Wandering Poles or Drifting Continents?
Wandering Poles or Drifting Continents?
This chapter discusses the results of paleomagnetic research that bore on continental drift. Paleomagnetic research proceeded in two phases. First came the effort to establish the reliability of rock magnetism. Second came the research into the strange magnetic reversals and whether they could be used to determine rock ages. Not one of the pioneering paleomagnetists set out to corroborate continental drift. British physicists like Patrick M. S. Blackett and Stanley Runcorn knew little geology and were mainly interested in magnetism for its own sake. They and the scientists after them had to deal with the most important questions, such as whether over hundreds of millions of years of geological activity, rocks could have preserved their original magnetism, or whether the Earth's magnetic field has always been dipolar: having a single north pole and a single south pole, as it does today. This chapter also considers how Runcorn, who had been working on paleomagnetism for only a few years and had espoused true polar wandering, changed his mind and converted to mobilism.
Keywords: continental drift, Patrick M. S. Blackett, Stanley Runcorn, geology, rocks, Earth, magnetic field, paleomagnetism, polar wandering, mobilism
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