Why was wegener rejected

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The above map shows an idealized schematic of the boundaries of the continental plates. Because of this abuse,Wegener could not get a professorship at any German university. Fortunately, the University of Graz in Austria was more tolerant of controversy, and in it appointed him professor of meteorology and geophysics. In Wegener was invited to an international symposium in New York called to discuss his theory.

Though he found some supporters, many speakers were sarcastic to the point of insult. Wegener said little. He just sat smoking his pipe and listening. His attitude seems to have mirrored that of Galileo who, forced to recant Copernicus' theory that the Earth moves around the sun, is said to have murmured, "Nevertheless, it moves! A theory stating that the Earth's continents have been joined together and have moved away from each other at different times in the Earth's history.

The theory was first proposed by Alfred Wegener in What supports Wegener's theory of plate tectonics? The mobilists were in the opposite camp and supported Wegener's ideas, since many of them had seen evidence for continental motion, especially in the Alps. Since the north pole is essentially fixed, except during periods of magnetic reversals, this piece of evidence strongly supports the idea of plate tectonics.

What are the two tectonic plates called? Tectonic plates are pieces of Earth's crust and uppermost mantle, together referred to as the lithosphere. The plates are around km 62 mi thick and consist of two principal types of material: oceanic crust also called sima from silicon and magnesium and continental crust sial from silicon and aluminium. What theory came before plate tectonics? The root of this was Alfred Wegener's publication of his theory of continental drift, which was a controversy in the field through the s.

At that point scientists introduced new evidence in a new way, replacing the idea of continental drift with instead a theory of plate tectonics. How did a supercontinent form? Arthur Holmes suggested that this thermal convection was like a conveyor belt and that the upwelling pressure could break apart a continent and then force the broken continent in opposite directions carried by the convection currents.

This idea received very little attention at the time. Not until the 's did Holmes' idea receive any attention. Greater understanding of the ocean floor and the discoveries of features like mid-oceanic ridges, geomagnetic anomalies parallel to the mid-oceanic ridges, and the association of island arcs and oceanic trenches occurring together and near the continental margins, suggested convection might indeed be at work.

These discoveries and more led Harry Hess and R. Deitz to publish similar hypotheses based on mantle convection currents, now known as "sea floor spreading". This idea was basically the same as that proposed by Holmes over 30 years earlier, but now there was much more evidence to further develop and support the idea. To learn more about the current theories which describe the mechanisms behind continental drift go to the "Plate Tectonics: The Mechanism" page.