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Don't get into a dither...scientists know the 'aina is sinking, but they predict the 'aina won't disappear completely for at least another 80 million years. And unless you intend to be another Methuselah, you won't be around to have to worry about swimming to the Mainland...
Miulang
Scientists in Berkeley and elsewhere say Hawaii's fate -- some 80 million years into the future -- is a certainty not just for the Big Island, but for all the major Hawaiian islands and a string of smaller, related islets that dot the ocean toward the northwest for 1,500 miles.
As those islands vanish one by one, new volcanoes will rise from the seabed where Hawaii is now; and ultimately, those too will move northwestward and shrink beneath the waves, just as if a huge undersea conveyor belt were carrying them along from birth to oblivion.
This sad end to the tropical islands as we know them is being revealed in a geologic saga playing out deep on the ocean floor. It is there that one huge moving slab of the Earth's crust, called the Pacific plate, moves the islands along toward their fate a few inches each century.
As those islands vanish one by one, new volcanoes will rise from the seabed where Hawaii is now; and ultimately, those too will move northwestward and shrink beneath the waves, just as if a huge undersea conveyor belt were carrying them along from birth to oblivion.
This sad end to the tropical islands as we know them is being revealed in a geologic saga playing out deep on the ocean floor. It is there that one huge moving slab of the Earth's crust, called the Pacific plate, moves the islands along toward their fate a few inches each century.
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