I ask myself this more regularly than I'd care to admit. And the ugly truth is that I don't know exactly. But what I do know is what I think I am going to do. Well, this could be very dangerous. Just like in life, in science, these are two very distinct things.
The simplest answer is that I'm going on a 47 day trip to Finland to collect samples for my PhD (how ridiculous is that?). I land in Helsinki and then a few days later I'll head north to Santa's village, Sodankyla. Although, I hear he's taken a liking to the trending geriatric getaway that is Florida. I'm assured it's not for the sport of alligator hunting (or is that crocodiles?). Anyways, I'm headed slightly north of the arctic circle all for the purpose of continental reconstruction. Remember Pangea? Well, we're working to reconstruct a supercontinent called Superia that came well before. Pangea, at ~270 - 200 million years old, is a baby compared to Superia. The rocks I'll be looking at could date back to 2500 - 2050 million years old. Our beautiful Earth has been alive for a very long time and I find that absolutely fascinating.
So the rocks that I want to look at aren't actually what THE Superia supercraton were made of exactly... instead, that's what my rocks are sitting on. So the idea goes that we had these continents as happy as can be just floating along. All of a sudden we get magmatic activity and that activity (resulting in the magmatic rocks that I will study) is what drove continental breakup.
But why? Why did continental break up occur then? And why did continents form in the first place? All these questions. I could go into more detail but I've got a pizza in the oven that needs my attention.
There's a lesson on priority.
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