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

THE SHAPE OF THE EARTH 183
supposes that the lopsidedness of the internal shell may have
resulted from the separation of the moon from the earth, at
which time the bed of the Pacific may have been created.
The arguments that once supported this theory of the origin
of the moon have, in recent years, been gradually whittled
away, until little remains of them. This, then, is also a hazardous
speculation.
Professor Daly's fertile mind has produced a third suggestion.
He feels that perhaps the triaxiality may have resulted
from the effects of continental drift, which he felt himself
compelled to support because there was no other way
to ex-
plain the innumerable facts of paleontology and geology,
many of which have been already cited in this book. We have
seen, however, that continental drift will not do.
It seems that all the arguments that Professor Daly uses to
support his suggestion that the triaxial protuberances are not
supported by the crust, but from below the crust, fail to stand
examination. They are supported by no convincing mass of
evidence. There is obviously a sort of desperate urgency
about them. A strong need impels him to hoist them up. The
nature of this need is perfectly clear.
The need is to save the theory of isostasy. It is to smooth
the path in front of a theory that has a lot of useful applica-
tions and has a great deal to be said for it. The theory is
threatened by the unexplained anomalies referred to above;
it is still more threatened by these massive distortions of
the shape of the planet, the triaxial protuberances. They are
wholly and absolutely irreconcilable with the known prin-
ciples of physics, as opposed to speculations. Either the shape
of the earth is established by the balance of the force of gravity
and the centrifugal effect of the rotation, or it is not. The
geoid, so established, is distorted, and it proves impossible
to explain the distortion either by the resistance of the crust
to the aforementioned forces or by the (undemonstrated) lop-
sidedness of the internal shell.
But displacements of the earth's crust may explain the
matter, and in the simplest possible fashion.