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

THE MOUNTAINS
Europe was nowhere near the meridian of displacement.
Thus, in one given displacement, a meridional fracture pattern
will be created near the meridian of displacement, a
diagonal fracture pattern in very large areas approximately
4.5 degrees from this meridian, and, of course, no fracture
pattern in the ''pivot" areas, 90 degrees from the meridian of
displacement, where no displacement will occur.
Lately, the oceanographic research work under the direction
of Ewing has resulted in tracing a globe-encircling crack
in the bottoms of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans,
and has connected it with the Great Rift Valley in Africa.
The pattern that has been traced out is about 40,000 miles
long; it is reported that there is seismic activity at present
recent dis-
along the whole length of the crack, suggesting
turbance of the area and a still-continuing process. The
crack appears to average two miles in depth and twenty miles
in width. The fact that it is connected with the Rift Valley
in Africa, that it bisects Iceland, and apparently invades
Siberia, indicates that it is not a phenomenon of ocean ba-
sins only. It is, on the contrary, clearly a global phenomenon.
The Columbia Research News, published by Columbia Uni-
versity, in its issue of March, 1957, described the discovery
thus:
In January, Columbia University geologists announced the dis-
covery of a world-wide rift believed to have been caused by the pull-
ing apart of the earth's crust. The big rift traverses the floors of all
the oceans and comes briefly to shore on three continents in a system
of apparently continuous lines . . . 45,000 miles long.
Throughout its vast length the world-wide rift seems to be remarkably
uniform in shape, consisting of a central valley or trench averaging
20 to 25 miles in width and flanked on either side by 75 milewide
belts of jagged mountains rising a mile or two above the valley.
The peaks
of the highest mountains in the system are from 3,600 to
7,200 feet below the ocean's surface while the long undersea stretches
of the rift valley itself lie from two to four miles down. In addition
to being marked by its topography, the globe-circling
formation is
the source of shallow earthquakes that are still going on along its
entire length an indication that, if the rift is due to a pulling apart
of the earth's crust, the geological feature is a young and growing one.