Alfred Wegener was the first to publish the hypothesis that these had somehow 'moved' apart but he was unable to provide a convincing explanation for the physical processes which might have caused it. What are we talking about?
"the Atlantic Ocean for rock type, geological structures and fossils. He noticed that there was a significant similarity between matching sides of the continents, especially in fossil plants. From 1912, Wegener publicly advocated the existence of ""continental drift"", arguing that all the continents were once joined together in a single landmass and had since drifted apart. He supposed that the mechanisms causing the drift might be the centrifugal force of the Earth's rotation ("""") or the astronomical precession. Wegener also speculated about sea-floor spreading and the role of the mid-ocean ridges, stating that ""the Mid-Atlantic Ridge ... zone in which"
"was missing. A second problem was that Wegener's estimate of the velocity of continental motion, 250 cm/year, was implausibly high. (The currently accepted rate for the separation of the Americas from Europe and Africa is about 2.5 cm/year). It also did not help that Wegener was not a geologist. Other geologists also believed that the evidence that Wegener had provided was not sufficient. It is now accepted that the plates carrying the continents do move across the Earth's surface, although not as fast as Wegener believed; ironically one of the chief outstanding questions is the one Wegener failed to resolve:"
"other areas), material from the upper mantle rises through the faults between oceanic plates to form new crust as the plates move away from each other, a phenomenon first observed as continental drift. When Alfred Wegener first presented a hypothesis of continental drift in 1912, he suggested that continents ploughed through the ocean crust. This was impossible: oceanic crust is both more dense and more rigid than continental crust. Accordingly, Wegener's theory wasn't taken very seriously, especially in the United States. Since then, it has been shown that the motion of the continents is linked to seafloor spreading by the"
"sufficiently hot to be liquid. By 1915, after having published a first article in 1912, Alfred Wegener was making serious arguments for the idea of continental drift in the first edition of ""The Origin of Continents and Oceans"". In that book (re-issued in four successive editions up to the final one in 1936), he noted how the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa looked as if they were once attached. Wegener was not the first to note this (Abraham Ortelius, Antonio Snider-Pellegrini, Eduard Suess, Roberto Mantovani and Frank Bursley Taylor preceded him just to mention"
"his studies on mountain ranges as the Andes, Rockies, Alps and Himalayas, concluding that these mountains could have been formed only as a result of titanic lateral pressures that thrust the earth's surface upward. His theory was either ignored or opposed by other scientists of his time. He wrote a total ten papers on the subject of continental drift Taylor's ideas about continental drift were independently discovered by Alfred Wegener in Germany three years later, in January 1912, and the theory of continental drift is historically often referred to as the ""Taylor-Wegener hypothesis,"" although Taylor himself disapproved of the hyphenated"
"gravitational sliding of lithosphere plates away from them. This gravitational sliding represents a secondary phenomenon of this basically vertically oriented mechanism. This can act on various scales, from the small scale of one island arc up to the larger scale of an entire ocean basin. Alfred Wegener, being a meteorologist, had proposed tidal forces and centrifugal forces as the main driving mechanisms behind continental drift; however, these forces were considered far too small to cause continental motion as the concept was of continents plowing through oceanic crust. Therefore, Wegener later changed his position and asserted that convection currents are the"
"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,"
"in 1924 as ""The Origin of Continents and Oceans"", a translation of the 1922 third German edition.) The last German edition, published in 1929, revealed the significant observation that shallower oceans were geologically younger. It was, however, not translated into English until 1962. In his work, Wegener presented a large amount of observational evidence in support of continental drift, but the mechanism remained a problem, partly because Wegener's estimate of the velocity of continental motion, 250 cm/year, was too high. (The currently accepted rate for the separation of the Americas from Europe and Africa is about 2.5 cm/year.) While his"
"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"
"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"
"of the continents. The velocity of the sliding continents, was allowed in the uncertainty of the fixed continent model and seafloor subduction and upwelling with phase change allows for inhomogeneity. The problem too, was the specialisation. Arthur Holmes and Alfred Rittmann saw it right . Only an outsider can have the overview, only an outsider sees the forest, not only the trees . But A. Wegener did not have the specialisation to correctly weight the quality of the geophysical data and the paleontologic data, and its conclusions. Wegener's main interest was meteorology, and he wanted to join the Denmark-Greenland expedition"
"west to east. Atmospheric and oceanic currents stopped the transfer of warm, tropical air and water to the higher latitudes. As a result of the warm air and currents moving northward, Antarctica cooled down so much that it became frigid. Although many of Alfred Wegener’s theories and conclusions were valid, scientists are constantly coming up with new innovative ideas or reasoning behind why certain things happen. Wegener’s theory of Continental Drift was later replaced by the theory of tectonic plates. There is evidence to suggest that the deterioration of northern Pangaea contributed to the Permian Extinction, one of Earth’s five"
"name. But even with Wegener's extensive extra research the idea did not achieve acceptance until the 1960s when a vast weight of evidence had accrued via Harry Hess, Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews. In a later paper he proposed that this occurred by their being dragged towards the equator by tidal forces during the hypothesized capture of the moon, resulting in ""general crustal creep"" toward the equator. The initial key to his proposal, the complementary shapes of the continental masses, had been observed as early as the 16th century by Abraham Ortelius, but had lacked a credible driving force. His"
"Wegener noted the similarity of Mantovani's and his own maps of the former positions of the southern continents. In Mantovani's conjecture, this continent broke due to volcanic activity caused by thermal expansion, and the new continents drifted away from each other because of further expansion of the rip-zones, where the oceans now lie. This led Mantovani to propose an Expanding Earth theory which has since been shown to be incorrect. Continental drift without expansion was proposed by Frank Bursley Taylor, who suggested in 1908 (published in 1910) that the continents were moved into their present positions by a process of"
"moved forward at the same time, but this was not taken into account. It thus seemed that light traveled different distances at the same time, which led George FitzGerald and Hendrik Lorentz (Lorentz ether theory) to postulate that distances shortened and time dilated in direction of motion (FitzGerald-Lorentz contraction). Alfred Potier Alfred Potier (11 May 1840, Paris – 8 May 1905, Paris) was a French polymath who contributed to many theoretical and practical fields of science when this was rapidly expanding. His interests covered mainly mathematical physics, the nature of light and the ether, geology, electricity and magnetism and their"
"large landmass, Pangea, and slowly drifted apart due to the movement of the plates below Earth's surface. The evidence for this theory is in the geological similarities between varying locations around the globe, fossil comparisons from different continents, and the jigsaw puzzle shape of the landmasses on Earth. Though Wegener did not know the mechanism of this concept of Continental Drift, this contribution to the study of biogeography was significant in the way that it shed light on the importance of environmental and geographic similarities or differences as a result of climate and other pressures on the planet. Importantly, late"
"intermolecular forces. Some months later, FitzGerald published the conjecture that bodies in motion are being contracted, in order to explain the baffling outcome of the 1887 aether-wind experiment of Michelson and Morley. In 1892, Lorentz independently presented the same idea in a more detailed manner, which was subsequently called FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction hypothesis. Their explanation was widely known before 1905. Lorentz (1892–1904) and Larmor (1897–1900), who believed the luminiferous aether hypothesis, also looked for the transformation under which Maxwell's equations are invariant when transformed from the aether to a moving frame. They extended the FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction hypothesis and found out that"
"Ocean, Indian Ocean and Arctic Ocean) on its faces. By 1915 German Alfred Wegener (1880–1930) had proposed in his continental drift theory that land masses moved great distances over the Earth's history. Wegener was also at first met with hostile reactions. By the mid-1920s Holmes had developed theories on what could cause the drift. The plate tectonics theory is now generally accepted to explain the dynamic nature of the Earth's surface; the tetrahedral shape plays no special role in modern theories. Explanations of details such as water to land ratios, the precise shape of continents and their sizes continue to"
"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"
"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"
"similar in structure and lithology. However, his ideas were not taken seriously by many geologists, who pointed out that there was no apparent mechanism for continental drift. Specifically, they did not see how continental rock could plow through the much denser rock that makes up oceanic crust. Wegener could not explain the force that drove continental drift, and his vindication did not come until after his death in 1930. As it was observed early that although granite existed on continents, seafloor seemed to be composed of denser basalt, the prevailing concept during the first half of the twentieth century was"
"agitations would shake such long molecules asunder. Hermann Staudinger faced similar prejudices in the 1920s when he argued that rubber was composed of macromolecules. Thus, several alternative hypotheses arose. The colloidal protein hypothesis stated that proteins were colloidal assemblies of smaller molecules. This hypothesis was disproved in the 1920s by ultracentrifugation measurements by Theodor Svedberg that showed that proteins had a well-defined, reproducible molecular weight and by electrophoretic measurements by Arne Tiselius that indicated that proteins were single molecules. A second hypothesis, the cyclol hypothesis advanced by Dorothy Wrinch, proposed that the linear polypeptide underwent a chemical cyclol rearrangement C=O"
"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"
"deep into the earth where they met below the Pacific Ocean, and provided strong evidence of the existence of continental drift, a theory that had been largely scoffed at by the scientific community when it was first proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. The order of the three coauthors' names on that paper (Isacks, Oliver, Sykes) was decided by lot, according to a footnote on the paper. This odd choice provoked speculation, but Oliver explained that decision was made before writing the paper, as all three authors worked full speed in what they saw as a race against other researchers."
"these measurements cannot be replicated by models in which each particle has its own state independent of the other, it appears that one particle of an entangled pair ""knows"" what measurement has been performed on the other, and with what outcome, even though there is no known means for such information to be communicated between the particles, which at the time of measurement may be separated by arbitrarily large distances. Such phenomena were the subject of a 1935 paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, and several papers by Erwin Schrödinger shortly thereafter, describing what came to be"
"century, the leading theory of the driving force behind tectonic plate motions envisaged large scale convection currents in the upper mantle, which can be transmitted through the asthenosphere. This theory was launched by Arthur Holmes and some forerunners in the 1930s and was immediately recognized as the solution for the acceptance of the theory as originally discussed in the papers of Alfred Wegener in the early years of the century. However, despite its acceptance, it was long debated in the scientific community because the leading theory still envisaged a static Earth without moving continents up until the major breakthroughs of"
"formed an important basis for the further development of electrodynamics, and Heaviside's notation is still used today. Other important contributions to Maxwell's theory were made by George FitzGerald, Joseph John Thomson, John Henry Poynting, Hendrik Lorentz, and Joseph Larmor. Regarding the relative motion and the mutual influence of matter and aether, there were two controversial theories. One was developed by Fresnel (and subsequently Lorentz). This model (Stationary Aether Theory) supposed that light propagates as a transverse wave and aether is partially dragged with a certain coefficient by matter. Based on this assumption, Fresnel was able to explain the aberration of"
"plates. However he didn't consider that due to optical effects these stars had been smeared out a little towards the edges, slightly different for the two plates. This caused systematic errors resulting in imaginary movements. Another possible explanation is that van Maanen simply saw what he had been trained to see for years. The belief that the ""spiral nebulae"" were relatively nearby and therefore ought to have a quite detectable rotation was quite widespread in the early 20th-century and therefore very hard to ignore. This does not, however, explain supposedly corroborating findings from Mount Wilson, Lowell Observatory, Russia, and 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"
"The opponents argued, as did the Leipziger geologist Franz Kossmat, that the oceanic crust was too firm for the continents to ""simply plough through"". From at least 1910, Wegener imagined the continents once fitting together not at the current shore line, but 200 m below this, at the level of the continental shelves, where they match well. Part of the reason Wegener's ideas were not initially accepted was the misapprehension that he was suggesting the continents had fit along the current coastline. Charles Schuchert commented: Wegener was in the audience for this lecture, but made no attempt to defend his"
"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 in 1912, but his theory was rejected by many for lack of any motive mechanism. Arthur Holmes later proposed mantle convection for that mechanism. The idea of continental drift has since been subsumed by the theory of plate tectonics, which explains that the continents"
"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"
"method) which itself saw criticism, due to the implosion of certain theories. Two physics thus existed at the same time: the physics of Galileo and Newton, and the physics of Maxwell; but neither one was able to explain all the experimental observations that technical advances had produced. The array of problems encountered concentrated on the electrodynamics of moving bodies. Poincaré swiftly proposed the idea that it is the ether modifying itself, and not the bodies acquiring mass, which came to contradict the older theories (based on a perfectly immovable ether). Overall, Poincaré shed light on the Zeeman effect, caused by"