The evolution of
tectonophysics is closely linked to the history of the
continental drift and
plate tectonicshypotheses. 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.
The idea of continents with a permanent location, the
geosyncline theory, the Pratt-Hayford isostasy, the extrapolation of the age of the Earth by Lord Kelvin as a black body cooling down, the contracting Earth, the Earth as a solid and crystalline body, is one school of thought. A
lithosphere creeping over the asthenosphere is a logical consequence of an Earth with internal heat by radioactivity decay, the Airy-Heiskanen isostasy,
thrust faults and Niskanen's
mantle viscosity determinations.
December 1960,
Harry H. Hess (preprint and a report for the Navy): Sonar and seafloor spreading (personal communication formally published in 1962 (Puzzle pieces: his World War II seafloor profiles, (
Carey 1958), (
Vening Meinesz 1948) and the Great Global Rift). (
Hess 1962), (
Hess 1960b), (
Hess 1960a), (
Hess 1959)
Wunderlich, H.G. (March 1962). "50 Jahre Kontinentalverschiebungstheorie – von Wegener bis Runcorn" [50 Years Continental Drift Hypothesis – Wegener to Runcorn]. Geologische Rundschau. 52 (1): 504–513.
Bibcode:
1962GeoRu..52..504W.
doi:
10.1007/BF01840095.
S2CID128754334.
The uncertainty of the distance between Europe and North America is too great to confirm the continental drift hypothesis. It states wrongly that the lock-and-key form of South America and Africa is less good if the continental shelf is taken into account. Note: the truth is that neither A. Wegener nor C. Schuchert used the east coastline of South America and west coastline of Africa, really; these coastlines don't fit (
Bullard 1975).
P.M.S. Blackett; E.C. Bullard; S.K. Runcorn, eds. (1965). "A Symposium on Continental Drift, 28th October, 1965". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 258 (1088): i–x, 1–323, A1–A6. (
Bullard, Everett & Smith 1965), (
Wilson 1965b), (
Heezen & Tharp 1965).
Wells, finds on growth rings of Devonian corals the maximum Earth expansion during this time to be less than 0.6 mm/year (
Wells 1963), (
Marvin 1966, p. 60). Heezen, abandons the expanding Earth theory as it requires a radial expansion of 4–8 mm/year for the Atlantic Ocean alone (
Heezen 1966).
Nowadays, the fit between Africa and South America is based on paleomagnetism, slightly different from the older "Bullard's Fit" (based on least-square fitting of 500 fathom (c. 900 m) contours across the Atlantic). (
Bullard, Everett & Smith 1965), (
Torsvik et al. 2001)
February 1966, Vine visits the Lamont group (Walt Pitman and
Neil Opdyke) and tells them that their 'discovered' Emperor reversal was already named as Jaramillo reversal. And shows the reversal on the Walt Pitman's graphik (cm/ vertical), surprising Pitman, Opdyke and even himself (
Ninkovich et al. 1966), (
Vine 1966). Many anti-drifters changed their mind after the publication of these magnetometer readings of sediment core (Eltanin-19), geomagnetic reversals (
Le Grand 1990).
The Vine–Matthews–Morley hypothesis is the first scientific test to confirm the seafloor spreading concept. Earth Sciences paradigm shift, from fix continents to plate tectonics (
Wilson 1968):
Magnetometer readings of sediment cores, geomagnetic reversals: ratio of cm (vertical).
Magnetic profiles of seafloor, geomagnetic reversals: ratio of km (horizontal).
Radiometric analysis of lava flows, geomagnetic reversals: ratio of Ma (time). (
Frankel 1987, p. 235)
Conference in New York in November 1966, sponsored by NASA ((
Phinney 1968) cited in (
Bullard 1975)).
Even Maurice Ewing (
Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory) came to accept seafloor spreading by April 1967 and cited (along with his brother John Ewing) the case for Vine-Matthews-Morley Hypothesis as "strong support for the hypothesis of spreading. (
Frankel 1987, p. 230)
In 1967,
W. Jason Morgan proposed that the Earth's surface consists of 12 rigid plates that move relative to each other (
Morgan 1968). Two months later, in 1968,
Xavier Le Pichon published a complete model based on 6 major plates with their relative motions (
Le Pichon (1968), received 2 January 1968). The Englishmen
Dan McKenzie and Robert Parker published the quantitative principles for
plate tectonics (
Euler's rotation theorem: Individual aseismic areas move as rigid plates on the surface of a sphere, quote: "a block on a sphere can be moved to any other conceivable orientation by a single rotation about a properly chosen axis.") (
McKenzie & Parker 1967).
Note I: although
Morgan (1968) (received 30 August 1967, revised 30 November 1967 and published 15 March 1968) was published later than
McKenzie & Parker (1967) (published 30 December 1967), priority belongs to Morgan. It is based on a presentation at the
American Geophysical Union's 1967 meeting (title: Rises, Trenches, Great Faults, and Crustal Blocks).
Note II: W. Jason Morgan shared with Fred Vine an office in the
Princeton University for two years, and a scientific paper from
H. W. Menard drifted his attention to plate tectonics. It was probably the long faults on
Menard (1967) (cited in
Morgan 1968) and the Euler's rotation theorem that gave him the idea.[5][6]
Wilson cycle: slab pull/
subduction opens a space on western South America and the sliding seafloor away from the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge on eastern South America occupies the new available space.
Overview: viscous resistance, slab thickness, slab bending, trench migration and seismic coupling, slab width, slab edges and mantle return flow:
Vening Meinesz (together with J.H.F. Umbgrove, B.G. Escher and Ph.H. Kuenen) had more evidence that the established paradigm and the reality do not match. But as all
geophysicists he could not really believe in crust motions in such a large scale and he knew Wegener's Continental drift hypothesis fate too.
Hess (1962) accumulated even more evidence, but he prudently introduced them as geopoetry, quote: "Little of
Umbgrove (1947) brilliant summary remains pertinent when confronted by the relatively small but crucial amount of information collected in the intervening years. Like Umbgrove, I shall consider this paper an essay in geopoetry."
The IAV/
IAVEI board (i.e., B.G. Escher and A. Rittmann) probably never dumped the idea that the South Atlantic is under
extension.
And the anti-drifters were in a way right as well. Although convection would mix up the
mantle and make it homogeneous. The seafloor cycle with subduction and upwelling is something between conduction and convection, it allows for its inhomogeneity in a quasi-steady state. The mantle and the continents are in a way passive, the heat sink of the earth is the seafloor. So that the heat generated in the earth gets neutralised.
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.
^Bill Bonini; Laurie Wanat, eds. (Fall 2003).
"Jason Morgan Retires"(PDF). The Smilodon: The Princeton Geosciences Newsletter. 44 (2). Fortuitously, he was assigned as well an office that he shared for two years with Fred Vine,... This insight was fundamental to the revolutionary theory then developing, and sharing that office with Fred Vine drew Morgan into the subject — as he puts it — "with a bang." A paper written by H.W. Menard caused him to begin musing on his own about great faults and fracture zones, and how they might relate to theorems on the geometry of spheres Passages about W. Jason Morgan from McPhee, John (1998) Annals of the Former World, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Heezen, B. C; Tharp, M (1965). "Tectonic Fabric of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans and Continental Drift". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 258 (1088): 90–106.
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Carey, S. W. (1958). "The tectonic approach to continental drift". In Carey, S. W. (ed.). Continental Drift—A symposium, held in March 1956. Hobart: Univ. of Tasmania. pp. 177–363. Expanding Earth from pp. 311–349.
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Frankel, H. (1987).
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W.A.J.M. van Waterschoot van der Gracht; Bailey Willis; Rollin T. Chamberlin; John Joly; G.A.F. Molengraaff; J.W. Gregory; Alfred Wegener; Charles Schuchert; Chester R. Longwell; Frank Bursley Taylor; William Bowie; David White; Joseph T. Singewald, Jr.; Edward W. Berry (1928). W.A.J.M. van Waterschoot van der Gracht (ed.). Theory of Continental Drift: a symposium on the origin and movement of land masses both intercontinental and intracontinental as proposed by Alfred Wegener, A Symposium of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG, 1926). Tulsa, OK. p. 240.{{
cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
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U.S. Geological Survey.
ISBN978-0-16-048220-5. Retrieved 2008-01-29. Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus... suggested that the Americas were 'torn away from Europe and Africa... by earthquakes and floods... The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents].'
Lilienthal, T. (1756). Die Gute Sache der Göttlichen Offenbarung. Königsberg: Hartung. This is also likely owing to the fact that the coasts of certain lands, situated opposite each other though separated by sea, have a corresponding shape, so that they would be congruent with one another were they to stand side by side; for example, the southern part of America and Africa. For this reason one supposes that perhaps both of these continents were previously attached to each other, either directly, or through the sunken island of Atlantis;...
Lyell, Charles (1875). Principles of Geology (12th ed.).
Marvin, Ursula B. (1973). Continental Drift: The Evolution of a Concept ((Dissertation)). Smithsonian Institution Press. p. 239.
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Ortelius, Abraham (1596). Thesaurus Geographicus (3 ed.). Antwerp: Plantin. The vestiges of the rupture reveal themselves, if someone brings forward a map of the world and considers carefully the coasts of the three [continents (Europe, Africa and Americas)]
Suess, E. (1875). Die Entstehung der Alpen [The Origin of the Alps]. W. Braumüller. A mass movement, more or less horizontal and progressive, should be the cause underlying the formation of our mountain systems.
Suess, Eduard (1885-08-19). Das Antlitz der Erde [The Face of the Earth]. Translated by Sollas, H.B.C. Vienna: F. Tempsky.
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