned from seismic data that every year a large amount of water flows into the crust deep in the Mariana Trench, and then into the mantle with geological movement.

The geological activities in the Mariana Trench have accelerated the speed of expansion to Japan. Therefore, some experts predict that Japan may sink in the Mariana Trench in the future. Is this true? Later, through more research and exploration, scientists found that this statement is actually unrealistic.

Japan is a country on the continental shelf. With the extrusion of the Eurasian continental plate and the Pacific plate, the Pacific plate will be squeezed underground and even into the mantle. On the Eurasian continent, Japan will gradually uplift, some of them may fall into the trench, but some of them will drift northward, forming new Islands with the newly exposed land.

Therefore, even if the Mariana Trench continues to expand to Japan, Japan will not completely fall into it in the future, but the islands near the Mariana Trench may suffer. Although the explanation of scientists let Japan breathe a sigh of relief, people are still not optimistic about the future of Japan. Even if it will not sink in the Mariana Trench, there may be other disasters that will drown the Japanese islands. What’s the matter?

Some people may have thought of what kind of disaster. That is the rise of global sea level. As we all know, with mankind entering the era of science and technology and starting a large number of industrial activities, the earth’s ecological environment is deteriorating, the most obvious of which is the greenhouse effect caused by a large number of carbon dioxide emissions.

With the increasing global temperature, the ice and snow in the north and south poles are melting. According to the research of scientists in recent years, the global ice and snow melting speed is faster and faster year by year.

If the rising trend of global temperature is not controlled, the global ice and snow will melt one day, and the sea level will rise by more than 50 meters. If the global sea level really rises by more than 50 meters, now all coastal cities and countries will be drowned, and the island countries at sea will bear the brunt, and Japan will not be spared.

Therefore, scientists speculate that the Japanese islands will no longer exist in the future. Some people may worry that if the Japanese Islands sink, where will the Japanese on them survive? We need to know that Japan has a large population. If we want to move collectively, we need a very large territory, which maybe only Africa or Australia can accommodate.

Maybe someone will say, why not come to China? In fact, China’s population is already very large. Although the area is vast, if the sea level really rises by more than 50 meters, China’s coastal cities will also be drowned. At that time, people in coastal cities need to move inland and need a lot of land to settle down. There will be no redundant places for the Japanese to move.

Of course, this is only one case. If global glaciers melt more slowly than originally expected, there will be enough time for human mitigation. In fact, after the global ice and snow melt, people in coastal areas still have a place to live, that is, sea cities. We can build huge iron and steel cities on the sea. Even if there is no land, we can live in the cities on the sea.

Of course, it’s not easy to build a huge marine city. We need more powerful scientific and technological support, which we can’t really achieve with our current technology. We can only wait for technology to go further, so human beings are racing against time now. If we want to have more time, we need to strengthen environmental protection, slow down carbon dioxide emissions, weaken the greenhouse effect, and slow down the melting speed of ice and snow in the north and south poles.

In the early days of the earth, there was basically no land. At a glance, it was covered by the ocean. That was a real water world. Later, as a result of geological activities, the land rose from the ocean, resulting in the Pangea continent, and then the Pangea continent split into six plates. And human industrial activities are constantly transforming the earth. It is possible that in the future, the earth’s land will continue to reduce, and return to the world full of oceans again. People live in marine iron and steel cities.


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