the Triassic period some 250 million years ago, earthquakes began to rock the spot where New Jersey nestled against Morocco. Volcanic eruptions spewed huge amounts of lava and gas. As a result, the region literally began to pull itself apart.

“As it rifted, it stretched and thinned that piece of [continental] crust just like if you take a bit of toffee and pull the two sides of it,” says Alan Collins at the University of Adelaide in South Australia, who was not involved in the study.

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Just as the toffee might droop, the continental crust formed valleys so deep that ocean water rushed in. The region continued to spread and the Atlantic Ocean was formed.

That ocean continues to grow today. Take a submarinea kink in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain — the mostly undersea mountain range that composes the Hawaiian Islands and shows the movement of the Pacific plate over the past several million years. The kink, which took place some 47 million years ago, shows a shift in the plate that caused the islands to inexplicably veer Northwest.

Still, it’s fun to speculate. Collins thinks the Atlantic will soon stop expanding and in accordion-like fashion start closing, its seafloor sucked down below the continents. This will transform the eastern Americas and Western Europe and Africa into worlds struck by earthquakes and eruptions from newly formed volcanoes. The eastern United States will no longer be known for the peaceful green slopes of Appalachians, but for snow-covered giants that occasionally spew lava and