"plate tectonics theory. In particular, the English geologist Arthur Holmes proposed in 1920 that plate junctions might lie beneath the sea, and in 1928 that convection currents within the mantle might be the driving force. Holmes' views were particularly influential: in his bestselling textbook, ""Principles of Physical Geology,"" he included a chapter on continental drift, proposing that Earth's mantle contained convection cells which dissipated radioactive heat and moved the crust at the surface. Holmes' proposal resolved the phase disequilibrium objection (the underlying fluid was kept from solidifying by radioactive heating from the core). However, scientific communication in the '30 and"
"of the changes is Continental Drift. The theory of Continental Drift, created by Alfred Wegener, explained how the continents shifted Earth’s surface and how that affected many aspects such as climate, rock formations found on different continents and plant and animal fossils. Wegener studied plant fossils from the frigid Arctic of Svalbard, Norway. He determined that such plants were not adapted to a glacial climate. The fossils he found were from tropical plants that were adapted to thrive in warmer and tropical climates. Because he would not assume that the plant fossils were capable of traveling to a different place,"
"concept of continental drift. Striations indicated glacial flow away from the equator and toward the poles, based on continents' current positions and orientations, and supported the idea that the southern continents had previously been in dramatically different locations that were contiguous with one another. Continental drift Continental drift is the theory that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have ""drifted"" across the ocean bed. The speculation that continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener"
"Continental Drift (novel) Continental Drift is a 1985 novel by Russell Banks. Set in the early 1980s, it follows two plots, through which Banks explores the relationship between apparently distant people drawn together in the world under globalization, which Banks compares to the geologic phenomena of continental drift. The first plot features Bob DuBois, a working class New Englander who heads to Florida in the hopes of striking it rich; the second plot traces the journey of Vanise Dorsinville from Haiti to Florida. It is an avowedly political work, whose stated aim is to ""destroy the world as it is."""
"Kontinente und Ozeane"", but only once, when Wegener refers to the ancient supercontinent as ""the Pangaea of the Carboniferous"". Wegener used the Germanized form ""Pangäa"", but the name entered German and English scientific literature (in 1922 and 1926, respectively) in the Latinized form ""Pangaea"" (of the Greek ""Pangaia""), especially due to a symposium of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in November 1926.<ref name=""Waterschoot/Gracht"">Willem A. J. M. van Waterschoot van der Gracht (and 13 other authors): ""Theory of Continental Drift: a Symposium of the Origin and Movements of Land-masses of both Inter-Continental and Intra-Continental, as proposed by Alfred Wegener."" X"
"the scientific and cultural change which developed from the acceptance of the plate tectonics theory. The event was a paradigm shift and scientific revolution. Continental drift theory helps biogeographers to explain the disjunct biogeographic distribution of present-day life found on different continents but having similar ancestors. In particular, it explains the Gondwanan distribution of ratites and the Antarctic flora. Reconstruction is used to establish past (and future) plate configurations, helping determine the shape and make-up of ancient supercontinents and providing a basis for paleogeography. Current plate boundaries are defined by their seismicity. Past plate boundaries within existing plates are identified"
"continental drift, first in the German language area and later internationally. Withering criticism was the response of most experts. In 1924 Wegener was appointed to a professorship in meteorology and geophysics in Graz, which finally provided him with a secure position for himself and his family. He concentrated on physics and the optics of the atmosphere as well as the study of tornados. Scientific assessment of his second Greenland expedition (ice measurements, atmospheric optics, etc.) continued to the end of the 1920s. In November 1926 Wegener presented his continental drift theory at a symposium of the American Association of Petroleum"
"Arctic Drift Arctic Drift is a Dirk Pitt novel, the 20th of the series and was released on November 25, 2008. The plot begins in the year 1847, when the Franklin Expedition becomes stranded trying to find the Northwest Passage. They experience a harsh winter. The men are seemingly going mad. Their stranded ships (""Erebus"" and ""Terror"") are loaded with a mysterious, unidentified silvery metal. The story switches to the present day. There is an ongoing quest to save the earth from Global Warming. All of the world's scientists are looking for a solution. Some people are trying to thwart"
"either side of the Wallace Line, and the sharp difference that existed between North and South America prior to their relatively recent faunal interchange, can only be understood in this light. Otherwise, the field of biogeography would be seen as a purely descriptive one. Moving on to the 20th century, Alfred Wegener introduced the Theory of Continental Drift in 1912, though it was not widely accepted until the 1960s. This theory was revolutionary because it changed the way that everyone thought about species and their distribution around the globe. The theory explained how continents were formerly joined together in one"
"formation of mountains; Plate Tectonics built on the theory of continental drift. Unfortunately, Wegener provided no convincing mechanism for this drift, and his ideas were not generally accepted during his lifetime. Arthur Homes accepted Wegener's theory and provided a mechanism: mantle convection, to cause the continents to move. However, it was not until after the Second World War that new evidence started to accumulate that supported continental drift. There followed a period of 20 extremely exciting years where the Theory of Continental Drift developed from being believed by a few to being the cornerstone of modern Geology. Beginning in 1947"
"Theory of Continental Drift. In South Africa the layer is known as the Dwyka Group. It is the earliest and lowermost of the Karoo Supergroup of sedimentary deposits. As Gondwana drifted away from the South Pole, the glaciers melted, leaving a vast inland sea, extending across South Africa, and neighboring regions of Gondwana. It might have had an opening to the ocean (similar to the Black Sea) but tidal effects were small. Rivers draining mountains to the north of the Karoo Sea formed large swampy deltas in which plants belonging to the ""Glossopteris"" flora flourished. This dense vegetation accumulated as"
"Alfred Wegener Alfred Lothar Wegener (; ; – ) was a German polar researcher, geophysicist and meteorologist. During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and as a pioneer of polar research, but today he is most remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift by hypothesizing in 1912 that the continents are slowly drifting around the Earth (German: """"). His hypothesis was controversial and not widely accepted until the 1950s, when numerous discoveries such as palaeomagnetism provided strong support for continental drift, and thereby a substantial basis for today's model of plate tectonics."
"for two reasons: (1) no mechanism for continental drift was known, and (2) there was no way to reconstruct the movements of the continents over time. Keith Runcorn and Edward A. Irving constructed apparent polar wander paths for Europe and North America. These curves diverged, but could be reconciled if it was assumed that the continents had been in contact up to 200 million years ago. This provided the first clear geophysical evidence for continental drift. Then in 1963, Morley, Vine and Matthews showed that marine magnetic anomalies provided evidence for seafloor spreading. Paleomagnetism is studied on a number of"
"to it, he told students to keep an open mind: by 1964 models favouring continental drift became widely accepted. Spitsbergen was a key element in some of the earliest speculations of continental drift: attempts to make sense of the field data led to hypotheses which could explain the relation between Spitsbergen and Greenland. At the 1964 Royal Society two day Symposium on Continental drift, Harland presented research on the tectonic evolution of the Arctic North Atlantic region. He looked at the history of the movements of these arctic terranes and at their ‘fit’ during the Caledonian orogeny. He described how"
"Despite its scope, it is according to critic Michiko Kakutani ""somehow, acutely personal."" The book sold well (15,000 copies in hard cover, 100,000 in paper-back) and was highly acclaimed by critics. After publishing ""Continental Drift"", Banks won the Dos Passos Prize for Literature. Continental Drift (novel) Continental Drift is a 1985 novel by Russell Banks. Set in the early 1980s, it follows two plots, through which Banks explores the relationship between apparently distant people drawn together in the world under globalization, which Banks compares to the geologic phenomena of continental drift. The first plot features Bob DuBois, a working class"
"as the Holmes-Houterman model after Fritz Houtermans who published in the same year, 1946. The established age of the Earth has been refined since then but has not significantly changed. In 1912 Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of Continental Drift. This theory suggests that the shapes of continents and matching coastline geology between some continents indicates they were joined together in the past and formed a single landmass known as Pangaea; thereafter they separated and drifted like rafts over the ocean floor, currently reaching their present position. Additionally, the theory of continental drift offered a possible explanation as to the"
"spreading is the engine of continental drift. At intervals along the mid-ocean ridges super-heated mineral-rich fluids are vented from the seabed. These hydrothermal vents are populated by animal and bacterial species not found elsewhere on Earth. BRIDGE investigated the geological setting of the ridge, the geochemistry of vent fluids, and ways in which biological communities survive in this apparently hostile environment. To achieve this the programme developed novel deep-ocean technologies for deployment from surface ships and manned submersibles. It also conducted experimental research into the mechanical and chemical nature of the rocks and underlying crust in these active volcanic regions."
"so. After two shakedown cruises in the Atlantic Ocean and a positioning cruise with further testing en route, ""Eltanin"" operated a total of 52 Antarctic research cruises from July 5, 1962 thru December 29, 1972. Over this time, some 80% of the southern ocean was surveyed, and a total of 400,000 miles traveled. Some of ""Eltanin""'s research cruises collected magnetic profiles of the sea floor that proved to be pivotal evidence in the acceptance of the continental drift theory, by proving the existence of sea floor spreading. These key profiles, which show symmetric bands of alternating magnetic orientation (corresponding to"
"substantial transcurrent, or strike slip, faulting provided the best explanation on their relative positions. At the end of 1964 he visited Beijing, Moscow and Leningrad where he again presented this research and argued for a theory of Continental drift. Over the following decades, Harland and colleagues used field data for developing models describing Svalbards terranes and fault systems, which were important in understanding the tectonic evolution of the North Atlantic Region. Harland was using palaeomagnetism before it became widely used and more sophisticated. With his student Derek Bidgood he made the first attempt, in 1958, to examine the palaeomagnetism of"
"Pichon, Dan McKenzie, W. Jason Morgan and John Tuzo Wilson. Prior to this, people had ideas of continental drift, but no real evidence came until the late 20th century. Alexander von Humboldt observed in the early 19th century the geometry and geology of the shores of continents of the Atlantic Ocean. James Hutton and Charles Lyell brought about the idea of gradual change, uniformitarianism, which helped people cope with the slow drift of the continents. Alfred Wegener spearheaded the original theory of continental drift and spent much of his life devoted to this theory. He proposed ""Pangaea"", one unified giant"
"Global Drifter Program The Global Drifter Program (GDP) (formerly known as the Surface Velocity Program (SVP)), was conceived by Prof. Peter Niiler, with the objective of collecting measurements of surface ocean currents, sea surface temperature and sea-level atmospheric pressure using drifters. It is the principal component of the Global Surface Drifting Buoy Array, a branch of NOAA's Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) and a scientific project of the Data Buoy Cooperation Panel (DBCP). The project originated in February 1979 as part of the TOGA/Equatorial Pacific Ocean Circulation Experiment (EPOCS) and the first large-scale deployment of drifters was in 1988 with"
"critics of continental drift. Despite much opposition, the view of continental drift gained support and a lively debate started between ""drifters"" or ""mobilists"" (proponents of the theory) and ""fixists"" (opponents). During the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the former reached important milestones proposing that convection currents might have driven the plate movements, and that spreading may have occurred below the sea within the oceanic crust. Concepts close to the elements now incorporated in plate tectonics were proposed by geophysicists and geologists (both fixists and mobilists) like Vening-Meinesz, Holmes, and Umbgrove. One of the first pieces of geophysical evidence that was used"
"Transpolar Drift Stream The Transpolar Drift Stream is a major ocean current of the Arctic Ocean, transporting sea ice from the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea towards Fram Strait. Drift experiments with ships like Fram or Tara showed that the drift takes between two and four years. In 1937, Pyotr Shirshov at the Soviet drift ice station North Pole-1 described this drift. The stream conveys water in roughly two major routes to the northern Atlantic Ocean at a rate of about per day. Primarily wind-driven, it flows roughly from the northern coast of Russia and Alaska, sometimes curving"
"ideas attracted a few early supporters such as Alexander Du Toit from South Africa, Arthur Holmes in England and Milutin Milanković in Serbia, for whom continental drift theory was the premise for investigating polar wandering, the hypothesis was initially met with skepticism from geologists, who viewed Wegener as an outsider and were resistant to change. The one American edition of Wegener's work, published in 1925, which was written in ""a dogmatic style that often results from German translations"", was received so poorly that the American Association of Petroleum Geologists organized a symposium specifically in opposition to the continental drift hypothesis."
"once continuous with other Australian tracts. He also investigated in the field evidence for drift in Australia and South Africa, integrating his work with that of other researchers to show how Antarctica and other Gondwana continents had drifted apart. Continental mobility was important also to Hamilton's research in western North America in the 1960s, at a time when lateral motions were rejected by most northern hemisphere geoscientists. He recognized that Baja California had pulled away from Mexico, opening the Gulf of California, as components of the San Andreas fault system. He studied the petrology and mobile settings of several volcanic"
"Keith Runcorn (Stanley) Keith Runcorn (19 November 1922 – 5 December 1995) was a British physicist whose paleomagnetic reconstruction of the relative motions of Europe and America revived the theory of continental drift and was a major contribution to plate tectonics. Runcorn was born in Southport, Lancashire and graduated in engineering from the University of Cambridge in 1942. After a period in radar research during the World War II, he joined the Physics Department at the University of Manchester where he did research on aspects of the Earth's magnetic field, taking his Ph.D. for research supervised by Patrick Blackett in"
"theory of continental drift, proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) to explain observations that were otherwise inexplicable, which was resisted and ridiculed until evidence led to its acceptance after Wegener's death. Science writer Martin Gardner criticized Josephson in 1980 for complaining to the ""New York Review of Books"", along with three other physicists, about an article by J. A. Wheeler that ridiculed parapsychology. Several physicists complained in 2001 when, in a Royal Mail booklet celebrating the Nobel Prize's centenary, Josephson wrote that Britain was at the forefront of research into telepathy. Physicist David Deutsch said the Royal Mail had"
"them along via viscosity-related traction forces. The driving forces of plate motion continue to be active subjects of on-going research within geophysics and tectonophysics. In line with other previous and contemporaneous proposals, in 1912 the meteorologist Alfred Wegener amply described what he called continental drift, expanded in his 1915 book ""The Origin of Continents and Oceans"" and the scientific debate started that would end up fifty years later in the theory of plate tectonics. Starting from the idea (also expressed by his forerunners) that the present continents once formed a single land mass (which was called Pangea later on) that"
"plate tectonics by the scientific community.The abstracts from the symposium are issued as Blacket, Bullard, Runcorn;1965.In this symposium, Edward Bullard and co-workers showed with a computer calculation how the continents along both sides of the Atlantic would best fit to close the ocean, which became known as the famous ""Bullard's Fit"". By the late 1960s the weight of the evidence available saw Continental Drift as the generally accepted theory. By applying sound stratigraphic principles to the distribution of craters on the Moon, it can be argued that almost overnight, Gene Shoemaker took the study of the Moon away from Lunar"
"and safe building practices. After finishing his work with the USGS, he was appointed as a professor and chairman of the geology department at Stanford University, where he served until 1922. In 1920, he was elected to the National Academy of the Sciences. He was president of the Seismological Society of America from 1921 to 1926, during which time he published his ""Geologic Structures"". He was president of the Geological Society of America in 1928. In 1928, he published ""Continental Drift"" in the ""SP 2: Theory of Continental Drift"", by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, where he rejects the"
"ridge-push, and other forces of tectonophysics will further separate and rotate those two continents. It was that temporary feature that inspired Wegener to study what he defined as continental drift although he did not live to see his hypothesis generally accepted. 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. The continuity of glaciers, inferred from oriented glacial striations and deposits called tillites, suggested the existence of the supercontinent of Gondwana, which became a central element of the"
"oceans. Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift in 1912. He stated: ""the Mid-Atlantic Ridge ... zone in which the floor of the Atlantic, as it keeps spreading, is continuously tearing open and making space for fresh, relatively fluid and hot sima [rising] from depth"". However, Wegener did not pursue this observation in his later works and his theory was dismissed by geologists because there was no mechanism to explain how continents could plow through ocean crust, and the theory became largely forgotten. Following the discovery of the worldwide extent of the mid-ocean ridge in the 1950s, geologists faced"
"was a Fulbright fellow at Cambridge University and postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. In 1966, he joined Nova University where he studied the Florida Current and the Gulf Stream. He became professor of oceanography at Oregon State University in 1974. He became professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1982 where he worked in the Physical Oceanography Research Division. He was a Scripps Distinguished Professor. Niiler designed ocean drifters for measuring direct circulation flow and other instruments for ocean observations. He was the scientific father of the Global Drifter Program and one of the persons responsible for organizing a Boulder,"