Why Iceland Is Slowly Splitting in Two

Iceland sits right on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart by about 2 centimetres a year. But the gap never stays empty: magma rises into it and turns into new land, so Iceland isn't breaking in two, it's getting wider (about 22 metres since the year 930). We fly over the rift in 3D, sink into Thingvellir's valley, find out why Silfra isn't really "the gap between the plates", and go under Grindavík, where on 10 November 2023 a 15-kilometre sheet of magma opened a crack under the town in about 6 hours.
Map imagery: NASA Blue Marble. 3D shots made in Blender; elevation: AWS Terrain Tiles (Mapzen/Tilezen), from SRTM (NASA), GMTED2010 (USGS), ETOPO1 (NOAA) and ArcticDEM (Polar Geospatial Center, NSF-funded). Movements in the 3D shots are hugely exaggerated.

Sources
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