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Polflucht (from German, flight from the poles) is a geophysical concept invoked in 1922 by Alfred Wegener to explain his ideas of continental drift. The pole-flight force F P f {\displaystyle F_{\mathrm {Pf} }} is that component of the centrifugal force during the rotation of the Earth that acts tangentially to the Earth's surface.
Continental drift is a highly supported scientific theory, originating in the early 20th century, that Earth's continents move or drift relative to each other over geologic time. [1] The theory of continental drift has since been validated and incorporated into the science of plate tectonics , which studies the movement of the continents as ...
Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (1802–1885) was a French geographer and geologist who theorized about the possibility of continental drift, anticipating Wegener's theories concerning Pangaea by several decades. In 1858, Snider-Pellegrini published his book, La Création et ses mystères dévoilés ("The Creation and its Mysteries Unveiled").
Alfred Wegener has been mischaracterised as a lone genius whose theory of continental drift met widespread rejection until well after his death. In fact, the main tenets of the theory gained widespread acceptance by European researchers already in the 1920s, and the debates were mostly about specific details.
The evolution of tectonophysics is closely linked to the history of the continental drift and plate tectonics hypotheses. The continental drift/ Airy-Heiskanen isostasy hypothesis had many flaws and scarce data. The fixist/ Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the contracting Earth and the expanding Earth concepts had many flaws as well.
Wegener's continental drift hypotheses is a logical consequence of: the theory of thrusting (alpine geology), the isostasy, the continents forms resulting from the supercontinent Gondwana break up, the past and present-day life forms on both sides of the Gondwana continent margins, and the Permo-Carboniferous moraine deposits in South Gondwana.
The tetrahedral hypothesis is an obsolete scientific theory attempting to explain the arrangement of the Earth's continents and oceans by referring to the geometry of a tetrahedron. Although it was a historically interesting theory in the late 19th and early 20th century, it was superseded by the concepts of continental drift and modern plate ...
The widespread distribution of Permo-Carboniferous glacial sediments in South America, Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Antarctica and Australia was one of the major pieces of evidence for the theory of continental drift, and led ultimately to the concept of a super-continent, Pangaea.