Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
They were too new, too different from anything that had been done. I apparently was the only
one to have considered it sufficiently important to drop everything else and start working along
these new lines.
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Le Pichon applied Morgan's method to the entire globe, showing that rotation
around a particular pole can explain the opening of each of the major ocean basins.
Just as Morgan had in effect “closed the loop” by reconciling the motion of three
plates, Le Pichon found the unique set of plate motions and rotational pole pos-
itions that closed the loop for six plates. (Le Pichon knew there were more than
six plates, including some small ones, but found that he needed only six to show
that the plate tectonic model was internally consistent and explained the findings
of marine geophysics.)
Le Pichon recalled “coming home early in the morning for breakfast after a
night at the computer and telling my wife: 'I have made the discovery of the cen-
tury.' Well, I was young and my enthusiasm carried me too far. But the statement
is a good indication of how we felt during those days of frantic discoveries.”
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Having worked out the way each plate moves today, Le Pichon put the process
into reverse to work out where each had been at various times in the past, all the
way back to the beginning of the Cenozoic Era.
In remembering those fertile days, Le Pichon reveals the human cost when a
scientist's world crumbles and why some are unable to face it. He recalls another,
earlier spousal conversation after he had seen the marvelously symmetrical
Eltan-
in
-19 magnetic profile for the first time:
Mywifestillremembers thatonmywaybackfromthelaboratory,Iaskedhertogetmeadrink
and told her: “The conclusions of my thesis are wrong: Hess is right.” This extremely painful
“conversion” experience has been crucial in shaping my own vision of what science is about.
During a period of 24 hours, I had the impression that my whole world was crumbling. I tried
desperately to reject this new evidence, but it had an extraordinary predictive power!
(212)
Another paper from 1968, titled “Seismology and the New Global Tectonics,”
greatly influenced geologists generally. If Wilson, Morgan, and Le Pichon were
right, then most earthquakes are the result of motion between two adjacent plates
rubbing against each other. A careful study of world earthquakes ought then to be
able to corroborate plate tectonics.
Three seismologists from Lamont, Bryan Isacks, Jack Oliver, and Lynn Sykes,
undertook a comprehensive review of the data of seismology and found that they
gave “remarkable support to the new tectonics.” Indeed, the findings were so stim-
ulating that the authors thought their effect would be of “revolutionary propor-
tions.”
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