The Atlantic Is Slowly Widening
The distance between New York and London changes because the cities sit on different tectonic plates. North America is carried westward on the North American Plate; Europe moves eastward with the Eurasian Plate. Along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a long underwater mountain chain, the plates pull apart. Molten rock rises into the gap, cools, and becomes new ocean floor, gradually pushing the continents farther apart.
The motion is measured in centimeters per year—roughly comparable to the pace at which fingernails grow, though rates vary by location. That makes the separation imperceptible over a human lifetime but meaningful over geological time.
What That Means for a Flight
As the plates diverge, the geographic distance between the two sides of the ocean increases by a tiny amount each year. For a New York–London trip, the change is only a fraction of an inch annually. It does not noticeably alter a flight: aircraft follow routes shaped by winds, weather, airspace, and other practical considerations, not just the shortest line between two cities.
Still, the underlying change is real. A transatlantic crossing connects places that are being carried apart, slowly, by the same process that builds new seafloor beneath the route.
