This. Lot of people tend to not know (or forget) that the mechanism of the continental drift and its causes that Wegener proposed had not much in common with modern plate tectonics and were mostly wrong. What he thought, was that the lighter sialic continental blocks were kind of “floating” on the denser simaic ocean floor, and the movement was caused by earth’s rotation and tidal forces of the sun and the moon. That’s… not how it really works.The problem wasn't the lack of evidence, because there was a lot, but at the time they couldn't conceive the mechanism by which continental drift worked.
I think a lot of fields are like this in their early days.. . . The field prior to the mid 20thC was heavily dominated by a few 'great men' that everyone else tended to parrot. . .
Honest to gosh, if a person simply watched a pot of thick oatmeal slowly boil!. . . Lot of people tend to not know (or forget) that the mechanism of the continental drift and its causes that Wegener proposed had not much in common with modern plate tectonics and were mostly wrong. . .
Convection isn't the cause of continental drift. That is a common misconceptionHonest to gosh, if a person simply watched a pot of thick oatmeal slowly boil!
Yes, Wegener was wrong on mechanism. But I just wonder if a number of simple everyday examples might get people playing with the idea of convention as the cause?
And I've read that slab pull is the stronger of the two.. . . Continental drift occurs due to a twinned pair of phenomena called ridge push and slab pull. . .
Okay, so our friends in the UK are saying "trench pull" for what we call "slab pull." For example, the slab of dense oceanic crust sliding under Chile in South America, which also makes the Andes Mountains.Plate tectonics: When we discovered how the Earth really works
BBC, Jonathan Amos, 2 Oct. 2017
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41472281
"So, it looks as though something called ’trench pull’ is a very important force and it’s generally agreed to be larger than 'ridge push'. Of course, everything is connected in the deep mantle through convection, but trench pull does seem to be key."
I love this kind of tension!There is no complete convection cell.
A good quick of example of this can be found in Antarctica. The Antarctic continental plate is surrounded by spreading centres, mechanically no convection cell structure can exist to explain that.
Unfortunately mantle convection is still taught in most primary and secondary curriculum as it is easier to explain with the foundation of knowledge that children at the time have. . .
But it's not so obvious with Eurasia and North America. It requires a bit of "Kit bashing".
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(And most of the "proper" geologists were either European or American.)
EDIT:by the time I took my Geology degree (78-81) Plate Tectonics was the orthodoxy. However it was interesting to listen to those Faculty members who had been taught land bridges. It really was a seismic (pun not really intended) change.
I wonder if that was part of his ‘schtick’ as an older fellow or something similar? For once we got symmetrical magnetic striping on both sides of an ocean ridge (sometimes crumpled in real world), that’s as much of a slam dunk as you’d like unless a person’s going to really grasp at straws.. . . he said there was one really old timer in the department who refused to accept plate tectonics.
———————————————————————-..... It wasn't till the post second world war oceanographic and deep seismological surveys that enough was learned about the structure of the earth and the ocean floor, that workable theories were constructed........
Unfortunately mantle convection is still taught in most primary and secondary curriculum as it is easier to explain with the foundation of knowledge that children at the time have. Despite the scientific community knowing that it is incorrect since the 1970's.
you mean to say that the lost tribes of MU are not secretly moving the continents with their secret psychic, psychotic, psychokinetic toes?! HERETIC!Ato wrote:
“A wing generates ‘lift’ due to the faster air over the upper surface creating a ‘vacuum’ which lifts the airfoil”
“How does an airplane fly upside down then”
“…” “Your parents are Santa Clause and there’s no Easter Bunny”
There’s an XYCD for that IIRC J
“Dumbing” it down for the little ones has an unfortunate tendency to then be ‘accepted’ as the actual explanation WAY to often.
Besides if we have this silly ‘plate tectonics’ thing then how do we explain what happened to Atlantis, Mu and all those deep earth tunnels that all the conspiracy theories need to get around? Or how that would work with a Hollow Earth? Yeesh those are SO much ‘simpler” to understand after all…
Randy