Continents and oceans on the surface of the earth. Hemispheres of the earth What territories cover the continental and oceanic hemispheres

The hemispheres of the Earth are two halves of the spherical surface of the Earth, which are distinguished according to certain characteristics. Usually the Earth is divided into:
* Northern and Southern (along the equator);
* Eastern and Western (along the Greenwich and 180° meridians, sometimes along the meridian of 160° eastern and 20° western longitude according to Greenwich), while Europe, Africa, Australia and almost all of Asia are located entirely in the eastern hemisphere, and America is located in the western hemisphere;
* continental (centered in southwest France - land occupies about 47% of the area) and oceanic (centered east of New Zealand - land occupies about 9%).

Related concepts

Isostasy (isostatic equilibrium) is a hydrostatically equilibrium state of the earth’s crust, in which the less dense earth’s crust (average density 2.8 g/cm³) “floats” in a denser layer of the upper mantle - the asthenosphere (average density 3.3 g/cm³), obeying Archimedes' law. Isostasy is not local, that is, fairly large (100-200 km) blocks are in isostatic equilibrium.

The euphotic zone (from the ancient Greek “eu” (εύ) - completely and “photos” (φωτός) - light), or photic zone, is the upper layer of water of a reservoir illuminated by the sun, in which, thanks to the photosynthetic activity of phytoplankton and higher plants photosynthesis occurs. One of three ecological zones (along with the disphotic zone and the aphotic zone) distinguished in reservoirs depending on the degree of illumination sunlight and the presence of photosynthesis. The lower boundary of the euphotic zone passes at a depth of...

Glacier is a mass of ice of predominantly atmospheric origin, undergoing viscoplastic flow under the influence of gravity and taking the form of a stream, a system of streams, a dome (shield) or a floating slab. Glaciers are formed as a result of the accumulation and subsequent transformation of solid atmospheric precipitation (snow) with their positive long-term balance.

Sea level is the position of the free surface of the World Ocean, measured along a plumb line relative to some conventional reference point. This position is determined by the law of gravity, the moment of rotation of the Earth, temperature, tides and other factors. There are “instant”, tidal, average daily, average monthly, average annual and average long-term sea levels.

Callisto (Latin Callisto; Greek Καλλιστώ) is the second largest satellite of Jupiter (after Ganymede), one of the four Galilean satellites and the most distant among them from the planet. It is the third largest moon in the Solar System after Ganymede and Titan. It was discovered in 1610 by Galileo Galilei, named after the character ancient greek mythology- Callisto, lover of Zeus.

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Airplane, because the airplane is more convenient and cheaper than other means of transport

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One day, after watching a film about wildlife, I decided to take a jeep ride through Africa. Soon I flew to Africa. I wanted to start my journey from the Nile Delta and end in the African jungle.
As I was driving through the desert, a tumbleweed rolled past me. This is a plant that does not have roots. It rolls wherever the wind blows.
Some time later, zebras ran past me, followed by a cheetah. For some time we were evenly matched, and I managed to get a good look at him. He had sharp teeth, he ran on three legs, and with the fourth he tried to get the zebras. He himself was red with black spots. Soon he hooked his victim and bit her neck.
When I wanted to drink, I discovered that the water was running out. Luckily, I came across an oasis. Not only did I get plenty drunk, but I also got to admire the rhinos! They nibbled grass and drank water. They were simply wonderful! Huge creatures with a horn above their nose - shine!
It was getting close to night. I was already approaching the jungle. When I arrived, large stones immediately caught my eye. But when I looked closer, I realized that these were sedums - stone plants. I also noticed a date palm where I thought the dates were already ripe. I picked them and tasted them. I liked them and picked more of them. Soon I went to bed.
A rustling woke me up. I stuck my head out of the tent. A giraffe stood right above me and nibbled the leaves of the tree that was located above my tent. Four more animals were eating leaves from a nearby tree. They were so beautiful!
This is where my journey ended.

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●waste from enterprises and factories
●car exhaust gases
and so on...

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Special properties:
The mineral quartz is a piezoelectric and pyroelectric; it can exhibit triboluminescence - glow under mechanical influence (friction, scratching, splitting, etc.).
Selection form
The mineral quartz forms crystals, solid masses of varying density and grain size (from coarse to cryptocrystalline), fine-fibrous, spherulitic, sinter (chalcedony) and earthy aggregates.
Origin
Igneous quartz is present mainly in acidic intrusive and volcanic rocks, in granitic pegmatites.
Metamorphic quartz occurs primarily in quartzites and crystalline schists.
Hydrothermal quartz is formed in ore veins, alpine-type veins, and forms nodules and concretions in sedimentary rocks.
Secondary quartz is often present in oxidation zones of ore deposits.
Deposits/occurrences
Quartz is found throughout the world.
Application
Quartz single crystals were used in optical instrument making and radio engineering; quartz sand - in the ceramic and glass industries. Many varieties of quartz (agate, amethyst, rauchtopaz, citrine, etc.) are used in jewelry.

The Earth as a planet obeys the laws of harmony. Johannes Kepler considered harmony to be a “real formative factor,” and many inquisitive thinkers traced aesthetic patterns in the spherical shape of the Earth and in its regular movement in world space. Harmony also appears on the physical map of the world. As a rule, aesthetically organized structures on the earth's surface do not immediately catch the eye, but become clearly visible after a detailed analysis of the globe or map of the earth's hemispheres.
The English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626), apparently, was the first to notice that all the continents of the Old and New Worlds are shaped like triangles, with their sharp ends facing south. Then it was noticed that all any significant islands and peninsulas also face the south or southwest with their extremities. These are Greenland, California, Florida in America, Scandinavia, the Iberian, Apennine and Balkan in Europe, Hindustan, Indochina, Korea and Kamchatka in Asia.
Reinhold Forster (1729-1798), a scientist and observational companion of J. Cook's circumnavigation, pointed out three more similar features in the structure of the continents. Firstly, the southern ends of all continents are high, rocky and look like mountain ranges ending abruptly at the seashore. America ends with Cape Horn, Africa - the Cape of Good Hope with Table Mountain. In Asia, on the Deccan Peninsula, the chains of the Western and Eastern Ghats extend to the south, forming the huge cliffs of Cape Comorin. The South-Eastern Cape of Australia has the same character. Even Europe, which strictly speaking is not a continent, but a part of Eurasia, ends in the south with the rocky Cape of Gibraltar.
Secondly, to the east of the southern tip of each continent lies one large island or group of islands. In America these are the Falkland Islands, in Africa - Madagascar and the small volcanic islands surrounding it, in Eurasia - Ceylon, in Australia - the two large islands of New Zealand and the island of Tasmania. Some continents on their eastern edges are even framed by garlands of islands. In this case, island garlands form arcs, sometimes strongly curved. Their convex side always faces east. There are no such garlands on the western side of the continents. The Aleutian Arc in this regard is part of the East Asian islands, although it is classified as part of the American continent.
Thirdly, all continents have large bays in the west, protruding deeply into the land. In America, this is a deep bend of the western coast at the foot of the Andes in Bolivia (Gulf of Arica), in Africa - the Gulf of Guinea, in Australia - the Great Australian Bight. In Asia, this feature is less noticeable, but can also be seen in the outlines of the Arabian Sea. In the east, all continents, on the contrary, have protrusions towards the ocean.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the geographer Steffens pointed out that the continents of our planet are grouped in pairs, forming three double parts of the world: 1) North and South America; 2) Europe with part of Western Asia and Africa; 3) Asia and Australia. At the same time, all the southern continents seem to continue the northern ones. They are connected to each other either by an isthmus or a series of islands and at the same time separated from each other by deep Mediterranean seas. In addition, there is always an archipelago on one side of the isthmus, and a peninsula on the other. The southern continents are also noticeably shifted to the east of the northern ones.
The clearest example of such a connection is represented by North and South America, with the Isthmus of Panama connecting them. The archipelago in the east is the Antilles, the peninsula in the west is California. Europe and Africa are connected through Italy and Sicily. To the west of this broken isthmus lies the Iberian Peninsula, an archipelago to the east - the Greek islands. Asia and Australia are connected by a long series of islands, starting from the Malacca Peninsula and tracing through Sumatra, Java and other islands of the Sunda archipelago to Australia itself. The peninsula to the west of this isthmus is Hindustan, and the huge archipelago to the east includes the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines.
Chains of mountains form the framework of the continents. America is, as it were, attached to the chain of Cordillera and the Andes, just as Australia is attached to the Great Dividing Range. The same framework of Eurasia forms a vast mountain belt between 20 and 45° N. sh., from the Himalayas to the Alps. Where the mountain belts are wider, the continents are usually wider. In the ocean, mountain ranges often continue with islands.

Reason for similarity

The harmony and similarity in the arrangement of the continents do not seem accidental, and R. Forster made a thorough attempt to explain their reason. If the western coasts of all continents are inclined to the southwest, drop steeply into deep water and are indented by many bays and bays, then there must be one common reason for this similarity. Forster saw it in the waves of a high flood that swept onto the continents from the southwest. A gigantic wall of furious ocean waters, hitting the barrier of the continents, dug deep bays off their shores and, tearing off all the light earth, left only the cliffs of the current capes.
In those days, scientists often associated the event of the global flood with a comet impact. This idea was first expressed by the English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742). In 1694, he presented a report to the Royal Society on how the impact of comet fragments upon their collision with the Earth caused the Great Flood described in the Bible. Halley saw traces of the impact in large depressions on the surface of the Earth, one of which he considered the Caspian Sea.
The ideas of R. Forster were developed by Peter Pallas (1741-1811), a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He explained the origin of deep bays in southern Europe and Asia and the formation of vast plains in the north, especially Siberian, by the impact of a giant catastrophic wave. In his opinion, the soils of these plains were formed from rocks that were torn off by ocean waves from the continents of the Southern Hemisphere. Waves of a terrible flood, advancing from the southwest, carried these rocks to the shores of the continents facing the Arctic Ocean and deposited them there. This happened after the full fury of giant waves hit the Himalayas and Tibet.
As a result, according to Pallas, rocks were brought to Siberia from the southwest, from the Southern Hemisphere. Numerous corpses of elephants and other tropical animals and plants were buried along with them. The geological and tectonic maps of Northern Eurasia also clearly show that the main directions of rock strike extend mainly from southwest to northeast.
Pallas also drew attention to the disproportion in territory between the southern parts of Asia, south of the Himalayas, and the vast plains lying north of the main mass of the continent. This shows that most of the southern countries were washed away by the waters of a terrible flood.
Then Pallas applied these constructions to America, the entire part of which to the west of the Cordillera and the Andes is a narrow strip, while to the east of the Cordilleran-Andean chain almost the entire space of America is contained.
Although the distribution of continents and oceans, rivers and mountains on the planet does not look geometrically correct, in their outlines the great thinkers of the past discovered a rich history of catastrophes that once outlined the appearance of our planet. Now their traces are imprinted in the mysterious pattern of the earth's surface and decorate it even more. But the attempts of Halley, Forster and Pallas to explain the order in the structure of the Earth's surface were not included in the scientific constructions of the twentieth century. Everyone was forgotten. The harmony of grace and the purpose of the structure of the earth's surface still remain unsolved. Today, the reason for the wedge shape of the continents is intricately explained with phrases like: “the reason is the increase in oceanicity to the south and in downward movements in the equatorial plane of the earth’s lithosphere ellipsoid.”

Continental and oceanic hemispheres

Almost all the land on the earth's surface is concentrated north of the equator, while the seas and oceans are south of it. North of the equator, the ratio of land and sea is 1: 1.5, while south of the equator it is 1: 6. Using a globe, it is easy to see that the continents, as a rule, are opposed by the ocean, in other words, continents and oceans are antipodal. If you mentally draw a diameter across the globe through any point on the earth’s land, then the opposite (antipodal) point in 19 out of 20 cases will not be on land, but in the ocean or sea. Only the southern part of South America has land as its antipode in China and Transbaikalia.
You can mentally move the Earth's poles so as to outline the most continental and the most oceanic hemispheres. Only 1/8 of the total land will lie in the ocean. The most oceanic hemisphere forms the Pacific Ocean together with Antarctica. The total area of the Pacific Ocean is only slightly smaller than the area of the Atlantic, Indian and Arctic oceans combined. The Pacific Ocean occupies more space than all land and almost a third of the entire surface of the planet (32.4%).
The continental hemisphere contains 7/8 of all land. Although, no matter how you move the hemisphere on the globe, you will not get an absolutely continental hemisphere, that is, one in which land would predominate. The greatest possible “continentality” will not exceed 47% of the area of any mentally delineated hemisphere, that is, more than half of its surface in all cases will be covered with water.
The division of the globe into continental and oceanic hemispheres characterizes the asymmetric structure of our planet. In the oceanic hemisphere there are only two continents, and the smallest ones at that - Australia and Antarctica. In most of the oceanic hemisphere there are no continents at all. The continental hemisphere covers a wide belt of land around the Arctic Ocean and the Indo-Atlantic half of the globe. It concentrates Europe, Africa, North America, a significant part of South America and almost all of Asia.
Almost the entire continental hemisphere is dominated by similar plants and animals that make up the Palaearctic flora and fauna. They are especially close to each other in the Arctic regions. The peoples here are similar to each other. In complete contrast to the Palearctic region, the South African, Australian and South American worlds of plants and animals look sharply different from each other. These same sectors exemplify the greatest contrasts on Earth and in racial terms. The consequences of the uneven distribution of land and water are also manifested in the cultural and political dominance of the Northern, land-rich hemisphere.

Young basalt rocks are developed over a vast area of the oceanic hemisphere. The earth's crust here is devoid of the ancient granite-metamorphic layer, characteristic of continents and reaching a thickness of 15-20 km there. IN AND. Vernadsky this phenomenon gave the term “dissymmetry (asymmetry) of the globe,” seeing in it the result of the impact on the Earth of some powerful geological factor, possibly the separation of the Moon. At the same time, V.I. Vernadsky believed that the Moon initially came into contact with the Earth, and called the Pacific Trench the place from which it came off. But the average density of the Earth is 5.5 g/cm 3 , and that of the Moon is 3.3 g/cm 3 . The formation of such a double system from the same material is not possible. The difference in composition and, most importantly, in the internal structure of the Moon and the Earth allows us to think that the Moon, alien to the Earth, most likely, on the contrary, once came to it from the black depths of Space.
It is more appropriate to explain the formation of the oceanic hemisphere not by the separation of the Moon from it, but by the collision of the Earth with a large cosmic body. Most likely it happened in the current area of the Pacific Ocean. The entire Pacific basin resembles a colossal ring structure. Its surroundings are even called the “Pacific Ring”. Outwardly, it is very reminiscent of a giant, largely already destroyed crater, similar to those formed on other planets of the solar system during collisions with huge asteroids. It can be assumed that a powerful and colossal impact of such an asteroid on the Earth occurred in the southern and central parts of the Pacific Ocean. There is no land left here, with the exception of fragments of the Pacific islands. The main direction of the impact fell on the two American continents, along the western edge of which the grandiose chains of the Cordillera and Andes grew. The impact was so powerful that continents grew on the opposite side of the globe. Some features of the ring structure can also be traced in the Indian Ocean, to which North America is antipodal on the opposite side of the globe.
Global asymmetry in the distribution of low and high areas can also be traced on other planets of the solar system. The surface of Mars, for example, is characterized by an asymmetry in the location of plains, which make up 35% of the Martian surface, and elevated, cratered areas. Most of the plains are located in the Northern Hemisphere, while the continental highlands are concentrated in the Southern Hemisphere. The border between plains and elevated areas is in some cases represented by a special type of relief - flat-topped mesas.
The older the surface, the greater the number of impact craters it bears. Therefore, the ancient continental territories of Mars are heavily cratered, and on the young plains of the northern hemisphere of Mars there are either no craters at all, or they are very rare. The ancient craters here were destroyed by younger ones, which formed the flat region of Mars, similar to the oceanic hemisphere of the Earth. It is quite possible to assume that the asymmetry of both Earth and Mars is based on the same reason.

Slow drift or instant split?

The great naturalist Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859) also searched for patterns in the structure of continents. In the book "Cosmos" he demonstrated the remarkable parallelism of the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Throughout their entire length, the protrusion of the land of one continent corresponds to the concavity of the opposite. The protruding part of one shore corresponds to the depressed bends or bays of the other. For example, the part of Brazil convex towards the ocean corresponds to the Gulf of Guinea. The entire Atlantic Ocean thus looks like a giant valley. This correspondence between the continents is especially pronounced if we consider the outlines not of the coasts themselves, but of the shelves that outline them. Between them one can sometimes trace such geometrically regular forms that one involuntarily creates an idea of their very recent unity.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German scientist Alfred Wegener noticed that the Atlantic coasts of Africa and South America are composed of the same rock crystalline shields and overlying sedimentary layers containing the same fossils of plants and animals. Striking similarities in sedimentary layers can be traced between the northeastern United States and Great Britain, while completely different layers lie in the Atlantic Ocean separating them.
The idea of the former unity of the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean is further strengthened when comparing organic life on the shores of the Old and New Worlds. The same freshwater fauna inhabits their lakes, separated by a salt ocean. Between its opposite banks one can find not only a huge number of common genera and even species of plants and animals, but also landscape consonance. The forests of Appalachia strikingly reminded the early settlers of the forests of their native Europe. The organic world of tropical latitudes turned out to be similar on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
Moreover, striking correspondences were also found in the lives of the peoples inhabiting the opposing shores of the Atlantic Ocean. The African Hottenots turned out to be in many respects similar to the tribes inhabiting the Brazilian jungle. The way of life, way of life and way of life of the primitive population of Europe is believed to be reminiscent of that encountered by Europeans among the North American Indians. The cult of the pyramids among the Mexican Aztecs was practiced by the ancient Egyptians. Both in Egypt and Mexico they made stone sarcophagi, mummified the dead, and used similar hieroglyphic writing. On both sides of the ocean there was a separate caste of priests, the cult of the Sun was practiced, there was a similar system of reckoning time and a fairly developed astronomy. How the Aztecs, Incas, Mayans pointed to their teacher when Quetzalcoatl sailed to them from the east, and the Egyptians pointed to Osiris who arrived from the west.
So many similarities were discovered between countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean that the idea arose of a land that disappeared as a result of a gigantic catastrophe in the middle of the current Atlantic Ocean - the mysterious Atlantis. However, it did not so much arise as it was borrowed by atlantologists from numerous legends, tales, and historical sources.
Similarities were also found in the opposite continents of other oceans. Thus, the rocks of the ancient foundation of Madagascar turned out to be very similar to those of South India, although they also resemble those of South Africa. But the organic world of Madagascar and its Malagasy people have very little in common with the African continent. At the same time, the living world of Madagascar reveals many similarities with the organic world and the peoples of Southeast Asia. True, the inhabitants of Madagascar, according to modern views, are considered to have simply moved here from Indonesia.
Especially many striking similarities are found in various remote regions of the Pacific Ocean and the countries adjacent to it. Many geologists consider the Pacific Trench to be a very ancient formation. But a number of biogeographical and ethnogeographical data do not agree with this. In particular, for the distribution of some genera of endemic (not found anywhere else) palms and lizards on the Pacific islands, it is necessary to assume that the islands of Oceania were previously a single landmass. The flora of Polynesia contains a number of species characteristic of the southernmost part of South America.
There are so many similarities in the organic world of the Pacific countries that to explain them it is necessary to assume the existence in recent times of a wide continental bridge stretching from southern Japan to the Hawaiian Islands and through the Galapagos Islands to Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. According to some ideas, such a bridge also contributed to the settlement of ancient human tribes. In this case, it must have existed geologically quite recently, perhaps already at the dawn of the early civilizations of Latin America. Then this bridge collapsed for some reason. Only numerous chains of islands have survived in the form of its fragments.
And the Pacific basin itself then turns out to be quite young.
By the way, the youth of the Pacific Trench is evidenced by the extremely small volume of sediments accumulated at its bottom. The oldest sediments in the deep parts of the oceans are no older than the Lower Cretaceous. This means that the basalt layer underlying them everywhere was also formed no later than the Lower Cretaceous. But on the middle ridges, as well as on the ridges of volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean, the age of the basalts is Cenozoic, predominantly Neogene.

The recent origin of the Sea of Japan depression is evidenced by the distribution patterns of freshwater fish, which were noted by biogeographer G.U. Lindbergh. Thus, in the rivers of the Amur basin, the Korean Peninsula and Eastern China, on the one hand, and Japan, on the other hand, there is a whole range of completely identical fish. How did these fish get from the mainland to the Japanese islands? If in relation to some species of animals and plants one can assume their accidental penetration through sea water, then in relation to freshwater fish this assumption disappears. For them, both sea and land are insurmountable obstacles.
Freshwater fish could penetrate from mainland rivers into the rivers of the Japanese islands only if these rivers were connected by a freshwater reservoir or directly continued each other. But this can only be imagined if, in place of modern seas, there was land on which rivers or other freshwater bodies were located. At the same time, the fauna of typical river fish of Japan did not have time to change any dramatically in comparison with the river systems of the Amur and Yellow Rivers and retained almost complete identity of species. This means that the break between them occurred recently. G.U. Lindberg explained the reason for the formation of such a gap as a catastrophic failure of the central part of the bottom of the Sea of Japan, which occurred in a time close to us. His hypothesis is confirmed by the absence in the fauna of this sea of typically deep-sea fish known in marine reservoirs adjacent to the Sea of Japan.
Alfred Wegener hypothesized that 200 million years ago all the continents formed a single massif, Pangea, which was washed by a single proto-ocean Panthalassa. This supercontinent consisted of the northern part - Laurasia, in which present-day Europe, Asia and North America were united.
In the Southern Hemisphere there was another part of it - Gondwana, consisting of South America, South Africa, Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica. Between all these distant regions, many similarities are also found in the geological structure and ancient organic world.
About 150 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurasia split into American and Euro-African parts. Wegener believed that large blocks of the earth's crust diverged under the influence of tidal forces and the waters of the World Ocean penetrated into the resulting depressions. This is how the Atlantic Ocean came into being.
At first, Wegener's hypothesis was accepted with a bang. But it soon became clear that geophysical data contradicted the explanations of the processes that Wegener gave. The hypothesis was rejected as unscientific. However, since the 60s, the movement of continents was remembered in connection with the discovery of the gigantic underwater mountain system of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, about 1 thousand km wide. Its highest peaks form the islands: Bouvet, Tristan da Cunha, Ascension, Sao Paulo, Azores, Iceland. In the Arctic Ocean it continues with a number of ridges, including the Gakkel Ridge. On average, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rises to depths of 2000-3000 m, having a height of 3-4 km, which corresponds to the highest mountains on the continents. Subsequently, it was discovered that a single global system of mid-ocean ridges, the total length of which exceeds 60 thousand km, encircles the entire globe.

But that is not all. Research has shown that along the tops of mid-ocean ridges, in their central parts, a giant underwater canyon stretches. It was called a rift, from English word"rift" is a crack. In some cases, rifts are represented by deep valleys in which there are no sedimentary rocks. In other cases, these are uplifts limited by ruptures and faults. The rift zone contains the youngest crust, and further along the slopes of oceanic ridges there are older rocks. The continental margins contain the oldest rocks of the ocean floor.
It also turned out that subparallel strip magnetic anomalies are located along the mid-ocean ridges. It is known that in the past the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field has been reversed many times. Therefore, different rocks in different areas of the oceanic crust were magnetized by fields of different polarities. As we move away from the ridges, the age of the strip anomalies, as well as the rocks of the ocean floor, increases, and the oldest rocks are located near modern continents. The aging pattern of magnetic field polarity change zones located in stripes parallel to rifts in ocean floor rocks suggests that the ocean floor was expanding away from the rifts.
An increase in the age of rocks and magnetic anomalies from the oceanic ridges to the margins of the continents gave rise to the idea that the material of the future oceanic crust floats up in the zone of the median ridges and spreads to the continents. According to one hypothesis, the continents with the underlying parts of the mantle form strong plates. The plates move apart as molten material from the mantle rises up into the space between the plates. The gaps between them are filled with expanding material rising from below, which, as it cools, forms a new crust of the ocean floor.
It was concluded that under the lithosphere, in the mantle, a kind of boiling of matter occurs. As a result of convection, a kind of giant lift is created, delivering molten basalts to the rift zone. Along the axis of the mid-ocean ridges, the intrusion, swelling and squeezing of basaltic material from the earth's interior onto the surface of the earth's crust occurs. This is where the youngest bark is found. Then the basalts spread in both directions at a speed of 1-2 to 10-15 cm per year to deep trenches on the margins of continents, where the crust sinks into the mantle. According to these ideas, the ocean floor is depicted as looking like a giant conveyor belt. This model of its formation is called the “theory of global plate tectonics.”
According to the theory of plate tectonics, when an oceanic plate is pushed under a continental plate or when two continental plates collide, mountain ranges are formed. For example, the Indo-Australian plate, colliding with the Eurasian one, gave rise to the Himalayas.
From a physical point of view, the concept of global plate tectonics looks completely unnatural. First of all, the question arises: why did convection in the mantle form such giant linear structures, and did not arise in the form of local foci or convective cells of different scales? To do this, it is necessary to allow, notes A.N. Romashov3 that the substance inside a certain linear “cauldron” boils without cooling for many millions of years, which obviously contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. Of course, it can be heated by the decay of isotopes of radioactive elements, but even in this case the heating should fade over time. And the processes of disintegration of the procontinent last, according to the modern theory of plate tectonics, 150-200, and according to some estimates, 400-500 million years.

Further, drilling of basalts adjacent to mid-ocean ridges has shown that a clear stripe structure of the magnetic field is not observed as it moves deeper. The magnetic properties of rocks change slightly at depth. The formation of such a magnetic field can occur during the rapid formation of basalt and its rapid magnetization reversal. Some American scientists believe that changes in the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field during the formation of ocean floor rocks did not occur as now, over tens of thousands of years, but with stunning speed.
Finally, is it possible to say that if today’s rates of continental drift are 2-15 cm per year, then over many millions of years the plates have been moving apart at the same speed? Obviously, if some cart itself is moving at a given moment at a speed of 2 cm per second, then a minute ago its speed should have been much higher.
Under the influence of friction, the movement of the “conveyor” pushing continents apart can only slow down. Computer modeling of the processes occurring during the movement of tectonic plates, carried out by American scientists Austin and Baumgardner, showed that initially they should have moved apart at incredibly high speeds, up to several hundred meters per second. When the Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates collided at such speeds, the Himalayas reared up. Then the speed of the continents moving apart slowed down under the influence of friction, and now we are observing their damping oscillations in the form of a very slow drift. They don't even drift so much as oscillate slightly. And at the same time, the modern slow friction of tectonic plates against each other is accompanied by the release of heat, especially at the edges of the plates, which gives rise to volcanic phenomena, earthquakes and the illusion of slow drift. But all these processes are already fading.
Thanks to the well-established collection of information about modern earthquakes, we know a lot about them. In other years they make a huge number of victims. It was such a terrible year
1976 It was even called “the year of catastrophic earthquakes.” The number of earthquake victims then exceeded half a million people. About 30 thousand people were killed by earthquakes in 1980, and in 1988, during the Spitak earthquake in Armenia, 25 thousand people died. There are opinions that the number of victims and material losses associated with earthquakes is growing every year. In fact, the quality of information collection about these events is improving. In the past, people experienced more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and they were of greater magnitude.
The Bible mentions frequent earthquakes in Palestine, where these disasters are quite rare today. During the powerful eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79 AD. The flourishing Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were buried under a layer of ash. After this, Naples, located nearby, quietly flourished. In Rome, in just one year of the Punic War (217 BC), 57 earthquakes occurred. During excavations of Troy, it was found that it was destroyed by an earthquake.

The entire earth's crust has cracked:
There was an abyss here, a mountain there.
There were a lot of revolutions here:
The top is the bottom, and the bottom has become the top -
And people do the same thing later
The theories were turned upside down.

J.W. Goethe. Faust

What could have been the initial cause of the split of the continents? Obviously, this was a huge tectonic catastrophe that broke the earth's crust into separate plates. Ustin Chashchikhin believes that it could have been caused by a large asteroid hitting the Earth. This is consistent with the views of other scientists. Thus, the German atlantologist O. Muk, studying the traces of the fall of the Caroline meteorite (diameter 10 km, mass 200 billion tons, speed 20 km/sec), came to the conclusion that it was the cause of the death of Atlantis. The force of the impact was equivalent to the explosion of 30 thousand hydrogen bombs. Polish atlantologist L. Seidler believed that Atlantis perished when the Earth collided with a comet.

S.I. Dubkova. History of astronomy. - M.: White City, 2002, 192 p.
G.U. Lindbergh. Large fluctuations in sea level during the Quaternary period. - L.: Nauka, 1972, p. 10-13, 69-72.

While cleaning, I listen to a TV show on Discovery Science. And I hear: “The topography of our planet is characterized by an asymmetrical structure of the hemispheres...” Wait, I’m thinking, how are the hemispheres asymmetrical?

Hemispheres of the Earth

We are accustomed to the conditional division of the Earth into hemispheres: by the equator into North and South, or by the prime meridian into East and West. But the Northern and Southern hemispheres can be called continental and maritime, respectively. This is because the Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern Hemisphere. From ancient times to the beginning of modern times, people believed that there was more land in the world than water.

But it turned out that the opposite was true. In the total area of the Earth (which is half a million square kilometers), the ocean is almost 2.5 times larger - 361 million km² versus 149 million km² of land.

Continental and maritime hemispheres

Moreover, the land is distributed asymmetrically over the earth's surface. I realized this when I saw a photo of the Earth from space.

It is immediately noticeable that the land is grouped in the “upper” hemisphere of the planet, that is, in the Northern. In numbers it looks like this:

the ocean occupies 70.8% of the total earth's surface;
in the Southern Hemisphere, the ocean occupies 81%;
in the Northern Hemisphere, 61% is occupied by the ocean;
29.2% of the entire earth's surface is occupied by land;
in the Southern Hemisphere of land - 19%;
in the Northern Hemisphere of land - 39%.

The continental hemisphere (also known as the Northern Hemisphere) is so called not because there is more land than water there (this is not true), but because there is even less land in the Southern Hemisphere.

Northern and southern continents

The earth's continents are also divided into two groups: Eurasia and North America are the continents of the northern group, and Antarctica, South America, Australia, and Africa are the southern ones. Moreover, every continent on the other side of the planet seems to be balanced by an ocean. Antarctica is balanced by the maritime Arctic, North America by the Indian Ocean.

This “antipodality” is characteristic of almost all continents. Only the end of South America falls outside this rule; its antipode is Southeast Asia.
It is clear that this cannot be an accident, but the exact reason is unknown. Perhaps antipodality is a consequence of the Earth's rotation.