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

THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH 179
distortion of the earth from its equilibrium shape, distortion
such as now prevails across parts of India and all of the
Arabian Sea. It is essential to realize that the long persistence
of such anomalies, and the apparent lack of any tendency to
adjustment, may have no relationship to the strength of the
crust. It may be due, quite simply, to the fact that the matter
in the sublayer (the asthenosphere) is too viscous to flow
rapidly, and that when it has to flow such great distances, and
in such great volume as would be required to compensate the
sweeping undulations of the geoid caused by a movement of
the crust, great periods of time are required, periods so long
that our instruments have not been able to detect the progress
of isostatic adjustment.
The advantage of the theory of crust displacements is that
it can reconcile the data supporting the conviction of geologists
that the crust must be too weak to support major loads
out of adjustment over great spans of territory, with the ob-
served fact that in some cases it appears to do so. Further-
more, we may, with this theory, grant the crust enough
strength under certain conditions (of compression) to support
heavy loads of narrow span, such as the Hawaiian
Islands, and still understand its extreme weakness in areas of
extension, where it appears to adjust easily to rather minor
loads.
Einstein, in the Foreword, referred to the possible centrif-
ugal effects of these distortions within the crust. The follow-
ing principles apply:
a. A positive load on the crust, like the icecap, will exert a
centrifugal effect equatorward; correspondingly, the
effects of negative loads must be poleward.
b. The effects of positive loads on one side of the equator
will be opposed to the effects of positive loads on the
other side of the equator; equal positive loads in equal
longitudes and latitudes will cancel each other across the
equator, and the same is true of negative loads.