The continents are still moving, at about the speed your fingernails grow, and they always have.

What it means

Plate motion runs to a few centimeters a year, which sounds negligible until you multiply it by geological time. At that rate the Atlantic has opened from nothing over the past two hundred million years. Satellite positioning now measures the drift directly rather than inferring it, and the observed rates match the ones worked out decades earlier from magnetic stripes on the sea floor.

The claim comes from U.S. Geological Survey.

Nearby in the collection

The facts either side of this one.

• USGSmedium, 74 letters
• USGSmedium, 78 letters
• NPShard, 72 letters
• NASAmedium, 82 letters

About as hard as this one

Scored closest to it by the model behind our guide to solving cryptograms.

• National Weather Servicehard, 74 letters
• NOAAhard, 73 letters
• USGShard, 72 letters
• USGShard, 75 letters