• Question: Do you think the worlds surface could crack and a massive hole appear?

    Asked by EmmaB to Scott on 17 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Scott Lawrie

      Scott Lawrie answered on 17 Mar 2016:

      Have you ever heard of a ‘sink-hole’? They’re quite weird things that happen sometimes when a big pocket land under the surface disappears (because of, for example, chalky soil being eroded away over time by rain water). If this big empty space gets too big, the surface soil or roads suddenly and dramatically fall in, leaving a huge hole in the road!

      If you’re thinking of something even more dramatic, then the edges of tectonic plates can sometimes move apart during an earthquake, leaving a huge fissure in the land.

      The Earth’s surface is never likely to open up so much that you can see down to the molten rock of the mantle, though. The closest you’ll get to that is a particularly enormous volcanic eruption… like is expected to happen sometime from the SUPERVOLCANO ? at Yellowstone National Park in the USA!

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