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

12 EARTH S SHIFTING CRUST
More than twenty-five years ago, the geologist William H.
Hobbs pointed out the consequences of the breakdown of
the nebular theory, so far as geology was concerned:
Far more than is generally supposed, the recent abandonment of
the nebular hypothesis to account for the origin of the universe, must
carry with it a rewriting of our science. This is particularly true of
geology, for all that concerns seismology, volcanology, and the whole
subject of the growth of continents and mountains (2i5:vii-viii).
But not only has there been no rewriting: actually, the
very abandonment of the nebular hypothesis has not yet
penetrated to the consciousness of the public. It is even true
that many geologists, when they are addressing their remarks
to the general public, write as if the cooling of the earth from
an original molten state had never been questioned.
Within the frame of reference of this uncertainty regarding
the earth's beginning, most geologists today unhesitatingly
confess that we do not understand the origin of continents,
ocean basins, mountain chains, or the causes of volcanic ac-
tion. We have never solved the mystery of ice ages in the
tropics, nor the equally strange mystery of the growth of
corals and warm-climate flora in the polar zones. There is a
dispute as to whether the present climatic zones have existed
continuously from the earth's beginning. If so, we cannot
account at all for the greater part of the fossils of plants and
animals of the past that did not live within the limits of the
present zones. If the zones have not continuously existed, no
one has been able to show what factor can have operated to
even out temperatures from pole to pole. When we turn to
the theory of evolution, we find that the unsolved problems
of origin, development, and extinction of species are many
and basic. Everybody agrees that evolution has occurred, but
nobody pretends to know how it happened. Our ideas of the
tempo at which geological change has occurred in the past
have been challenged in the most dramatic fashion by new
evidence produced by techniques of dating based on radio-
active isotopes. These new techniques have served to under-
line and emphasize the bankruptcy of the present theory of