Earth Features and Their Meaning / An Introduction to Geology for the Student and the General Reader

by William Herbert Hobbs

Fig. 2.—Map on Mercator’s projection to show the reciprocal relation of the land and sea areas (after Gregory and Arldt).

One of the most significant facts involved in the distribution of land and sea, is a concentration of the land areas within the northern and the seas within the southern hemisphere. The noteworthy exception is the occurrence of the great and high Antarctic continent centered near the earth’s south pole; and there are extensions of the northern continent as narrowing land masses to the southward of the equator. Hardly less significant than the existence of land and water hemispheres is the reciprocal or antipodal distribution of land and sea ([Fig. 2]). A third fact of significance is a dovetailing together of sea and land along an east-and-west direction. While the seas are generally A-shaped and narrow northward, the land masses are V-shaped and narrow southward, but this occurs mainly in the southern hemisphere. Lastly, there is some indication of a belt of sea dividing the land masses into northern and southern portions along the course of a great circle which makes a small angle with the earth’s equator. Thus the western continent is nearly divided by a mediterranean sea,—the Caribbean,—and the eastern is in part so divided by the separation of Europe from Africa.

Fig. 3.—The form toward which the figure of the earth is tending, a tetrahedron with symmetrically truncated angles.

The figure toward which the earth is tending.—Thus far in our discussion of the earth’s figure we have been guided entirely by the present distribution of land and water. There are, however, depressions upon the surface of the land, in some cases extending below the level of the sea, which are not to-day occupied by water. By far the most notable of these is the great Caspian Depression, which with its extension divides central and eastern Asia upon the east from Africa and Europe upon the west. This depression was quite recently occupied by the sea, and when added to the present ocean basins to indicate depressions of the lithosphere, it shows that the earth’s figure departs from the standard spheroid in the direction of the form represented in [Fig. 3]. This form approximates to a tetrahedron, a figure bounded by four equal triangular faces, here with symmetrically truncated angles. Of all regular figures with plane surfaces the tetrahedron has the smallest volume for a given surface, and it presents moreover a reciprocal relation of projection to depression. Every line passing through its center thus finds the surface nearer than the average distance upon one side and correspondingly farther upon the other ([Fig. 4]).

Astronomical versus geodetic observations.—Confirmation of the conclusions arrived at from the arrangement of oceans and continents has been secured in other fields. It was pointed out that the earth’s oblateness was proven by comparison of the measured degrees of latitude upon the earth’s surface in lower and higher latitudes, the degree being found longer as the pole is approached. Any variation from the spherical surface must obviously increase the size of the measured degree of latitude in proportion to the departure from the standard form, and so the tetrahedral figure with one of its angles at the south pole will require that the degrees of latitude be longer in the southern than they are in the northern hemisphere. This has been found by measurement to be the case, and the result is further confirmed by pendulum studies upon the distribution of the earth’s attraction or gravity. If less of the mass of the earth is concentrated in the southern hemisphere, its attraction as measured in vibrations of the pendulum should be correspondingly smaller.

Fig. 4.—A truncated tetrahedron, showing how the depression upon one side of the center is balanced by the opposite projection.

Other confirmations of the tetrahedral figure of the earth have been derived from a comparison of astronomical data, which assume the earth to be a perfect spheroid, with geodetic measurements, which are based upon direct measurements. Thus the arc measured in an east-and-west direction across Europe revealed a different curvature near the angle of the tetrahedral figure from what was found farther to the eastward.

Changes of figure during contraction of a spherical body.—If we inquire why the earth in cooling should tend to approach the tetrahedral figure, an answer is easily found. When formed, the earth appears to have been a but slightly oblate spheroid, or practically a sphere—the shape which of all incloses the most space for a given surface. Cooled and solidified at the surface to the temperature of the surrounding air, and the core still hot and continuing to lose heat, the core must continue to contract though the outer shell is no longer able to do so. The superficial area being thus maintained constant while the volume continues to diminish, the figure must change from the initial one of greatest bulk to others of smaller volume, and ultimately, if the process should continue indefinitely, to the tetrahedron, which of all regular figures has the minimum volume for a given surface.