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People only figured out the mechanics of plate tectonics relatively recently. However, they started noticing that the continents looked like they had fit together as soon as they had accurate maps to look at. In the late 1500’s
Abraham Ortelius in his work Thesaurus Geographicus … suggested that the Americas were “torn away from Europe and Africa … by earthquakes and floods” and went on to say: “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].”
Exactly!
While the continents might look like they fit together, and the rock types and ages and fossils match at key points all down the coasts from Canada/Scotland all the way down to South America and South Africa, how on earth (sorry) would you explain how the continents are thousands of miles apart?
One theory posited the earth spinning so fast centrifugal forces ripped ehat would become the moon out of the Pacific, sucking Eurasia and America into the void.
That’s a Randall Monroe WhatIf if ever I saw one. Think of the energy involved! All life on earth would be extinct.
So these theories were laughed out of scientific court. Until Vine and Matthew’s seminal paper on magnetic stripes being mirrored over the mid ocean ridge showed there had to be something forcing the plates apart.
I’m really bothered by this line of thinking.
Just because something “looks” like it is a certain way doesn’t mean it is. For anything to be considered fact there needs to be evidence. The hypothesis that the Earth may have plate tectonics existed decades before it became fact.
This leads people to make connections between completely unrelated things, despite scientists, or professionals working in fields of science (i.e. doctors), saying, and often proving, there is none.
Consider eprime, english without “is”
“Garfield is a cat”: “Garfield belongs to the cat species”.
They had me until this one lmao
