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The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

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104<br />

EARTH'S SHIFTING CRUST<br />

as a sector <strong>of</strong> the crust approaches a pole. Where this happens,<br />

the surplus surface must fold. Thus it is the force <strong>of</strong><br />

gravity, over a large area, that folds the crust in a small area.<br />

It may help the reader to grasp this idea if he will visualize<br />

a flat area on the equator which, in process <strong>of</strong> being displaced<br />

with the crust as far as a pole, has been folded enough to produce<br />

mountains six miles high. Now, actually, the peaks <strong>of</strong><br />

those mountains are no farther from the center <strong>of</strong> the earth<br />

than the flat area was at the equator. <strong>The</strong>ir altitude, with<br />

reference to the earth's center, is unchanged. What has<br />

changed altitude, however, is the rest <strong>of</strong> the surface, outside<br />

the mountain chain. That has been pulled down six miles.<br />

What pulled it down, obviously, was the force <strong>of</strong> gravity, and<br />

the reason it was pulled down was that it was first shifted<br />

horizontally to a place where gravity could act upon it.<br />

Here, then, is the answer to the long-standing enigma <strong>of</strong><br />

the source <strong>of</strong> the energy for mountain folding. <strong>The</strong> moun-<br />

tains are not lifted up at all; the surface is pulled down, the<br />

force <strong>of</strong> gravity does the pulling, and folding results where<br />

there happens to be excess <strong>of</strong> surface.<br />

JF. Existing Fracture Systems as Evidence for the <strong>The</strong>ory<br />

It is ordinarily considered a strong argument in favor <strong>of</strong><br />

a hypothesis if it enables one to anticipate the discovery <strong>of</strong><br />

phenomena. Campbell has shown that the theory <strong>of</strong> displacements<br />

<strong>of</strong> the earth's crust calls for the existence <strong>of</strong> great sys-<br />

tems <strong>of</strong> parallel fractures, intersected <strong>by</strong> other fractures at<br />

right angles to them. It was some time after Mr. Campbell<br />

began to consider this matter, and quite independently <strong>of</strong><br />

him, that I became aware <strong>of</strong> the fact that such fracture pat-<br />

terns do, in fact, extend over the whole face <strong>of</strong> the globe,<br />

and that geologists are in agreement that their origin is un-<br />

explained. Many years ago Hobbs pointed out that they<br />

must have been the result <strong>of</strong> the operation <strong>of</strong> some world-<br />

wide force:

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