From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An
island
is a piece of
land
that is surrounded by a
body of water
such as a
lake
,
river
,
sea
or
ocean
.
[1]
Islands are smaller than
continents
. Although there are many Islands that surround fresh water, the vast majority of them surround oceans.
Greenland
and
Australia
are huge islands, but they are built of continental rock, and the latter is generally considered a continent. The most ancient part of continental rock is far older and chemically more complex than the rock of the
sea floor
.
The heart of continents is their
cratons
, which are the most ancient and stable parts of the
Earth's crust
. In the cratons are all the rare elements needed for electronic equipment. They were swept up as the
Sun
moved through areas where
supernovae
had exploded. The rare elements we need were all got indirectly from supernovae explosions. The Sun's energy comes from turning hydrogen into helium.
There are some islands which do have rare elements, and that is a sign that they were once part of a large
supercontinent
. So
Great Britain
was once part of a supercontinent. The oldest rocks are 2,700 million years old, and include many rare elements only found in cratons.
[2]
Britain is a snapped-off piece of the
Old Red Sandstone
continent
, now known as
Laurasia
.
Other islands that were formed from the ocean floor, as
Japan
, and
Hawaii
were, lack most of the rare elements. Japan has for many years since
WWII
imported iron ore from
Australia
. Its seizing of
Manchukuo
(~
Manchuria
) and the infamous attack on
Pearl Harbour
no doubt had many reasons. Lack of raw materials was one of these
[3]
Now it looks for potential in its nearby deep-sea muds.
[4]
- Great Britain
218,995 km²
- Iceland
101,826 km²
- Ireland
81,638 km²
- The island in the north of
Novaja Zemlja
47,079 km²
- Spitsbergen
38,981 km²
- The island in the south of
Novaja Zemlja
33,246 km²
- Sicily
25,662 km²
- Sardinia
23,812 km²
- Nordaustlandet
(archipelago of
Svalbard
,
Norway
) 14,247 km²
- Corsica
8,741 km²
- Australia
7,662,000 km²
- Cyprus
9,234 km²
- Greenland
2,130,800 km²
- New Guinea
785,753 km²
- Borneo
748,138 km²
- Madagascar
587,041 km²
- Baffin
507,451 km²
- Sumatra
442,658 km²
- Honshu
233,000 km2
- Victoria Island
217,000 km2
- Ellesmere Island
196,000 km2
- ↑
Society, National Geographic (2012-08-27).
"island"
.
National Geographic Society
. Retrieved
2020-12-07
.
- ↑
Toghill, Peter 2000.
The geology of Britain: an introduction
. Shrewsbury: Swan Hill Press.
ISBN 1-85310-890-1
- ↑
Yamamuro, Shin'ichi. 2006.
Manchuria under Japanese dominion
. U. of Pennsylvania Press.
- ↑
Takaya, Yutaro 2018. The tremendous potential of deep-sea mud as a source of rare-earth elements.
Nature
.
8
(1): 5763.
[1]
doi:10.1038/s41598-018-23948-5. PMC 5893572.
PMID 29636486
.