QUOTE FROM MARIO:
Your interest in this post is to prove that "perhaps" continents can sink... and that maybe Atlantis sank?
I read your justifications:
I don’t think any of us can prove or disprove that.
My intention for this thread is just an opinion poll, Mario. I take it then that you don’t believe that continents can sink? However your analogy of the continents being less dense and floating like corks doesn't completely makes sense to me. I’m no expert on tectonic plate theory, but I believe that the ocean floor is also made up of plates. As I also understand it the plates can slip beneath another plate, butt up against each other or collide forming mountains as in the case of India slamming into Asia and forming the Himalayas.
As a New York resident it is obvious to me that the Hudson River is actually a fault line, and that the land on the New Jersey side is a sheer cliff a good 400 feet higher than the Manhattan side of the river, (the Palisades). So apparently these plates do not have to match up exactly.
So then we have to wonder why are the ocean plates fathoms lower? Are we to suppose that they are less thick? Are those ocean plates wedged under the continental plates making them lower?
Or should we assume that the sheer weight of all that water sitting on top of the ocean plates has pushed those pieces of cork, as you put it deeper into the mantle that it is floating on? But if that is the case then tons of ice should have the same effect on Antarctica, wouldn’t it?
You see Tectonic Plate Theory is just that… a theory and it does not answer all the questions.
To be sure some sort of impact could massive change in the earths crust if it disrupted the mantle. There is some evidence of some kind of impact 12,900 years ago which is right around the time Plato claims Atlantis sank.
Qoais provided me with this link yesterday as evidence of a global impact 12,900 years ago.
http://www.agu.org/meetings/sm07/sm07-sessions/sm07_PP43A.htmlI personally believe that continents can sink, but I am eager to learn why you or other don’t believe that it’s possible. Your reasoning that they are “essentially” too light to sink doesn’t stand to reason in my mind, (again, just my opinion). Why then do geologists think that the continent of Zelandia sank? Refer to my reply #1 above in this thread.
Mike