Pole shift theory
Encyclopedia
The cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis
suggests that there have been geologically rapid shifts in the relative positions of the modern-day geographic locations of the poles and the axis of rotation of the Earth
, creating calamities such as floods and tectonic events.
No form of the hypothesis is accepted amongst the general scientific community. There is evidence of precession
and changes in axial tilt
, but this change is on much longer time-scales and does not involve relative motion of the spin axis with respect to the planet. However, in what is known as true polar wander
, the solid Earth can rotate with respect to a fixed spin axis. Research shows that during the last 200 million years a total true polar wander of some 30° has occurred, but that no super-rapid shifts in the Earth's pole were found during this period. A characteristic rate of true polar wander is 1° per million years or less. Between approximately 790 and 810 million years ago, when the supercontinent
Rodinia
existed, two geologically-rapid phases of true polar wander may have occurred. In each of these, the Earth rotated ~55°.
that are caused by precession
and nutation
, and from true polar wander
.
Pole shift hypotheses are not connected with plate tectonics
, the well-accepted geological theory that the Earth's surface consists of solid plates which shift over a fluid asthenosphere
; nor with continental drift
, the corollary to plate tectonics which maintains that locations of the continents have moved slowly over the face of the Earth, resulting in the gradual emerging and breakup of continents and oceans over hundreds of millions of years.
Pole shift hypotheses are not the same as geomagnetic reversal
, the periodic reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (effectively switching the north and south magnetic poles).
, a specialist in Mesoamerican codices who interpreted ancient Mexican myths as evidence for four periods of global cataclysms that had begun around 10,500 B.C.
In 1948, Hugh Auchincloss Brown
, an electrical engineer, advanced a hypothesis of catastrophic pole shift. Brown also argued that accumulation of ice at the poles caused recurring tipping of the axis, identifying cycles of approximately seven millennia.
In his controversial 1950 work Worlds in Collision
, Immanuel Velikovsky
postulated that the planet Venus
emerged from Jupiter
as a comet
. During two proposed near approaches in about 1,450 B.C., he suggested that the direction of the Earth's rotation was changed radically, then reverted to its original direction on the next pass. This disruption supposedly caused earthquakes, tsunamis, and the parting of the Red Sea
. Further, he said near misses by Mars
between 776 and 687 B. C. also caused the Earth's axis to change back and forth by ten degrees. Velikovsky supported his work with historical records, although his studies were mainly ridiculed by the scientific community.
Charles Hapgood
is now perhaps the best remembered early proponent. In his books The Earth's Shifting Crust (1958) (which includes a foreword by Albert Einstein
that was written before the theory of plate tectonics was developed) and Path of the Pole (1970). Hapgood, building on Adhemar's much earlier model, speculated that the ice mass at one or both poles over-accumulates and destabilizes the Earth's rotational balance, causing slippage of all or much of Earth's outer crust around the Earth's core, which retains its axial orientation.
Based on his own research, Hapgood argued that each shift took approximately 5,000 years, followed by 20,000- to 30,000-year periods with no polar movements. Also, in his calculations, the area of movement never covered more than 40 degrees. Hapgood's examples of recent locations for the North Pole include Hudson Bay
(60˚N, 73˚W) , the Atlantic Ocean between Iceland
and Norway
(72˚N, 10˚E) and Yukon
(63˚N, 135˚W).
However, in his subsequent work The Path of the Pole, Hapgood conceded Einstein's point that the weight of the polar ice would be insufficient to bring about a polar shift. Instead, Hapgood argued that the forces that caused the shifts in the crust must be located below the surface. He had no satisfactory explanation for how this could occur.
Hapgood wrote to the Canadian librarian, Rand Flem-Ath, encouraging him in his pursuit of scientific evidence to back Hapgood's claims and in his expansion of the hypothesis. Flem-Ath published the results of this work in 1995 in When the Sky Fell co-written with his wife, Rose.
authors offering a variety of evidence, including psychic reading
s.
In the 1970s and 1980s a series of books not intended as fiction by former Washington Newspaper reporter Ruth Shick Montgomery elaborates on Edgar Cayce readings.
In 1997 Richard W. Noone published 5/5/2000, ICE: The Ultimate Disaster. This book argued that a cataclysmic shift of the Earth's ice cap
covering Antarctica caused by a planetary alignment and solar storm
s, would lead to crustal displacement on May 5, 2000.
In 1998 retired civil engineer James G. Bowles proposed in Atlantis Rising magazine a mechanism by which a polar shift could occur. He named this Rotational-Bending, or the RB-effect. He hypothesized that combined gravitational effects of the Sun and the Moon pulled at the Earth's crust at an oblique angle. This force steadily wore away at the underpinnings that linked the crust to the inner mantle. This generates a plastic zone that allows the crust to rotate with respect to the lower layers. Centrifugal forces will act on the mass of ice at the poles, causing them to move to the equator.
Books on this subject have been published by William Hutton, including the 1996 book Coming Earth Changes: Causes and Consequences of the Approaching Pole Shift (ISBN 0876043619), which compared geologic records with the psychic readings of Edgar Cayce
and predicted catastrophic climate change
s before the end of 2001. In 2004 Hutton and co-author Jonathan Eagle published Earth's Catastrophic Past and Future: A Scientific Analysis of Information Channeled by Edgar Cayce (ISBN 1-58112-517-8), which summarizes possible mechanisms and the timing of a future pole shift.
has occurred at various times in the past, but at rates of 1° per million years or less. Analysis of the evidence does not lend credence to Hapgood's hypothesized rapid displacement of layers of the Earth.
Although Hapgood drastically overestimated the effects of changing mass distributions across the Earth, calculations show that changing mass distributions both on the surface and in the mantle can cause true polar wander.
More rapid past possible occurrences of true polar wander have been measured: from 790 to 810 million years ago, true polar wander of approximately 55° may have occurred twice.
The orientation of the rotational axis itself could be changed by the high-velocity impact of a massive asteroid
or comet
.
Hypothesis
A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. The term derives from the Greek, ὑποτιθέναι – hypotithenai meaning "to put under" or "to suppose". For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it...
suggests that there have been geologically rapid shifts in the relative positions of the modern-day geographic locations of the poles and the axis of rotation of the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, creating calamities such as floods and tectonic events.
No form of the hypothesis is accepted amongst the general scientific community. There is evidence of precession
Precession
Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotation axis of a rotating body. It can be defined as a change in direction of the rotation axis in which the second Euler angle is constant...
and changes in axial tilt
Axial tilt
In astronomy, axial tilt is the angle between an object's rotational axis, and a line perpendicular to its orbital plane...
, but this change is on much longer time-scales and does not involve relative motion of the spin axis with respect to the planet. However, in what is known as true polar wander
True polar wander
True polar wander is a solid-body rotation of a planet or moon with respect to its spin axis, causing the geographic locations of the North and South Poles to change, or "wander". In a stable state, the largest moments of inertia axis is aligned with the spin axis, with the smaller two moment of...
, the solid Earth can rotate with respect to a fixed spin axis. Research shows that during the last 200 million years a total true polar wander of some 30° has occurred, but that no super-rapid shifts in the Earth's pole were found during this period. A characteristic rate of true polar wander is 1° per million years or less. Between approximately 790 and 810 million years ago, when the supercontinent
Supercontinent
In geology, a supercontinent is a landmass comprising more than one continental core, or craton. The assembly of cratons and accreted terranes that form Eurasia qualifies as a supercontinent today.-History:...
Rodinia
Rodinia
In geology, Rodinia is the name of a supercontinent, a continent which contained most or all of Earth's landmass. According to plate tectonic reconstructions, Rodinia existed between 1.1 billion and 750 million years ago, in the Neoproterozoic era...
existed, two geologically-rapid phases of true polar wander may have occurred. In each of these, the Earth rotated ~55°.
Definition and clarification
The geographic poles of the Earth are the points on the surface of the planet that are intersected by the axis of rotation. The pole shift hypothesis describes a change in location of these poles with respect to the underlying surface – a phenomenon distinct from the changes in axial orientation with respect to the plane of the eclipticPlane of the ecliptic
The plane of the ecliptic is the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. It is the primary reference plane when describing the position of bodies in the Solar System, with celestial latitude being measured relative to the ecliptic plane. In the course of a year, the Sun's apparent path through...
that are caused by precession
Precession
Precession is a change in the orientation of the rotation axis of a rotating body. It can be defined as a change in direction of the rotation axis in which the second Euler angle is constant...
and nutation
Nutation
Nutation is a rocking, swaying, or nodding motion in the axis of rotation of a largely axially symmetric object, such as a gyroscope, planet, or bullet in flight, or as an intended behavior of a mechanism...
, and from true polar wander
True polar wander
True polar wander is a solid-body rotation of a planet or moon with respect to its spin axis, causing the geographic locations of the North and South Poles to change, or "wander". In a stable state, the largest moments of inertia axis is aligned with the spin axis, with the smaller two moment of...
.
Pole shift hypotheses are not connected with plate tectonics
Plate tectonics
Plate tectonics is a scientific theory that describes the large scale motions of Earth's lithosphere...
, the well-accepted geological theory that the Earth's surface consists of solid plates which shift over a fluid asthenosphere
Asthenosphere
The asthenosphere is the highly viscous, mechanically weak and ductilely-deforming region of the upper mantle of the Earth...
; nor with continental drift
Continental drift
Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912...
, the corollary to plate tectonics which maintains that locations of the continents have moved slowly over the face of the Earth, resulting in the gradual emerging and breakup of continents and oceans over hundreds of millions of years.
Pole shift hypotheses are not the same as geomagnetic reversal
Geomagnetic reversal
A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth's field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse...
, the periodic reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (effectively switching the north and south magnetic poles).
Speculative history
In popular literature, many conjectures have been suggested involving very rapid polar shift. A slow shift in the poles would display the most minor alterations and no destruction. A more dramatic view assumes more rapid changes, with dramatic alterations of geography and localized areas of destruction due to earthquakes and tsunamis.Early proponents
An early mention of a shifting of the Earth's axis can be found in an 1872 article entitled "Chronologie historique des Mexicains" by Charles Étienne Brasseur de BourbourgCharles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg
Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg was a noted French writer, ethnographer, historian and archaeologist...
, a specialist in Mesoamerican codices who interpreted ancient Mexican myths as evidence for four periods of global cataclysms that had begun around 10,500 B.C.
In 1948, Hugh Auchincloss Brown
Hugh Auchincloss Brown
Hugh Auchincloss Brown was an electrical engineer best known for advancing a theory of catastrophic pole shift. Brown claimed that massive accumulation of ice at the poles caused recurring tipping of the axis in cycles of approximately 4000–7500 years...
, an electrical engineer, advanced a hypothesis of catastrophic pole shift. Brown also argued that accumulation of ice at the poles caused recurring tipping of the axis, identifying cycles of approximately seven millennia.
In his controversial 1950 work Worlds in Collision
Worlds in Collision
Worlds in Collision is a book written by Immanuel Velikovsky and first published on April 3, 1950. The book proposed that around the 15th century BCE, Venus was ejected from Jupiter as a comet or comet-like object, and passed near Earth...
, Immanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American independent scholar of Jewish origins, best known as the author of a number of controversial books reinterpreting the events of ancient history, in particular the US bestseller Worlds in Collision, published in 1950...
postulated that the planet Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
emerged from Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...
as a comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
. During two proposed near approaches in about 1,450 B.C., he suggested that the direction of the Earth's rotation was changed radically, then reverted to its original direction on the next pass. This disruption supposedly caused earthquakes, tsunamis, and the parting of the Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
. Further, he said near misses by Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
between 776 and 687 B. C. also caused the Earth's axis to change back and forth by ten degrees. Velikovsky supported his work with historical records, although his studies were mainly ridiculed by the scientific community.
Charles Hapgood
Charles Hapgood
Charles Hutchins Hapgood was an American college professor and author who became one of the best known advocates of a pseudo-historical claim of a rapid and recent pole shift with catastrophic results.-Biography:...
is now perhaps the best remembered early proponent. In his books The Earth's Shifting Crust (1958) (which includes a foreword by Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
that was written before the theory of plate tectonics was developed) and Path of the Pole (1970). Hapgood, building on Adhemar's much earlier model, speculated that the ice mass at one or both poles over-accumulates and destabilizes the Earth's rotational balance, causing slippage of all or much of Earth's outer crust around the Earth's core, which retains its axial orientation.
Based on his own research, Hapgood argued that each shift took approximately 5,000 years, followed by 20,000- to 30,000-year periods with no polar movements. Also, in his calculations, the area of movement never covered more than 40 degrees. Hapgood's examples of recent locations for the North Pole include Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay
Hudson Bay , sometimes called Hudson's Bay, is a large body of saltwater in northeastern Canada. It drains a very large area, about , that includes parts of Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Alberta, most of Manitoba, southeastern Nunavut, as well as parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota,...
(60˚N, 73˚W) , the Atlantic Ocean between Iceland
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
and Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
(72˚N, 10˚E) and Yukon
Yukon
Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....
(63˚N, 135˚W).
However, in his subsequent work The Path of the Pole, Hapgood conceded Einstein's point that the weight of the polar ice would be insufficient to bring about a polar shift. Instead, Hapgood argued that the forces that caused the shifts in the crust must be located below the surface. He had no satisfactory explanation for how this could occur.
Hapgood wrote to the Canadian librarian, Rand Flem-Ath, encouraging him in his pursuit of scientific evidence to back Hapgood's claims and in his expansion of the hypothesis. Flem-Ath published the results of this work in 1995 in When the Sky Fell co-written with his wife, Rose.
Recent conjectures
The field has attracted pseudoscientificPseudoscience
Pseudoscience is a claim, belief, or practice which is presented as scientific, but which does not adhere to a valid scientific method, lacks supporting evidence or plausibility, cannot be reliably tested, or otherwise lacks scientific status...
authors offering a variety of evidence, including psychic reading
Psychic reading
A psychic reading is a specific attempt to discern information with clairvoyance and the resulting statements made during such an attempt. The term is commonly associated with paranormal-based consultation given for a fee in such settings as over the phone, in a home, or at psychic fairs...
s.
In the 1970s and 1980s a series of books not intended as fiction by former Washington Newspaper reporter Ruth Shick Montgomery elaborates on Edgar Cayce readings.
In 1997 Richard W. Noone published 5/5/2000, ICE: The Ultimate Disaster. This book argued that a cataclysmic shift of the Earth's ice cap
Ice cap
An ice cap is an ice mass that covers less than 50 000 km² of land area . Masses of ice covering more than 50 000 km² are termed an ice sheet....
covering Antarctica caused by a planetary alignment and solar storm
Solar storm
Solar storm can refer to:*Solar flare, a large explosion in the Sun's atmosphere*Coronal mass ejection , a massive burst of solar wind associated with solar flares*Geomagnetic storm, the interaction of the Sun's outburst with Earth's magnetic field...
s, would lead to crustal displacement on May 5, 2000.
In 1998 retired civil engineer James G. Bowles proposed in Atlantis Rising magazine a mechanism by which a polar shift could occur. He named this Rotational-Bending, or the RB-effect. He hypothesized that combined gravitational effects of the Sun and the Moon pulled at the Earth's crust at an oblique angle. This force steadily wore away at the underpinnings that linked the crust to the inner mantle. This generates a plastic zone that allows the crust to rotate with respect to the lower layers. Centrifugal forces will act on the mass of ice at the poles, causing them to move to the equator.
Books on this subject have been published by William Hutton, including the 1996 book Coming Earth Changes: Causes and Consequences of the Approaching Pole Shift (ISBN 0876043619), which compared geologic records with the psychic readings of Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce
Edgar Cayce was an American psychic who allegedly had the ability to give answers to questions on subjects such as healing or Atlantis while in a hypnotic trance...
and predicted catastrophic climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
s before the end of 2001. In 2004 Hutton and co-author Jonathan Eagle published Earth's Catastrophic Past and Future: A Scientific Analysis of Information Channeled by Edgar Cayce (ISBN 1-58112-517-8), which summarizes possible mechanisms and the timing of a future pole shift.
Scientific research
It is now established that true polar wanderTrue polar wander
True polar wander is a solid-body rotation of a planet or moon with respect to its spin axis, causing the geographic locations of the North and South Poles to change, or "wander". In a stable state, the largest moments of inertia axis is aligned with the spin axis, with the smaller two moment of...
has occurred at various times in the past, but at rates of 1° per million years or less. Analysis of the evidence does not lend credence to Hapgood's hypothesized rapid displacement of layers of the Earth.
Although Hapgood drastically overestimated the effects of changing mass distributions across the Earth, calculations show that changing mass distributions both on the surface and in the mantle can cause true polar wander.
True polar wander
True polar wander, or the motion of the solid Earth with respect to a fixed spin axis that causes the spin axis to lie over a new geographic position, does occur. This is because of changes in mass distribution throughout the Earth that modify its moment of inertia tensor. The Earth consistently readjusts its orientation with respect to its spin axis such that its spin axis is parallel to the axis about which it has its greatest moment of inertia. This readjustment is very slow. In 2001, historical evidence for true polar wander was found in paleomagnetic data from granitic rocks from across North America. The data from these rocks conflict with the hypothesis of a cataclysmic true polar wander event. This evidence indicated that the geographical poles have not deviated by more than about 5° over the last 130 million years.More rapid past possible occurrences of true polar wander have been measured: from 790 to 810 million years ago, true polar wander of approximately 55° may have occurred twice.
Causes and effects
True polar wander can be caused by several mechanisms of redistributing mass and changing the moment of inertia tensor of the Earth:- Glacial cycles: redistribution of ice and water masses, and resultant deformation of the crust, changes the mass distribution around the Earth.
- Perturbations of the topography of the core-mantle boundaryCore-mantle boundaryThe core–mantle boundary lies between the Earth's silicate mantle and its liquid iron-nickel outer core. This boundary is located at approximately 2900 km of depth beneath the Earth's surface. The boundary is observed via the discontinuity in seismic wave velocities at that depth...
, perhaps induced by differential core rotation and shift of its axial rotation vector, leading to CMB mass redistributions. - Mass redistributions in the mantle.
The orientation of the rotational axis itself could be changed by the high-velocity impact of a massive asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
or comet
Comet
A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when close enough to the Sun, displays a visible coma and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are both due to the effects of solar radiation and the solar wind upon the nucleus of the comet...
.
See also
- Doomsday eventDoomsday eventA doomsday event is a specific, plausibly verifiable or hypothetical occurrence which has an exceptionally destructive effect on the human race...
- Earth ChangesEarth changesThe phrase "Earth Changes" was coined by the American psychic Edgar Cayce torefer to the belief that the world will soon enter on a series of cataclysmic events causing major alterations in human life on the planet....
- Geomagnetic reversalGeomagnetic reversalA geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth's field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse...
- North Magnetic PoleNorth Magnetic PoleThe Earth's North Magnetic Pole is the point on the surface of the Northern Hemisphere at which the Earth's magnetic field points vertically downwards . Though geographically in the north, it is, by the direction of the magnetic field lines, physically the south pole of the Earth's magnetic field...
- South Magnetic PoleSouth Magnetic PoleThe Earth's South Magnetic Pole is the wandering point on the Earth's surface where the geomagnetic field lines are directed vertically upwards...
- Tollmann's hypothetical bolideTollmann's hypothetical bolideAlexander Tollmann's bolide, proposed by Kristan-Tollmann and Tollmann in 1994, is a hypothesis presented by Austrian geologist Alexander Tollmann, suggesting that one or several bolides struck the Earth at 7640 BCE , with a much smaller one at 3150 BCE...
External links
- Alleged “Evidence” of Earth Crustal Displacement (Pole Shift) Analysis of specific evidence used to argue for geologically recent Pole Shift
- Fingerprints of the Gods An analysis of arguments made for a Late Pleistocene Pole Shift, based in the ideas of Rand Flem-Ath, by Graham Hancock in his 1995 book
- “The Day the Earth Fell Over” at LiveScience.com
- Charting Imaginary Worlds: Pole Shifts, Ice Sheets, and Ancient Sea Kings
- Minds in Ablation Part Five Addendum: Living in Imaginary Worlds More about interpreting ancient maps and ideas of Charles Hapgood.
- The Kerplop! Theory: Acme Instant Ice-Sheet Kit (Some Assembly Required)
- A Corruption of European History - Buache's Map of 1739
- “Earth's Poles May Have Wandered”, ScienceNOW Daily News, August 2006
- “What is that pole shift thing?"