THE EARTH'S FUTURE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 51, 5 March 1929, Page 17

THE EARTH'S FUTURE

BUILDING- OF CONTINENTS

(From "The Post's" Representative.) NEW 'YOBK, 9th January.

"Is the earth dead? Are the ocean basins and continents made and finished'? Are .there no active asthenqliths?" These questions were discussed before tho American Association for tho Advancement of Science by Dr. Bailey Willis, ofXLeland Stanford University, who named certain: sectors of the universe where land shifts would, iu 1 slow time, cause thd upbuilding 'of new continents.

The asthenoliths he asked about are popularly—among his craft, that ■ is— known as blisters, caused by heat. "Compression of gravity," said pr. Willis, "is capable "of producing air the heat of k which we have evidence. As rocks heat, the, melting tends to extend laterally faster than Upward, thus forming asthenoliths." The formation of asthenoliths appears to develop 30 to 600 miles below the oarth's surface, and probably only those within 100 miles of the surface directly affect"it. A blister requires several million years to grow. . ■■',".■ "There is a great deep off Japan and tho chain of volcanoes dominated by Fujisan," he said. "There is the deep of the Aleutian Islands, with Katinal and many, other volcanoes. There is Ataeana deep, off Central Chile and the voneanoes that rise in. the Andes. There are many othcr3 in the Pacific and the West Indies. .Only the Atlantic .now appears s relatively cold, although perhaps warming up to become active some millions of years hence." /