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True Polar Wander (Non-Geomagnetic Polar Shifts)

gremlinclr

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Initial posts have been copied from the Antarctica Without The Ice thread:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/antartica-without-the-ice.3382/




Crustal Shift Theory

Theres an interesting theory that at one time Antartica was on the equator(roughly) and somewhere else, presumably whats on the equator now, was the north pole.

How the theory goes is as ice builds up on the poles they get heavier and heavier and along comes a planetary alignment to give it that extra nudge and the entire crust of the earth, which as we all know is floating on magma, just slides about 90 degrees and the poles are at the equator.

Consequently, I saw this on a special about Atlantis and that was one theory as to what happened to it.

A side note, the same plantary alignment they mentioned will occur again on 5/5/2005.


OOOOOOOOH scary! :)
 
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Tectonics: the plates wander, and will eventuallay be somewhere else - so current equator was once south pole, current poles were once equatorial, etc.

And the gravitational pull of planetary alignments is negligible, or less.

The interesting bit is, if there's enough land mass at one pole or t'other, a permanent winter condition at that pole heralds a new ice age...

And the past few have been in the north...
 
Gremlin had a point about the concept of crustal slippage, an idea that the whole crust of the planet can move togther very rapidly, over a period of a few days to a few tens of year. Some of the observable fact of both plate tectonics, such as why did some plate boundariesfuse and new ones appear in places, unless they were moved quite rapidly from the places of convection in the mantle, and how could there be evidences of deciduous forestation in latitudes that, even if they were warm enough, didn't have the right amounts of light to support such plants. I would refer you to the work of the Flem-Aths.

8¬)
 
Picking up on the bit about tectonics and crustal shifting ... This can lead to true polar wander - a shift in the location of the earth's spin axis relative to its surface layout.
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". If a body is not totally rigid (as is the case of the earth), then in a stable state, the largest moment of inertiaaxis will be aligned with the spin axis, with the smaller two moments of inertia axes lying in the plane of the equator. If the body is not in this steady state, true polar wander will occur: the planet or moon will rotate as a rigid body to realign the largest moment of inertia axis with the spin axis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_polar_wander
 
This Business Insider article describes how the results of recent research indicate the earth's true pole wandered about 12 degrees beginning around 84 million years ago, then the planet eventually more or less "righted" itself.
Earth tipped over on its side 84 million years ago and then righted itself, new study finds

According to a new study, Earth tilted by 12 degrees about 84 million years ago.

"A 12-degree tilt of the Earth could affect latitude that same amount," Sarah Slotznick, a geobiologist at Dartmouth College and co-author of the new study, told Insider.

It would approximately move New York City to where Tampa, Florida, is right now, she added.

Imagine the Earth as a chocolate truffle — a viscous center ensconced in a hardened shell. The center consists of a semi-solid mantle that encircles the liquid outer core. The top layer of the truffle, the Earth's crust, is fragmented into tectonic plates that fit together like a puzzle. Continents and oceans sit atop these plates, which surf atop the mantle.

The researchers found that, between 86 and 79 million years ago, the crust and mantle had rotated around Earth's outer core and back again — causing the entire planet to tilt and then right itself like a roly-poly toy. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.businessinsider.com/earth-tipped-over-84-million-years-ago-study-2021-6
 
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Here are the bibliographic details and abstract for the research paper identifying the true polar wander event at circa 84 MYA.
The full article is accessible at the link below.

Mitchell, R.N., Thissen, C.J., Evans, D.A.D. et al.
A Late Cretaceous true polar wander oscillation.
Nat Commun 12, 3629 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23803-8

Abstract
True polar wander (TPW), or planetary reorientation, is well documented for other planets and moons and for Earth at present day with satellites, but testing its prevalence in Earth’s past is complicated by simultaneous motions due to plate tectonics. Debate has surrounded the existence of Late Cretaceous TPW ca. 84 million years ago (Ma). Classic palaeomagnetic data from the Scaglia Rossa limestone of Italy are the primary argument against the existence of ca. 84 Ma TPW. Here we present a new high-resolution palaeomagnetic record from two overlapping stratigraphic sections in Italy that provides evidence for a ~12° TPW oscillation from 86 to 78 Ma. This observation represents the most recent large-scale TPW documented and challenges the notion that the spin axis has been largely stable over the past 100 million years.

SOURCE / FULL REPORT: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-23803-8
 
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This new IFLScience article provides some more details on the research cited above and its implications
New Evidence The Earth Tipped Over 84 Million Years Ago

Towards the end of the dinosaurs' reign the Earth tipped over on its side before righting itself, new evidence suggests. The movement took millions of years, so it wasn't like giant sauropods were suddenly sent sliding. However, the findings in Italy's Apennine mountains could settle a long-running geological debate. ...

Professor Joe Kirshvink of Caltech examined magnetic deposits in search of evidence for the most recently proposed example of such a tip. In Nature Communications, Kirshvink and co-authors not only claim to have found clear signs the Earth moved, but to be able to measure the shift at 12 degrees over around 4 million years, followed by a reversal. ...

We know that true polar wander exists on a small scale – we can measure it with satellites, but whether movements of many degrees have taken place is still debated, with scientific papers both for and against a late Cretaceous tip.

The Apennine mountains are a particularly good place to test the idea because Cretaceous-era limestone deposits known as Scaglia Rossa are veined with iron-rich bacteria that formed magnetite deposits. As the name suggests, magnetite is magnetic and preserves the magnetic field at the time at which it formed. ...

Just as magnetic basalt around mid-ocean ridges record the flips in orientation of the Earth's magnetic poles, leading to the discovery of tectonic plates and enabling the dating of important fossils, these magnetite veins record orientation relative to the poles.

Between 87 and 78 million years ago these mountains swung 12 degrees, before returning to almost the exact same place. Movement peaked 84-82 million years ago. Although the magnetic measurements can only compare movements compared to the magnetic poles, the paper's authors maintain this was true polar wander, with the whole crust tilting compared to the Earth's axis of spin. ...

The paper's findings are significant because previously the Scaglia Rossas limestones have been used as key evidence against a major wandering event in the Cretaceous. The authors argue previous researchers relied on just three average inclinations and may have also used less reliable techniques. ...
https://www.iflscience.com/environment/new-evidence-the-earth-tipped-over-84-million-years-ago/
 
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I came across a theory/myth that the earth physically flipped pole-to-pole. See Scott Creighton's video here that I've set to start at the relevant section:

He uses the back-to-front ceiling at Senenmut as primary evidence.

The video also covers Scott's theorising that the pyramids were built to withstand a predicted flood and that the newly discovered void contains all of Khufu's ancestors. In the questions at the end, he mentions hearsay that a drilling into the void is to be carried out.
 
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