DO CONTINENTS DRIFT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 10 November 1925, Page 7

DO CONTINENTS DRIFT.

WIRELESS TO BE USED FOR DISCOVERY.

Are America and Eul-ope drifting further apart? This question, asked in a geological and not in a.political sense, Avas set- before the meeting of the Biitisb Association for the AdA-ance-ment of Science, by Professor J. W. Gregory, tvho proposed to answer it by the use of Avireless time signals for the determination of Variations in longitude, states Science Service. Kept up for a few years, he said, these would afford a conclusive’ test of the theory recently advanced by Wegener, that tlie Atlantic Ocean was produced by the drifting*apart of the Americans on one side and Europe and Africa on the other.

The reality of a drifting motion of Avhole continents is now seriously accepted toy many geologists. Rieceut investigations have shown that beneath the uppermost 60 miles or so of rocky crust, there is. a semi-molten layer of magma or lava overlying the earth’s solid central cere, and on this viscid mass the continental blocks find more or less uncertain footing. The idea of a drift also receives /support from the rather suggestive reciprocity of the projections and indentations of the Atlantic shores of America and the Eurafrican coastline.

Professor Gregory was not inclined, however, to admit the rapidity of the drift postulated by the Wegener theory, and it is to get a critical test of this disputed question that he proposed the use of radio time signals.