Big discoveries, by their very nature, come along only once in a while. Geology was on the cusp of one such upheaval , when we reported a revival of the idea of continental drift that Alfred Wegener had put forward 40 years earlier. The theory of plate tectonics had yet to be formulated, but geologists were quickly approaching what might arguably be described as their discipline鈥檚 eureka moment.
We again noted that the world鈥檚 continents fitted together like a jigsaw suspiciously neatly 鈥� and pointed out that 鈥渋t would be nice to make an observation of two land masses actually drifting apart鈥�. Before too long, geologists would be doing just that.
Geology has never been as prominent in 快猫短视频 as other science disciplines. But in June 1993 we reviewed the first European geophysical atlas, A Continent Revealed. The authors had attempted to pack all of Europe鈥檚 diverse geophysical data into one volume, but admitted they were just scratching the surface (鈥渁 game of cartographic hide and seek鈥�). Like all true scientists perhaps should, they looked forward to seeing 鈥渢heir synthesis disproved and improved on as soon as possible鈥�.
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In June 2000 we reported that rocks at depth metamorphose over much longer periods than previously believed, 鈥渃hanging their crystalline structure and chemistry 10,000 times slower鈥� than lab tests suggested. This meant we would be able to discover more than we thought about conditions millions of years ago. Ethan Baxter, then at the University of California, Berkeley, likened it to the rocks having a 鈥渕emory鈥�.
Now if only we could have asked them, we鈥檇 have found out about plate tectonics much sooner than we did and without all that fuss.
