Scientists have prepared a video based on an article in the journal Nature. It shows continental breakup and coalescence over the last 240 million years. Orange light pulses indicate kimberlite eruption. Each one is accompanied by a step. Higher latitudes are represented by higher pitches, lower latitudes are represented by lower pitches.

Meanwhile, the melody in the background hints at what’s happening to the tectonic plates. As the continents break apart and break apart, the sounds become brighter and more elemental. Often when they combine, the sound is calmer.

The result is an audio and visual representation of Earth’s natural history. Kimberlite eruptions occur in places where diamonds are often found today, especially in South Africa.

The images show that the eruptions began shortly after the break-up of the supercontinent Pangea and spread inward over millions of years into the interior of the reformed modern continents.

Previously, scientists had learned that these processes were caused by the splitting of continents during the break-up of the supercontinent. It is slowly destabilizing neighboring regions. This is apparently enough to cause sudden eruptions of kimberlites.

Kimberlites are a series of extrusive facies igneous ultramafic rocks that form dykes and sills as well as eruption pipes. They often contain xenoliths of mantle rocks and sometimes contain industrial concentrations of diamonds.

A scientific paper on the new “sonification” was published in the journal Nature News Earth & Environment. The sonics were created at SYSTEM Sounds, a science and arts organization that often works with NASA to represent cosmological objects such as black holes. Source