“Why should we hesitate to toss the old views
overboard?"
Albert Wegener was a very together
kind of guy. He wasn’t satisfied with just being a meteorologist, astronomer,
physicist, and an arctic explorer and balloonist. (In 1906 he and his brother
set a new world’s record for the longest balloon flight, remaining aloft for 52
hours.) He also helped figure out how the Earth is put together.
At Christmas in 1911, a friend was
showing off one of his presents—a lavish world atlas. Wegener looked at the
spread depicting Africa and South America. He thought it remarkable that it
looked as though both continents once fit together. He also noticed that North
America and Europe appeared as though they could easily nestle together, too,
if Greenland were fit between them.
This wasn’t the first time a
scientist (or thousands of school children) had noticed this, but Wegener did
research. He found time for this after making yet another expedition to
Greenland (He spent the winter on
the ice and traveled 750 miles, making it the longest ice cap crossing ever.) Then he went for military training in the German
army.
His
investigations revealed that the coasts of South America and Africa had the
same types of limestone formations, and the ocean floors off of both coasts had similar contours suggesting that they had once been closer together. That wasn't all. He
discovered that a great many plants and animals (and especially fossils) showed
remarkable similarities across various continents. For example, marsupials in
Australia and South America looked similar. What’s more, they both shared the
same flatworm parasites.
“A conviction of the fundamental
soundness of the idea took root in my mind,” he wrote. He shared his hunches with his future father-in-law, a noted climatologist, writing “If it turns out that sense and meaning are now
becoming evident in the whole history of the Earth's development, why should we
hesitate to toss the old views overboard?"
All the Earth
Being a speedy worker, the next year in 1912, Wegener published a lengthy treatise Die Heraushebung der Großformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und
Ozeane) auf geophysikalischer Grundlage" (The
Geophysical Basis of the Evolution of the Large-Scale Features of the Earth’s
Crust (Continents and Oceans).
World
War I intervened. Wegener was lucky to survive. He was shot twice—once in the
arm and again in the neck.
Upon
being discharged and while recuperating, he followed up his pamphlet with a slender volume in 1915 further detailing his conclusions. He postulated that the
continents were once one land mass. He named it Pangaea, meaning “All the
Earth” in Greek. He believed that over a period of 300 million years the landmasses
had ever so gradually moved apart due to “continental displacement.” (Today
geologists believe that in 250 million years the continents will again
coalesce into a mega-continent, Pangaea Ultima.)
The son of an evangelical minister,
Wegener became an evangelist for his beliefs. His German colleagues mocked him, and the abuse grew much worse in 1922 when his book
was translated into English.
At the time the
ruling theory was that the continents were stable and fixed in place, thus
explaining why adherents to that belief were known as fixists and stabilists. Wegener
literally challenged the foundations of their long-held beliefs.
He was accused of promoting a “footloose”
hypothesis by an American professor who added that Wegener was taking “considerable
liberties with our globe.” Worse, the head of the American Philosophical
Society said Wegener’s notions were “utter, damned rot!” Another “expert” lambasted his ideas as “delirious ravings.” Another said Wegener lived in a “state of auto-intoxication.” “Geo-poetry” sniffed
another scientist.
Wegener
wasn’t right about everything. He thought that continental motion (or drift)
was caused by centrifugal forces created by the Earth’s rotation. He also
incorrectly thought that the continents were zipping along at eight feet annually
when their real rate of motion is only about an inch a year. And plates on
which the continents rest, not the continents themselves, are what are actually move.
Yet he was correct in concluding
that "the forces that displace
continents are the same as those that produce great fold-mountain ranges.
Continental drift, faults and compressions, earthquakes, volcanicity, [ocean]
transgression cycles and [apparent] polar wandering are undoubtedly connected on
a grand scale."
Gradually westward
After years of struggle, Wegener
finally earned an appointment in 1924 as a professor…of meteorology, not
geology.
Sadly, he did not live to see his
theories proved true. In 1929 at the age of 50 he went on yet another
expedition to Greenland, this time to reprovision remote weather stations. He
and two other men ventured off from the main party. They did so courageously because they
knew food supplies were desperately needed at a far station.
Months
later Wegener’s body was found lying in his sleeping bag in his tent. It’s believed
he died of a heart attack. His companions built a mausoleum out of blocks of
ice around his body. He lies there today, buried under ice and snow, moving every so gradually
westward.
In his notes, researchers found a
handwritten quotation which implied that Wegener lived his life believing that
he had an “obligation to be a hero” and that the stakes were high—To accomplish
anything worth doing, Wegener believed one must take the attitude “I will accomplish
it or die.”
No comments:
Post a Comment