Earth's Crust Shifting? End of the world?

There has been great speculation on the various "End of the world" scenarios. One has speculated that a shift in the Earth's crust will lead to environmental catastrophe as today's tropics become tomorrow's polor ice caps and vice versa. Here are a few interesting web sites for people interested in learning more about these theories: Poleshift.org, Charles Hapgood's Theory, Science Frontiers, and Troubled Times which is loaded with links to other discussions and articles on the topic. Some even believe that the Mayan calendar references such an occurence in 2012 - leading to the end-times as we know it.

Recently science has proven that the Earth's magnetic poles have been shifting. This is not to be confused with a crust shift, unless it is in fact the crust shifting which makes the poles "Appear" to be shifting. More on the pole shift can be learned in the following: Breitbart Article, or this NASA article, or even this CNN article.

The two seemingly were two different issues until I read this recent article on The Inuit.

This got me to thinking... although the explaination in the article is plausible, it does not seem probable. I am beginning to believe that the two issues are in fact one in the same and that science is being prevented from disclosing our fate.

Has anyone else ever heard of this? Any opinions, thoughts, theories etc...??? I am new to this whole issue and am anxious for fresh ideas and perspcetives.

Unless there is some massive amount of energy that can make such an effect, I can't see how such a thing can occur without taking a massively long time, due to the normal rates of continental drift.

And IMO magnetic pole movement wouldn't do much either, life doesn't seem to have suffered from all the times it's happened before.



I don't see how this would happen, and it would leave one hemisphere always facing the sun too, which seems really strange to me.

That massive amount of energy lies below the Earth's surface, in the outer mantle in the inner mantle and core. The inner layers of the earth are molten and are in constant flux generating huge amounts of energy. As a result, the earth's crust literally floats atop this roiling mass. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are evidence of the amount of intense energy that can be generated right beneath our feet.

Geologists even speculate that movement within a super culdera, like the one in Yellowstone, contain enough energy to do exactly what we are talking about.

Beyond that there are external forces that could potentially exert the type of energy required - asteroid strike, black hole etc...

The fact that the magnetic poles are shifting so quickly lends itslef to the fact that perhaps something is happening that could cause a rapid shift in the Earth's crust. The reality is that we just don't know. Thanks for your input.

I know that there is a massive amount of energy down there, but i meant a massive amount in comparison to that, as it would take enormous amounts of energy to move such a large amount of rock. consider, it currently moves at about 70 mm a year in the fastest areas, now consider how much rock these theories would need to move, and how fast. to do it quickly, and in order to do it from say, now until December 21st, 2012. the distance needed is about 5000 miles. now I don't know how much the crust has a mass of, but the speed needed for this is 4.6cm/s. The current speed is at maximum 70 mm/year. In cm/s, that is 2.22x10^-7 cm/s. needed speed is 20.7 million times larger. Or, because speed follows a square law, it will need 429.46x10^14 times more energy by my calculations. I think this is right, but by these calculations it seems a very unlikely occurrence.

And I doubt even a large impactor could do this, although a large asteroid might have enough energy, considering what happened to the planet Uranus.

Well you have to think of the planet as a living being, as I truely feel it is.. But most of all you have to go way back to Pangea, the once full land of the earth was all connected.. The shifts of the plates under the earth created the land masses you see now, easy enough, Im sure you know about all this.. But my point is that the end of the world and mankind go hand in hand.. All the time I have been alive the end has been comming..
Its logical to say, yes it will happen, we all will die. and the earth will if it makes it long enough be consumed by the sun when it reaches the end of its lifetime... Thus, the changes in the world are always changing.. Yet what we do as humans on this planet sure dont help much.. If anything we are a cancer to this planet, How much garbage do you put out each week alone.. I think people really lose site of how wasteful and un in touch with this planet as all the other being on this pale blue dot are...

There is not going to be "any end of the world", at least not anytime soon.

The Earth has been in worse upheaval than this and it never "ended", and it is not about to do that now.

Climate Changes will happen for millions of years or billions of years; the current change is just a part of a larger cycle of changes, so you won't have to worry about "the end of the world yet".

[edit on 25-3-2007 by Muaddib]

Unfortunately, the article is gone.


In fact, they're not. The earth's crust is still continuing to shift (continental drift) and the poles are still continuing to drift... just as they've always done.

The Hapgood, etc, sites are based on very old information (we've learned a LOT since 1945). Their arguments are the equivalent of saying that "bad air causes malaria and an overactive liver causes you to have multiple sclerosis."

While it's a good idea to examine scientific theories (and scientists do this all the time), it's first a good idea to ask:
* how current are these ideas
* which scientists (with degrees in the field) are supporting this idea (because it's a bad assumption to think you can read a few web pages and know all there is about geology. I've got a good layman's understanding of geology and I can tell you there's a LOT I don't know.)
* if there aren't any scientists with degrees in the field supporting it (or currently supporting it), be very suspicious.
* how much information do you have (from science websites) about the phenomina.

Why that last point?

Frankly, because people lie. Yes, scientists do sometimes, but part of the science game is that if someone challenges your idea, you check for research and papers that refute them. Liars are usually caught within a relatively short time period (longer back when we only communicated by letters -- Piltdown took a longer time to expose as a hoax) and very quickly in modern times (some of the "munged" fossils from China.)

There's no such check and balance on regular websites. I could put up one saying that pole shifts are caused by the moon's wobble and lie through my teeth about the orbital shift of the moon. You guys couldn't tell that I was lying, particularly if I threw up some scientific terms and formulas.

So look for sources where they HAVE to be accountable and HAVE to explain themselves.

And European scientists have known for over 400 years that the magnetic poles shift.

Poleshift.org is an honest site, but it's evident they don't know much about geology or they'd mention the geologic columns as part of the evidence for the slow continental drift and the evidence for subsidance and rising of land.

Science Frontiers is an odd website. They do no filtering of the content or investigation, so you can find hoaxes and misinterpretations galore there. I don't agree with everything there, and the sources that they cherry pick their information from can be questionable. Still, it's an interesting site. Again, the content there is based on fairly old material.

"Troubled times" is the site of a self-proclaimed prophet of doom who's so far been wrong every single year for the past decade. She "channels" information from the least reliable "aliens" in the universe, and many of her statements on the "troubled times" index are wrong (there are, in fact, no "flash frozen" mammoths.)

There's no doubt that the magnetic poles will flip within the next few centuries, but the amount of "chaos" it's likely to cause is minimal. Even GPS doesn't rely on magnetic data readings, though it does have a magnetic north indicator. Some migrating animals and birds and insects MAY be in trouble... maybe. We don't know.

The earth's magnetic poles have shifted hundreds of times and none of those seems to correspond with any dieoff in lifeforms or any rapid expansion of new species. Continental drift is slow and does create econiches (as does the rising and subsidance of land) and does create change over millions of years.

2012 is only the end of the Aztec calendar. No other civilization records any significance to that date.

I've followed your well-reasoned posts for a long time and these boards and I trust your feedback - all them excellent points.

For your benefit, the Inuit article discussed Inuit tribesmen noticing that the sun was rising earlier in the year than normal and rising in the wrong place. They are also claiming that the dark season is not nearly as dark as it had been in the past and was, in fact, becoming brighter and brighter each year.

The explaination offered was something about light refraction taking place due to the atmosphere - an explaination that I believed sounded more like propaganda than true science.

Anyway, I thought that opening this thread up would yield some interesting information on the topic as I am having difficulty locating more info. I have heard the theories of the Earth's crust shifting - not merely as individual techtonic plates, but the entire mantle at once - due to the weight of ice accumulation at the poles (Sounds kind of crazy:@@. Hapgood, although I had no idea was such an old theory, seemed to reveal that this has taken place in the past.

Anyway, thank you all for contributing. Anyone with any more info, please post it as I am truly interested in learning more about this.

Actually, it does make sense from a scientific standpoint. I did some checking of other sources and found that it seems to be something noticed by a lot of the inhabitants (not just Inupiat) of the arctic circle:
www.cbc.ca...

Can the temperature differential produce the result? Yes... it's basically the same sort of thing as any persistant mirage. Is that the real cause? Maybe. Needs more study.

Is the Earth changing position? No. If it was, astronomers everywhere would have been screaming about it long ago, because their calibration software for their telescopes would suddenly be out of whack and amateur astronomers couldn't reliably find things in the sky that they wanted to photograph.

The second group screaming about this would be sailors and boat captains and fishermen worldwide. Fish behavior (such as feeding) is often triggered by light, and if you have to start going out an hour earlier or even a half hour earlier than you expect, you're going to start yelling about it.



It hadn't, at least not quickly. Einstein did indeed find his idea charming and interesting, but Einstein had as much knowledge of geology as I have of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons.

Here's a neat page of animations that show current tectonic theory of continent movement (as seen by matching rock layers in areas that once adjoined each other:
www.scotese.com...

An interesting article on this web site.

www.tmgnow.com...

The massize amount of energy needed to create a pole shift isn't underneath of us it's above us. The sun is set to have its' biggest sunspot cycle in recorded history.check NASA.cycle 24.set to peak anywhere from 2010-2012.The pole reversal is coming.The Mayans have created the most accurate calendar in history using the sun and it ends in 2012.Coincidence that we expect the biggest sun cycle in history peeking in 2012? The field will go topsy turvy all oceans will become tidal waves and all the tectonic plates will go resulting in earthquakes and volcanoes.
They are attempting to get Egyptian authorities permission to dig Giza as they believe they found the hall of records with Ground Penetrating Radar.
It is though that they will find more on this pole reversal down there. Who knows but they found something down there.The Mayans,Greeks,Egyptians,and a decoded bible scream 2012.

What if the sun's poles were shifted? Could such an event cause the earth's poles to do the same?

that's also in throy becuase the first sun-spot of this current cycle befuddled nasa because it acted in reverse of its' usual doings. Nasa has alot on this they have issued a solar storm warning

It hasn't so far.

The sun's poles shift on a regular cycle, about every 11 years.
science.nasa.gov...

Byrd...you seem to know everything. You even know that magnetic poles shift will not cause any big problems...wow

And you think that scientists do not lie, and if they do, they get caught.

Just caught you. HOW do you know that the pole shift will not cause a catastrophy? What EXACT science are you using to come to this conclusion. Or is is just a politically correct opininion amogn the OFFICIAL SCIENTISTS who get their salaries from corrupted governments?

Almost ALL SCIENTIESTS lie. They have to. Some of the reasons they lie are good (public does not really need to know a lot of facts) but some are really rotten - money, politics, cults (masons) etc.

Scientists are just like other people, and other people lie a lot.

Off topic I know, but the public really should know more about science, so much needless fear of nuclear power because of Chernobyl.

And what sort of thing can cause Earth to shift in such a manner anyway? even if the crust shifted so the arctic regions were at the equator, it would still probably spin as it does now, as most of the earth's mass and moment of inertia (the rotational equivalent) is not in the crust.

The subject is very serious. Check out the free book "Eve of Destruction" at kataclysm.webs.com... [no gimmick or hook at this site]. It gives a complete summary of the problem and pending crisis.