Alfred Wegner’s Great Contribution

Alfred Wegener did something that many of us only dream of doing. He had wanted to elaborate on an opinon of Earth that was totally out there and tried to prove it! He was one of the many scientist who believed in the idea of one large continents that he imagened roughly fit together like a puzzle and wanted to go out on a limb to prove this theory. Scientest like Wagener imagened that Earth looked something like this at one point: One single landmass.

He argued that the similarity of these continents and the fossils found on the now distanced continents were evidence that these continents were drifting pieces of an ancient “supercontinent” [Bolt]. Wegener suggested that the lighter thicker coninental blocks floated above the oceanic crust millions of years ago similar to an iceburg in the sea.

The idea of “Float and Drift” is his explanation of the geographical phenomenon that occurred when oceanic crust similar to that of tar, floated to the surface and for thousands of years reached a balance and then drifted. We call this large floating continent Pangaea. However, Wegeners idea was not as easily accepted because he did not find reasoning to identify the strong forces that would propel these continents away from one another. What drove them apart? How did these plates drift through such a sea floor? Alfred would need the assistance and help of two other important figures in plate tectonics Harry Hess and Arthur Holmes to later make this plate tectonic, pangaea, and “floating and drifting” theories accepted in the science community. But they are coming up next!

How did Alfred’s theory assist with understanding Earthquakes and continents? Does this affect those theories? Why is it so important to the study of seismology?

Here is a great article about Alfred Wegener with more description and details about his theories and discoveries.

Click Here, to see an article about Alfred Wegener in the NEW YORK POST!

from Earthquakes and Plates

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Evolution of Frogs, Rise of Himalayas and Rearrangement of Southeast Asia

The evolution of a group of muscled frogs scattered throughout Asia is telling geologists about the sequence of events that led to the rise of the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau starting more than 55 million years ago.  Rearrangement of Southeast Asia is also one of the issues in these findings.

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First Time Ever, Scientists Watch an Atom’s Electrons Moving in Real Time

In a path breaking discovery ,an international team of scientists led by groups from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany, and from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has used ultrashort flashes of laser light to directly observe the movement of an atom’s outer electrons for the first time.Through a process called attosecond absorption spectroscopy, researchers were able to time the oscillations between simultaneously produced quantum states of valence electrons with great precision. These oscillations drive electron motion.

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China launches new global positioning satellite for COMPASS

A rocket carrying the fifth of a planned array of 35 orbiters blasted off from the Xichang space launch center in Sichuan, southwest China, the official Xinhua news agency reported.Beijing started a drive to end its reliance on the U.S. Global Positioning System in 2000, when it sent an experimental pair of positioning satellites into orbit.China’s necklace of satellites aims to provide navigation, time and short message services in the Asia-Pacific region before 2012 and will be capable of offering global navigation by 2020, Xinhua said.The system, codenamed “COMPASS,” will be crucial for the transport and oil exploration industries as well as for weather and disaster forecasting, telecommunications and public security, the news agency said.

Links:

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Wikipedia

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