Cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis

This article is about the hypothesis of pole shift in its historical context. For a description of the modern scientific understanding, see true polar wander.

The pole shift hypothesis is the hypothesis that the axis of rotation of a planet has not always been at its present-day locations or that the axis will not persist there; in other words, that its physical poles had been or will be shifted. The Pole shift hypothesis is almost always discussed in the context of Earth, but other bodies in the Solar System may have experienced axial reorientation during their existences.

It is now established that true polar wander has occurred at various times in the past, but at rates of 1° per million years or less. However, in popular literature, many theories have been suggested involving very rapid polar shift.

Pole Shift Clarification

Pole shift hypotheses are not to be confused with plate tectonics, the well-accepted geological theory that the Earth's surface consists of solid plates which shift over a fluid asthenosphere; nor with continental drift, the corollary to plate tectonics which maintains that locations of the continents have moved slowly over the face of the Earth, resulting in the gradual emerging and breakup of continents and oceans over hundreds of millions of years.

Pole shift hypotheses are also not to be confused with geomagnetic reversal, the periodic reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (effectively switching the north and south magnetic poles). Geomagnetic reversal has more acceptance in the scientific community than pole shift hypotheses.

Early proponents

An early mention of a shifting of the Earth's axis can be found in an 1872 article entitled "Chronologie historique des Mexicains" by Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, an eccentric expert on Mesoamerican codices who interpreted ancient Mexican myths as evidence for four periods of global cataclysms that had begun around 10,500 B.C.

Hugh Auchincloss Brown, an electrical engineer, advanced a hypothesis of catastrophic pole shift influenced by Adhemar's earlier model. Brown also argued that accumulation of ice at the poles caused recurring tipping of the axis, identifying cycles of approximately seven millennia.

Charles Hapgood is now perhaps the best remembered early proponent, in his books The Earth's Shifting Crust (1958) (which includes a foreword by Albert Einstein who was writing before the theory of plate tectonics was developed) and Path of the Pole (1970). Hapgood, building on Adhemar's much earlier model, speculated that the ice mass at one or both poles over-accumulates and destabilizes the Earth's rotational balance, causing slippage of all or much of Earth's outer crust around the Earth's core, which retains its axial orientation.

Based on his own research, Hapgood argued that each shift took approximately 5,000 years, followed by 20,000- to 30,000-year periods with no polar movements. Also, in his calculations, the area of movement never covered more than 40 degrees. Hapgood's examples of recent locations for the North Pole include Hudson Bay (60˚N, 73˚W) , the Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and Norway (72˚N, 10˚E) and Yukon (63˚N, 135˚W).

This is an example of slow pole shift motion, which displays the most minor alterations and no destruction. A more dramatic view assumes more rapid changes, with dramatic alterations of geography and localized areas of destruction due to earthquakes and tsunamis. Several recent books propose changes that take place in weeks, days, or even hours, resulting in a variety of doomsday scenarios.

Regardless of speed, the results of a shift occurring results in major climate changes for most of the Earth's surface, as areas that were formerly equatorial become temperate, and areas that were temperate become either more equatorial or more arctic.

Hapgood wrote to the Canadian librarian, Rand Flem-Ath, encouraging him in his pursuit of scientific evidence to back Hapgood's claims and in his expansion of the hypothesis. Flem-Ath published the results of this work in 1995 in When the Sky Fell co-written with his wife, Rose.

Other theories which are not dependent upon polar ice masses include those involving:

• a high-velocity asteroid or comet which hits Earth at such an angle that the lithosphere moves independent of the mantle
• a high-velocity asteroid or comet which hits Earth at such an angle that the entire planet shifts axis.
• an unusually magnetic celestial object which passes close enough to Earth to temporarily reorient the magnetic field, which then "drags" the lithosphere about a new axis of rotation. Eventually, the sun's magnetic field again determines the Earth's, after the intruding celestial object "returns" to a location from which it cannot influence Earth.
• perturbations of the topography of the core-mantle boundary, perhaps induced by differential core rotation and shift of its axial rotation vector, leading to CMB mass redistributions. See, e.g., Bowin.
• mass redistributions in the mantle from mantle avalanches or other deformations. See, e.g., Ladbury, and Steinberger and O'Connell.

Recent research

Recent work by scientists and geologists Adam Maloof of Princeton University and Galen Halverson of Paul Sabatier University in Toulouse, France, indicates that Earth indeed rebalanced itself around 800 million years ago during the Precambrian time period. They tested this idea by studying magnetic minerals in sedimentary rocks in a Norwegian archipelago. Using these minerals, Maloof and Halverson found that the north pole shifted more than 50 degrees — about the current distance between Alaska and the equator — in less than 20 million years. This reasoning is supported by a record of changes in sea level and ocean chemistry in the Norwegian sediments that could be explained by true polar wander, the team reports in the September–October 2006 issue of the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

Much work on this subject has been done by William Hutton and can be found at The Hutton Commentaries website. William Hutton and Jonathan Eagle in 2004 published Earth's Catastrophic Past and Future, which summarizes and extends their earlier work on possible mechanisms and timing of a future pole shift.

New Age theories

Main article: New Age

The field has attracted many pseudoscientific and non-scientific authors, offering a wide variety of things as evidence, including psychic readings. The series of non-fiction books by former Washington Newspaper reporter Ruth Shick Montgomery in the 1970s and 1980s elaborates on the Edgar Cayce readings.

See also

• Doomsday event
• North Magnetic Pole
• South Magnetic Pole

External links

• Alleged “Evidence” of Earth Crustal Displacement (Pole Shift) Analysis of specific evidence used to argue for geologically recent Pole Shift
• Fingerprints of the Gods An analysis of arguments made for a Late Pleistocene Pole Shift, based in the ideas of Rand Flem-Ath, by Graham Hancock in his 1995 book
• “The Day the Earth Fell Over” at LiveScience.com
• Charting Imaginary Worlds: Pole Shifts, Ice Sheets, and Ancient Sea Kings
• Minds in Ablation Part Five Addendum: Living in Imaginary Worlds More about interpreting ancient maps and ideas of Charles Hapgood.
• The Kerplop! Theory: Acme Instant Ice-Sheet Kit (Some Assembly Required)
• A Corruption of European History - Buache's Map of 1739
• “Earth's Poles May Have Wandered”, ScienceNOW Daily News, August 2006
• “What is that pole shift thing?"