I have read this theory many years ago and have not seen it mentioned ever since. It makes a lot of sense to me. I would like to know if it was ever refuted or even known?
Earth is spinning peacefully on it's axis.
Water vapor is picked up from the ocean and is frosen over the poles. It gets deposited as ice over land (several miles thick in antarctica) but not much in arctic regions because ice thaws in water. So far so good.
Since the center of Antarctic continent is not at the pole, the mass of ice is not distributed evenly. There are miles of ice over land on the side of Indian Ocean, but just meters of ice over Ross Ice Shelf and none in the ocean on that side. Looking at the map I would say that there is twice as much land on one side then the other.
Imagine you are standing on a rotating disk. If you stick your hands to the sides, your rotation would slow down, if you pull them in the rotation would accelerate. Sticking your hands up (redistributing your mass towards the pole) would not cause much change. But if you stick out only one hand - then you would begin to wobble!
It makes sense that ice redistributed to once side of antarctica would impart significant force on the Earth. Of course the weight of all that ice is minuscule compared to teh weight of the planet and would not affect it's rotation. On the other hand, the Earth solid crust is only few miles thick floating on the liquid magma. So while the imbalance is too small to affect the Earth, it can be significant enough to affect the crust.
What would be the results of such force? A slow wobbling drift of the position of the poles around the central point over several millenia - gradually increasing as more ice accumulates. Isn't that what the studies indicate?
Of course it would not be teh poles that drift but the Earth surface over the poles.
The pressures in the earth crust would cause increase in volcanic activity, massive CO2 and ash emissions and climate changes, etc.
With time the oscillations would grow past certain point and imbalance forces grow so strong so that the crust would shift it's position over the earth core. Antarctica with it's ice will end up somewhere in the temperate zone and some other unfortunate locations over the poles.
The increase in volcanic activity would be enormous and change the climate for a little while, some locations would almost instantly end up in the ice age.
Since the ice accumulation may be slower then thawing, the ocean level would probably raise for a few millenia.
The Antarctic ice would thaw over millenia and accumulate over the pole(s) - if there is any solid ground over them. Both processes would violate the balance again and precipitate the new cycle.
Do we have evidence that something like that ever happened, let alone every few hundred thousand years?
Such an event would see like radical shift of the magnetic poles. We do have evidence from fossils that magnetic poles did change positions. It seems easier to assume that the Earth crust shifted over the poles then some cosmic disaster that would re-magnetise the whole planet.
Old poles position over land would have depression in the earth and water erosion patterns taht do not currently make much sense. Just such depression/patterns exist in Africa with opposing pole partly over Canada. Could the traces of glaciers in Canada be the result of it's polar location rather then ice planet-wide ages.
The land that ended up under the new poles would retain traces of flora/fauna preserved under the ice. According to the drill samples, there is evidence of lush tropical biosphere that trived in Antarcic continent before the ice came. It is hard to imagine how much hotter a climate should have been to have tropical conditions in the polar regions. There would have been nothing alive in equatorial regions if that were true.
Much more reasonable that Antarctica shifted to the South pole then grew colder all of a sudden.
Such theory would explain multiple ice ages (in different places), magnetic poles shifts, religious events like deluge, legends about atlantis and other lost civilisations and many other things.
Have you heard anything about that theory? It is so basic that it is probably refuted and forgotten. I just never found any reference to it.
miko
