What I’m looking for here is a map. When California has its big earthquake and if the part thats supposed to slide into the sea does. Then what would the new California map look like?
I’ve seen a map, but it was more of a general map that shows the projected path of the plates of Earth, if all tectonic plates keep moving in a projected direction. It is not online, so I can’t link to it, but the important part to remember is that the part of California west of the San Andreas fault won’t slip into the ocean, it will separate from the continental US and will become an island and continue to drift north, eventually ending up by Alaska.
Ahh…you must be refering to the latest crappy new psuedoscience movie I saw a trailer for but can’t remember the name of.
The western part of California is sliding northward, and will not “fall into the sea”. Eventually, the northward motion will seperate LA and a strip of land along the coast from the mainland and make it into an island, but not for a long time. On it’s way to becoming an island, LA will slide northward past San Fransisco.
Draw a line from Baja California up to just south of San Fransisco., this is the part of the coast that is sliding northward, and it will be tens of millions of years before it gets far enough north to totally seperate from the coast. Note that it is not sinking, just sliding.
I don’t think that any reputable geologist believes that any part of California will slide into the sea.
And guess what? Cecil agrees with me.
I grew up in LA.
As kids, we always were hoping for the Big One, when the rest of the US (the useless part) would slide into the Atlantic and we’d have twice as much beachfront property.
Surf’s Up, Duude.
California is actually a jumble of uplifted sea floor, volcanoes resulting from subduction, and islands that have been pushed against the coastline and accreted. This explains the varied geology of the state (i live near a rock formation that has been the bottom of an under sea canyon, was uplifted, and now you can see all of the cobbles that fell into the canyon trapped in sedimentary rock (carmelo formation))…
As to the OP, as others have said, no it won’t slide into the sea. And the part that would have the slightest chance is a very small bit along the coast. The oldest rocks in CA have been around since the Precambrian (600 MYA – the Mojave desert area)
Go here for a synopsis of California’s geologic history.