Did the Earth flip over in the past? Scientists at Princeton, Cal Tech, Harvard, and MIT have evidence that this may have happened in the Earth’s distant past.
Did the Earth flip over in the past? Scientists at Princeton, Cal Tech, Harvard, and MIT have evidence that this may have happened in the Earth’s distant past.
The 140 year old true polar wander theory describes what could happen if a massive object—like a super-volcano—ever formed far enough from the Earth’s equator. Our planet’s rotation would eventually pull that object away from the Earth’s axis, tilting and pulling the Earth until the extra weight was relocated to a point closer to the equator.
Adam Maloof’s team of geoscientists recovered magnetic sediment from Norway that indicates a true polar wander event may have occurred about 800 million years ago. “If we could find good… evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this soft of dramatic change,” Maloof claims.
What do you think? Is the true polar wander theory just an interesting concept with a few pieces of evidence to back it up? Is it destined to become as widely accepted as the theory of continental drift? We will not likely experience anything like Alaska suddenly changing its address to latitude 0° or the tropical rain forest becoming a winter wonderland any time soon. Such a shift could take 15 million years. Humans in the far distant future, however, could find their world turned upside down.
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