Alfred Wegener
Alfred Wegener was a German Geophysicist, Polar researcher and meteorology he is most commonly known (not that he is commonly known) for his theory of continental drift which he came up with in 1912 even though Abraham Ortelius in 1596 hinted at the idea of continental drift.
Continental drift is the theory that the continents moved or split into smaller continents that we have today. That is the reason we think is that we find plant and animal fossils that originated and lived in different continents are found on the other side of the world than were we thought they lived.
What is his evidence? Ever since the continents were all mapped, people had noticed that many continent edges, like those of South America and Africa, looked as though they would fit together if they could be moved like puzzle pieces.
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he was a specialist on Greenland. He noticed that, based on nineteenth-century longitude determinations, it appeared that Greenland had moved a mile away from Europe in a hundred years. And Paris and Washington, D.C., seemed to be moving apart by about 15 feet each year while San Diego and Shanghai got about six feet closer. On top of that, Wegener learned that species, too small to swim the oceans, were found on other continents, as were similar fossils.
In 1912 he proposed that the continents we know today were once all attached in a single landmass he called Pangaea (Greek for "all earth"). They were surrounded by one global ocean, but then broke apart and somehow "drifted" to their separate places on the globe. evidence seemed to match up: the shape of the continents, fossil evidence, matching rock types and structures, and evidence of ancient climate patterns. But Wegener could not come up with an feasible way to explain how the continents
Rogier van der Weyden painted his vision of the biblical Deposition before the year 1443, likely between 1435 and 1438. The painting is oil on wood panel and was an altarpiece commissioned by the crossbowmen’s guild in Louvain, Belgium. Jesus’s body is at the center of the scene, being carefully lifted down from his cross. He is surrounded by mourners, his mother, Mary, swooning in her grief as John the Evangelist reaches out to support her and Mary Magdalene wringing her hands, her head bowed in sorrow. The figures in the artwork do not fit completely within the frame of the altarpiece and the only the lower part of the cross is shown in full. In his Deposition, Rogier van der Weyden attempts to capture the extreme grief apparent at Christ’s death and reflect the emotion onto the observer, placing him/her within the narrative.
Mignolo explained how America was incorporated into the continental triad cosmology created by the Christians. America was incorporated as a forth arm because the world was originally divided into three continents; Asia, Africa, and Europe (Mignolo, 2002, p. 23). The original map was called the “T-in-O” map compiled in the early seventh century (Mignolo, 2002, p. 24). America was not included in this map because the existence was still not heard of. This “T-in-O” map was created by Western Christians. The Western Christians drew their map as a circle and decided to divide the world in three parts. Only two parts of the circle were drawn equally. Asia covered the top half on the circle, which created a semi-circle. Europe then consisted of the bottom left quadrant in the circle, and then followed by Africa at the bottom right quadrant.
The Exploration Era was a time period when countries and people made journeys overseas to find “the New World.” With the help of the printing press, the discoveries of the Americas were known globally making people curious to explore it themselves. In the map “Distribution of Columbus’ Letter” (Document D), it shows where the letter was published and where it was translated to different. This is due to the printing press. Along with the many documents, the news of Christopher Columbus’ discoveries of “India” or the New World had sparked the curiosity of people all over the world. People became more interested in geography and seeing what’s out there along with the different resources. The New World discovery opened up a new trade route and different trade items. This would create pros and cons like economic growth and slavery. In addition the exploration of the Europeans helped us gain knowledge and get a picture of the Americas. In the “Henricus Martellus’ World Map, 1489” (Document E), it shows the world as they knew it with Europe, Africa, and Asia. The “Martin Waldseemuller's World Map, 1507” was an updated, more correct version of the world we see today. Waldseemuller’s map includes the Americas and was much bigger than Martellus’. The printing press had helped Waldseemuller use this new knowledge to create a map that would depict something
As if the Harris map weren't suggestive enough, other maps have also surfaced. It's a specific map that Menzies points to as definitive proof that the Chinese had already explored the world long before the Europeans ever set sail in the age of exploration. This map, known as the 1418 map -- so called for the date it was supposedly published -- clearly shows all of the world's oceans, as well as all seven continents, correct in shape and situation. Even more startling is the map's accurate depiction of features of North America, including the Potomac River in the Northeast of the present-day United
Throughout the 20th century, the Coastal Migration Theory, the “Kelp Highway,” suggested that some of the First Americans colonized the New World by navigating along the North Pacific coastlines from Asia into North and South America. This theory was considered highly unlikely by most archaeologists who at the time did not have access to advanced technology that reliably dated faunal remains. Moreover, archaeologists lacked recent discoveries that supported the Coastal Migration Theory. The evidence available at the time supported the hypothesis which proposed Upper Paleolithic hunters followed big game herds from Siberia to Beringia and down a long, narrow ice-free passageway that opened as the vast ice sheets, Laurentide and Cordilleran,
It is widely considered that media was forever changed with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450. The printing press made it easier for people to convey their thoughts and ideas while simultaneously reaching the maximum amount of people possible. Within the last century, the evolution of media has been staggering. We can now read the news online from halfway around the world or watch stories on television as they happen. All of these innovations have not come without their problems. In 1774, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote the book The Sorrows of Young Werther, a book that by all accounts was The Catcher in the Rye of its generation. It was banned because it was said to have influenced thousands across Europe to commit a form of copy-cat suicide. Copy-cat suicide is when one person commits a form of suicide that they learned from either local knowledge or accounts of the suicide in the news and other forms of media. This paper will analyze Goethe's influence on what we now know as “The Werther Effect” and its prevalence in other forms of modern media. First I will look at The Sorrows of Young Werther and how it influenced numerous studies.
When Cook returned from his first voyage he still had one question left, and that was whether or not there was another continent in the south seas or if it was just a huge mass of water. He manned a new ship, the Resolution in 1772, for this next voyage as well as a secondary ship the Adventure. His goals of this trip were to discover the supposed seventh continent as well as a southern passage. He charted two islands, Tonga and Easter Island. He continued south trying to find the seventh continent, but ran into ice, and proposed that the ice could be connected to a landmass that no one has discovered yet. Even though he never reached this continent he did successfully circumnavigate the world and he was actually the first to circumnavigate the world at such high latitudes.
Since the beginning of human kind there has been a cloud of wonder of how our planet was formed. Scientist interested in this field through out the years have developed many different theories to how our planet came about. Before the Twentieth Century, scientists and geologists thought that mountain structures were due to the massive tightening of the earth caused by the gradual cooling of molten rocks. In 1900, American scientist Joseph Le Conte, published an article in the Appleton's Popular Scientific Monthly. He described that the problem in understanding mountain building was establishing the cause of sideways pressure. It was not until 1910, that an American Geologist named F.B.Taylor, proposed the idea of a continental drift. Other scientists dismissed Taylor's idea, because there was just not enough proof. However, Taylor's idea was then backed up by a German scientist named Alfred Wegener. He proposed that the continents surrounding the Atlantic Ocean, Africa and South America fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. His broad range of studies enabled him to incorporate his theory of Plate Tectonics. Wegener, later in 1915 while in the German military published his idea that interpreted how his continental drift theory worked. He proposed that a huge landmass called Pangea, meaning ("all land") existed 200 million years ago. He furthered explained that this super continent began to drift apart very slowly throughout millions of years into what it looks like now. Wegener went on several expeditions through out his life to the continents of South America and Africa.
In the years leading up to and including 1491 European explorers had been researching and studying the world, however they lacked a real understanding of the true size and geography of our planet. When explorers finally began setting out on their expeditions in the late 1400’s, the world began to experience serious change. Before Columbus is credited with the discovery of America in 1492, the Americas were untouched by Europeans, but within a few hundred years permanent settlements would be founded on American soil despite the presence of the native people.
He began to participate in research groups over his new findings on the excursion. As a free and logical thinker, Darwin stayed in a close-knit circle of freethinking scientist who began to discuss the idea of transmutation and how it was a curs...
He realized that snake embryos had bumps where there should be legs. Which mean they probably evolved from a creature with legs. He noticed that whale embryos had teeth, but adult whales did not have teeth. The most shocking of his embryotic studies involved human embryos. He noted that the human embryos as slits around the neck, the same in fish. The difference is that in fish the develop into gills, and in human the become the bones of the inner ear. This showed that humans must be descended from fish. This led him to the conclusion that all species were somehow connected. He theorized that beginning with a common ancestor, species had changed dramatically over generations. Some species may add new body features, or lose them. He called this descent with
Charles Darwin began his scientific breakthroughs and upcoming theories when he began an expedition trip to the Galapagos Islands of South America. While studying there, he discovered that each island had its own type of plant and animal species. Although these plants and animals were similar in appearance, they had other characteristics that made them differ from one another and seem to not appear as similar. Darwin questioned why these plants and animals were on these islands and why they are different in ways.
At the very dawning of the science of historical geology, James Hutton developed views on the earth’s geologic processes and ow they affect the planet unlike any other scientist before him. His idea that the planet’s processes revolved in a cyclic fashion were the cornerstone of uniformitarianism. Although he did not coin the phrase himself, an honor bestowed upon William Whewell, he did form the basic idea that the history of the earth can be explained by what is happening now.
Convergent boundaries, divergent boundaries and convection currents all examples of physical evidence that supports the theory of plate tectonics. Continental drift is the theory contrived by Alfred Wegener in 1912 that states that Earth’s tectonic plates are in slow constant movement. At the time he didn’t know how the continents moved. The theory was soon modernized in the 50’s and the theory of plate tectonics became was born. Plate tectonics is the theory that tectonic plates are in slow constant movement due to convection currents in the mantle. Now we know for sure, thanks to scientific studies of convergent boundaries, divergent boundaries, and convection currents in the Earth’s mantle, that the continental drift and plate tectonics theories are not
Alfred Lothar Wegener was born on November 1, 1880 and earned a Ph.D in astronomy in 1904. However Wegener had always been fascinated in climatology and meteorology. (According to ucmp.berkeley.edu) In the autumn of 1911, Wegener was browsing in Marburg university’s library and found a scientific paper that listed fossils of identical animals and plants found on opposite sides of the Atlantic ocean. With further searching he was able to prove that his theory of “Continental Drift” could have been true. The continental drift explained how parts of Earths crust could slowly drift atop a liquid core causing all continents were once formed as a single landmass to split apart . Although Wegener was the not the first scientist that all continents were connected at some point of time but, he was the first to prove it was plausible with evidence. This is why I agree that the continental drift is true, because of the fact that there were fossils of the same organisms on opposites sides of the Atlantic, same rock strata of South Africa and Brazil, and that fossils found in certain areas could ...