WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Alfred Wegener 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:06.800 Happy Saturday. Alfred Wegener presented his ideas on continental drift 0:00:06.880 --> 0:00:11.520 before the Geological Association in Frankfort on January sixth, nineteen twelve, 0:00:11.720 --> 0:00:15.120 or one hundred and twelve years ago today, So our 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.200 episode on him and the controversy about his research is 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:23.320 Today's Saturday Classic. This originally came out December ninth, twenty nineteen. 0:00:23.760 --> 0:00:29.639 Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:39.960 production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.599 Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. I really love 0:00:43.760 --> 0:00:47.720 historical disputes, especially when it's some kind of scientific or 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.280 technical discovery or advancement, or some kind of medical something 0:00:51.640 --> 0:00:55.000 that people were arguing over, Like when I've been trying 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:57.480 to figure out what to talk about next and nothing 0:00:57.520 --> 0:00:59.360 on my list is really grabbing me at the moment. 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:06.720 Sometimes helped googling, like scientific disputes in history. This is 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.480 one that I've been hanging on to for a while, 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:13.319 and it's Alfred Wegener and the dispute over his theory 0:01:13.360 --> 0:01:18.320 of continental drift. And I really expected this episode to 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.679 sound a lot like our previous one on Ignat Semmelweiss 0:01:21.760 --> 0:01:26.080 and hand washing, except geology, because that's how the story 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:28.959 gets told a lot of the time, especially to a 0:01:29.080 --> 0:01:32.200 general audience. It kind of gets summed up as Alfred 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:36.000 Wegener introduced his theory of continental drift and was basically 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.200 laughed out of the academy, and then after his tragic 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:42.240 and untimely death, he was proved to be more or 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.920 less right and for a discovery that was as important 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:48.480 to the field of geology as the discovery of DNA 0:01:48.720 --> 0:01:52.920 is to biology. But that is really not how this 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:57.640 story goes at all. Alfred Wegener had a huge career 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.480 outside of his ideas around what we understand today as 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:05.440 plate tectonics. He did important and respected work that touched 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:07.720 on a lot of different disciplines, and while there were 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:11.359 definitely people who were very critical and even hostile when 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.400 it came to what he called continental drift, he did 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.080 have his supporters, or at least people who were willing 0:02:17.639 --> 0:02:21.200 to entertain the idea that he could potentially be right. 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:27.440 Alfred Wegener was born Alfred Lothar Wegener on November first, 0:02:27.520 --> 0:02:31.000 eighteen eighty in Berlin, Germany. His parents were Richard and 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:33.720 Anna Vigener, and they had five children, Three of whom 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.600 survived infancy, Alfred was the youngest. His older brother and 0:02:37.680 --> 0:02:41.040 sister who survived were named Kurt and Tony. The men 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:44.560 in the Wagner family typically went into the clergy, and 0:02:44.600 --> 0:02:47.360 that was also true for Alfred's father. He was a 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:52.040 theologian and a classicist, and a pastor and an orphanage director. 0:02:52.320 --> 0:02:54.679 He also taught at the local gymnasium, but it was 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:57.600 against the rules for Kurt and Alfred to attend the 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.560 same school where he was working because he their father, 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:03.800 so they attended a different school and both wound up 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:07.160 pursuing an education in science rather than following that family 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:11.359 tradition into the church. Kurt studied geophysics and Alfred studied 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:15.400 at universities in Heidelberg, Innsbruck, and Berlin before getting a 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:20.000 doctorate in astronomy in nineteen oh five. Even before finishing 0:03:20.040 --> 0:03:23.280 that doctorate, Wegener's interests went outside of what you might 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:26.359 think of when we say astronomy. He had studied Max 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:29.880 Planck's work on thermochemistry and thermodynamics, and some of the 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:33.079 people he studied under for his doctorate were using planetary 0:03:33.120 --> 0:03:36.080 astronomy as a way to study the Earth rather than 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:40.000 focusing on other planetary objects. He was also interested in 0:03:40.040 --> 0:03:43.960 weather and meteorology, and after finishing his degree, he started 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:48.360 working at the German Aeronautical Observatory in Lindenberg. His brother 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:51.520 worked there as well, and they used kites and balloons 0:03:51.560 --> 0:03:55.680 to study the Earth's atmosphere and atmospheric phenomena. At one 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:59.480 point during this work, the Vegener brothers spent fifty two 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:03.440 hours aloft in a balloon, which set a world record. 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.000 Alfred Wegener was also part of the team that confirmed 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:09.800 the existence of the stratosphere. Wasn't a team he was running, 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.760 but he was involved in it. Waganer had been interested 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.480 in Greenland since he was young, and in nineteen oh 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:18.200 six he got the opportunity to go there as part 0:04:18.240 --> 0:04:21.880 of the Danish Denmark expedition, which intended to map Greenland's 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:26.880 northeast coast. Wegener was the expedition's physicist and meteorologist, and 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:30.039 his research involved more work with kites and balloons to 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:33.440 collect atmospheric data. He also got a lot of practical 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:37.479 experience in polar exploration. This expedition made its way through 0:04:37.560 --> 0:04:42.760 extremely inhospitable territory, so Wegener learned things like Arctic survival skills, 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:45.760 and how to handle a team of sled dogs. On 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.240 July tenth of nineteen oh seven, while they were on 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:52.599 Cape Bismarck, Wegener and the team observed several water spouts. 0:04:52.800 --> 0:04:55.800 They took a lot of pictures and documented what they saw, 0:04:55.880 --> 0:04:59.800 and this experience may have inspired Wegener's interest in tornadoes 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:02.560 and water spouts, which will come up again later in 0:05:02.600 --> 0:05:06.880 his career. Wegener kept journals during this expedition, documenting his 0:05:07.000 --> 0:05:10.120 experiments and their results, as well as the ordinary work 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:12.920 that was associated with it, like setting up the equipment 0:05:12.960 --> 0:05:16.080 and keeping it maintained and repaired, and he also wrote 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:18.400 about his own challenges as a member of the team. 0:05:18.960 --> 0:05:22.800 He had no experience in polar environments before this, and 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:26.159 his knowledge of Danish was limited. Unlike many of the 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:29.000 other scientists involved, he was also very early in his 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:32.119 career and he hadn't really established a name for himself yet. 0:05:32.440 --> 0:05:36.599 This expedition achieved its objectives of mapping the northeast coast 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.839 of Greenland, but it was also tragic. Several of its 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:45.920 primary members, including leader Ludwigmilius Erickson, died after being stranded 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.839 when the sea ice broke up around them. Even so, 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:52.200 before it was even over, Wegener was talking about where 0:05:52.200 --> 0:05:55.680 he might go in the future, even considering an expedition 0:05:55.760 --> 0:05:59.640 to Antarctica as a future project for himself. In nineteen 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:03.240 oh eight, after he returned from Greenland, Wegener moved to Marburg, 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.080 where he started working at the Physical Institute in Marburg. 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.800 In nineteen oh nine. He also lectured on meteorology and 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.920 astronomy at the university there, and Wegener became particularly interested 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:18.240 in atmospheric discontinuities, which are sudden, sharp changes in temperature 0:06:18.279 --> 0:06:22.440 or pressure. For example, there are discontinuity services around the 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:26.640 boundaries of weather fronts and at the borders of atmospheric layers. 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:30.800 Wegener wrote prolifically over the next three years, publishing more 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:34.520 than forty scientific papers and then editing the ones on 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.480 the subject into a book called Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere. 0:06:38.960 --> 0:06:42.719 This was a widely respected and referenced text on atmospheric 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.600 thermodynamics for years, until it was ultimately replaced by a 0:06:46.720 --> 0:06:49.880 later book on the subject that Wegener also wrote. In 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:53.080 nineteen ten, one of Wegener's colleagues brought an atlas into 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.080 their office that was Richard Andres Algemini handatlas. This was 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.880 one of the first atlases in Germany that included both 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:04.320 the coastlines of South America and Africa and the basymmetry data, 0:07:04.480 --> 0:07:07.200 or information about the ocean's depths, that had been gathered 0:07:07.360 --> 0:07:10.280 by the expedition aboard the HMS Challenger in the late 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:14.720 nineteenth century. So Wegener noticed something in this combination of 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.120 data that intrigued him. He noticed that the eastern coast 0:07:18.200 --> 0:07:20.880 of South America looked like it would fit exactly against 0:07:20.880 --> 0:07:24.280 the western coast of Africa. And this wasn't just at 0:07:24.280 --> 0:07:26.560 the coastline at sea level. It was also part of 0:07:26.600 --> 0:07:29.920 the underwater topography off of the visible coast. He wrote 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:33.480 a letter to Elsa Coppin, daughter of climatologist Vladimir Coppin. 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:38.000 Vladimir Coppin had advised Wegener in advance of the Denmark expedition, 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:42.360 and Alfred and Oas had started corresponding. Veganer wrote, quote, 0:07:42.440 --> 0:07:45.840 doesn't the east coast of South America fit exactly against 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:48.400 the west coast of Africa as if they had once 0:07:48.480 --> 0:07:51.800 been joined? This is an idea I'll have to pursue. 0:07:52.200 --> 0:07:54.760 He didn't pursue it right away, though it seems to 0:07:54.800 --> 0:07:57.000 have kind of slipped his mind until about a year 0:07:57.120 --> 0:08:01.120 later when he read a newly published paper on paleogeography 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.800 that documented fossils that had been found on both sides 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:09.200 of the Atlantic. That combined with Wegener's earlier study of 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:11.720 that atlas to put him on the path of formulating 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.560 a theory of continental drift. And we will get to 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:27.280 that after a sponsor break. Alfred Wegener was not at 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:30.560 all the first person to notice that the eastern coast 0:08:30.600 --> 0:08:33.720 of South America and the western coast of Africa looked 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.760 like they could fit together like puzzle pieces. I mean, 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:39.400 this is an observation that children make the first time 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:43.120 they experience a globe or an atlis that shows all 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:46.640 of that. And people had been spotting that similarity starting 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.600 as soon as there were maps showing both of those coasts. 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:54.080 In fifteen ninety six, Dutch map maker Abraham Ortellius wrote 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:56.840 that the Americas looked like they had been quote torn 0:08:56.920 --> 0:09:00.560 away from Europe and Africa by earthquakes and floods. Francis 0:09:00.600 --> 0:09:03.959 Bacon commented on it in his Nova Organum or True 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.320 Suggestions for the Interpretation of Nature in sixteen twenty in 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.640 a passage on similarities found in the natural world. He wrote, 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:15.080 quote similar instances are not to be neglected in the 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.800 greater portions of the world's confirmation, such as Africa and 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:21.880 the Peruvian continent, which reaches to the Straits of Magellan, 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:25.880 both of which possess a similar isthmus and similar capes, 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:29.800 a circumstance not to be attributed to mere accident. By 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:34.360 the nineteenth century, naturalists that also started to document animals, plants, 0:09:34.360 --> 0:09:37.800 and physical features that seemed to exist on both sides 0:09:37.840 --> 0:09:41.320 of oceans in a way that seemed impossible or at 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:45.000 least really improvable, given that the ocean was there to 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.520 separate them. There were rock formations on one side of 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:50.520 the ocean that seemed to pick up again on the 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:54.800 other side. Mesosauris fossils were found in both Brazil and 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:59.080 South Africa, and there are freshwater trilobite fossils from the 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.679 genus Para doxides that were found in both North America 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:07.480 and Europe. Naturalists found living animals too, like lemurs which 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:12.559 live in Southeast Africa, the island of Madagascar, and Southeast Asia. 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:15.520 Even though there's a lot of water separating all of those. 0:10:16.200 --> 0:10:18.679 There were also coal beds on both sides of the 0:10:18.720 --> 0:10:21.400 Atlantic and seemed to be a part of the same system. 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.000 And physical evidence of glaciers that had once existed in 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:28.720 parts of the world now have tropical climates, and fossils 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:31.640 of tropical plants and areas that are now polar. The 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.840 list went on and on and on. So people started 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:38.120 trying to come up with all kinds of possible explanations 0:10:38.160 --> 0:10:40.600 for how all of this stuff came to be. So 0:10:40.679 --> 0:10:44.319 for the animal fossils and the living animals, maybe they 0:10:44.440 --> 0:10:47.960 swam really was one, but kind of briefly that was 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:51.600 easy to discount. It seemed incredibly unlikely that the animals 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:53.880 in question could have swum that far, or maybe, I 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:56.400 don't know, clung to a floating log all the way 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:01.080 across the ocean. Maybe they swam. Explanation also didn't account 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:04.320 for things like rock formations and glaciers that seemed to 0:11:04.360 --> 0:11:07.680 have existed in what seemed like the wrong place. Another 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:10.200 popular idea was that at one time there had been 0:11:10.280 --> 0:11:13.640 land bridges connecting the continents, but that those had ultimately 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:17.520 sunk into the ocean. This tied into another prevalent idea 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:20.520 that the Earth had once been molten and was contracting 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:23.480 as it cooled and solidified. It was a little like 0:11:23.520 --> 0:11:26.120 the surface of a plum as it dries into a prune, 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:30.040 which could explain the existence of both oceans and mountains. 0:11:30.559 --> 0:11:33.720 That land bridge idea still had some problems, though, it 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:37.199 didn't explain the rock formations that seemed to stop at 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:39.280 one coast and then pick up again on the other 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:42.560 side of the ocean, unless maybe those formations had been 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:45.840 part of these land bridges that were now underwater. But 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:48.520 then there also wasn't a clear answer to what could 0:11:48.559 --> 0:11:51.360 have caused the land bridges to sink, if they had 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:56.079 ever existed. In eighteen fifty eight, Antonio Snyder Pellegrini argued 0:11:56.120 --> 0:11:59.520 that maybe Africa and South America had been one continent 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:02.320 at some point point in the past. He suggested that 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:04.720 the continents had been forced apart in the flood that 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:08.160 is described in the biblical Book of Genesis. Then a 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:12.440 few decades later, when radioactivity was discovered in eighteen ninety six, 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.320 that raised more questions about this general idea that the 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:19.600 earth was molten and was just contracting as it cooled. 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:23.880 How could that be happening if there were radioactive materials 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:26.679 within the Earth that were giving off heat. On December 0:12:26.720 --> 0:12:30.439 twenty ninth, nineteen oh eight, American geologist Frank B. Taylor 0:12:30.679 --> 0:12:34.320 gave a presentation to the Geological Society of America in 0:12:34.360 --> 0:12:37.040 which he suggested that the continents were moving and had 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:40.320 been pulled apart by lunar gravity. He thought that the 0:12:40.320 --> 0:12:43.360 collisions of the continents had pushed mountains into being, and 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.520 that the continence movement had also left deep tears in 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.800 the oceans. He published a paper in nineteen ten, and 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:54.520 other papers followed. It is definitely possible that Wegener read 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:57.840 Taylor's nineteen ten paper or one of the ones that followed, 0:12:58.280 --> 0:13:00.880 and for a while the theory of continental drift was 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:05.000 actually called the Tailor Veganer hypothesis. In nineteen thirty two, 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.240 though Taylor said that his name should be dropped off 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:10.480 from the descriptor because other than the basic idea that 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:15.040 the continents were moving, his ideas were really different from Veginer's. 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.600 Here's what Veganer thought was going on. He thought that 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:22.120 the planet was made from concentric layers of material, which 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:25.800 were denser the further down you go, and the outermost layer, 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.199 with the continents on it was not contiguous. Oceans filled 0:13:29.240 --> 0:13:32.440 in any gaps. The continent layer was made of seal 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:36.960 material that's largely silicon and aluminum, and the ocean floors 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:41.160 were sema that's silicon and magnesium. Seal was less dense 0:13:41.160 --> 0:13:44.080 than sema, so the seal continents could float along the 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.600 sema ocean floor, kind of like icebergs float on the ocean. 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:50.960 Veginer thought that at some point, about two hundred million 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.440 years ago, all the continents had been connected into one 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.199 land mass that he called Pangaea, and then something had 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.320 broken them apart and allowed them to mindgrate around the Earth. 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.600 He thought this motion explained how mountains formed. It wasn't 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:08.240 that the Earth was cooling and shrinking like a prune, 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:10.959 or that mountains were being pushed up by the force 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:13.880 of colliding continents. He thought they were formed by the 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.280 resistance that the continents experienced as they were sort of 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:20.560 pllowing through the ocean floor beneath them, sort of like 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:22.880 the way a tablecloth wrinkles if you try to push 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:26.840 it across the table. Veginer also thought that islands were 0:14:26.880 --> 0:14:29.760 pieces that had broken off the continents as they were moving. 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:33.440 Veganer was not entirely sure what was providing the energy 0:14:33.560 --> 0:14:37.640 needed for the continents to move. He proposed several possibilities, 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.000 and the one that he focused on the most was 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:43.080 that it was some kind of energy related to irregularities 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:47.240 in the planet's rotation on its axis. Wagner detailed all 0:14:47.240 --> 0:14:50.640 this in two papers published in nineteen eleven and nineteen twelve, 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:54.640 both titled The Origin of Continents. He cited evidence from 0:14:54.840 --> 0:15:01.200 several different fields, including geology, paleontology, geophysics, and geotesy, and 0:15:01.480 --> 0:15:04.520 on January sixth of nineteen twelve he spoke about these 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:07.880 ideas before the Geological Association in Frankfurt, and then he 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:10.560 presented on it at the Society for the Advancement of 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:13.520 Natural Science in Marburg, Germany a few days after that. 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:17.960 This was just dramatically different from how most scientists understood 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.440 the world at the time, and to be clear, it's 0:15:20.520 --> 0:15:24.200 really not how we understand it today either. But it 0:15:24.240 --> 0:15:28.360 also wasn't the only hypothesis out there. Other geologists had 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.480 also put forth various ideas about how the Earth's continents 0:15:31.560 --> 0:15:33.520 might have been joined together at some point in the 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:36.960 distant past. Basically, it was clear that the whole model 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:39.280 of the Earth as a molten object that was cooling 0:15:39.360 --> 0:15:42.840 and contracting just wasn't correct, So a lot of scientists 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.680 were trying to figure out what really was happening. Wegener 0:15:46.720 --> 0:15:49.000 had some supporters, or at least people who thought he 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:52.400 might be onto something. These were especially people who had 0:15:52.480 --> 0:15:55.720 personally seen or already knew about some of the evidence 0:15:55.760 --> 0:15:59.080 that he had cited, But he also had plenty of detractors. 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.240 Some of this was rooted in the details of his work. 0:16:02.760 --> 0:16:06.120 For example, he said that Greenland was moving at about 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:08.800 one hundred and twenty feet or thirty six meters a year. 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:13.360 That was an error, and it was easily disproved. It 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:17.080 also didn't seem like slight irregularities in the Earth's rotation 0:16:17.200 --> 0:16:20.720 could have provided nearly enough energy to move entire continents, 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.040 especially if those continents were plowing their way through a 0:16:24.160 --> 0:16:27.520 less dense layer of the planet underneath them. Some of 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.240 the people who disagreed with Wegener were particularly scathing about it. 0:16:31.680 --> 0:16:34.800 For example, doctor Rollin T. Chamberlain of the University of 0:16:34.880 --> 0:16:38.760 Chicago said, quote Veganer's hypothesis in general is of the 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:42.120 footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our 0:16:42.160 --> 0:16:45.560 globe and is less bound by restrictions or tied down 0:16:45.600 --> 0:16:48.680 by awkward, ugly facts than most of its rival theories. 0:16:49.200 --> 0:16:52.560 So this wasn't really a case of one man, Alfred 0:16:52.680 --> 0:16:56.560 Wegener against the whole of science. Enough people thought he 0:16:56.640 --> 0:16:59.240 was at least partially correct that they became known as 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.400 the mobilists, while people who disagreed were called the anti 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:05.240 mobilist or the fixists. This was not the end of 0:17:05.280 --> 0:17:08.240 Wegener's work on his continental drift theory, but he did 0:17:08.320 --> 0:17:10.800 keep working on lots of other stuff during his career, 0:17:11.240 --> 0:17:13.000 and we're going to talk a little bit more about 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:24.720 that after we pause for a sponsor break. Alfred Wegener 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:28.320 took another expedition to Greenland starting in nineteen twelve. This 0:17:28.480 --> 0:17:32.040 was another treacherous expedition meant to cross and survey the 0:17:32.040 --> 0:17:35.520 Greenland ice sheet from east to west, including spending the 0:17:35.680 --> 0:17:39.040 entire winter out there on the ice sheet. At one point, 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:42.879 a glacier that the team was on unexpectedly calved, and 0:17:42.960 --> 0:17:46.720 Veganer wrote that they quote escaped death only by a miracle. 0:17:47.280 --> 0:17:50.399 Veginer and Elsa Coppin that we mentioned earlier had gotten 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:53.960 engaged before that expedition, and they married after he returned 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:57.639 in nineteen thirteen. They would eventually have three daughters together. 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:02.560 Ess was a translator, translating scientific works, including some by 0:18:02.560 --> 0:18:06.040 her husband. She also published a biography of Alfred, including 0:18:06.080 --> 0:18:09.240 parts of his notes and journals after his death. Wegener's 0:18:09.280 --> 0:18:12.040 work as a scientist and a researcher was interrupted by 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:15.000 World War One. He served in the German Army, first 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:17.760 as a lieutenant and then as a captain. He was 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:21.960 wounded twice, once on August twenty third, nineteen fourteen, in Belgium, 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.359 and then once again in France on October fourth of 0:18:24.400 --> 0:18:28.520 that same year. That second injury was a lot worse. 0:18:28.600 --> 0:18:30.399 He was shot in the neck and had to go 0:18:30.440 --> 0:18:33.760 home to recover. He used that recovery time to write 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:37.600 his book, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, which expanded 0:18:37.640 --> 0:18:41.320 on his earlier ideas around continental drift. Once Wegener was 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:45.080 sufficiently recovered, he returned to the army, this time serving 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:48.560 with the Field Weather Service as a meteorologist. This was 0:18:48.600 --> 0:18:51.879 not a particularly taxing assignment. He was stationed on the 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.679 Western Front, which was a dangerous place to be, but 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:58.639 his daily duties mostly involved making some routine weather observations, 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.240 so he spent this time on study and research, writing 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:06.240 a paper called on the formation of Hoarfrost on horse corpses, 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:10.000 as well as a book called Tornadoes and Waterspouts in Europe. 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.720 This book pulled together information on two hundred and fifty 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:17.520 eight reported tornadoes that had struck in Europe between fourteen 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:21.200 fifty six and nineteen thirteen. Because he could only get 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.560 to one library to do his research because he was 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.640 literally stationed at the Western Front during a war, most 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:30.760 of the tornadoes in question were in Western Europe, reasonably 0:19:30.800 --> 0:19:33.640 near where he was stationed. This was the first Pan 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:38.000 European book on tornado climatology, and it was really thorough. 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:41.080 His intent was not to speculate on the causes of 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.520 tornadoes and waterspouts, which was not settled at that point. 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:47.200 It was instead to pull together a wealth of data 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:49.960 on how large the tornadoes were and when and where 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.159 they struck and how they moved, along with other details 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:56.600 like what they smelled and sounded like and any electrical 0:19:56.640 --> 0:20:00.680 phenomena associated with them. On April third of nineteen sixteen, 0:20:00.720 --> 0:20:03.879 while Vegener was at home in Marburg for Easter, a 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:08.800 meteorite struck outside the nearby town of Treesa. Two professors 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:11.600 from the University of Marbor got in touch with Wegener 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:14.479 about trying to figure out where this meteorite had fallen. 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:19.760 So Wegener cross referenced newspaper accounts and eyewitness statements try 0:20:19.840 --> 0:20:24.120 to calculate its trajectory, eventually requesting some additional leave from 0:20:24.160 --> 0:20:26.680 the army to try to finish up this work. When 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:30.560 the meteorite's remains were found on March fifth of nineteen seventeen, 0:20:30.640 --> 0:20:33.160 they were very close to the spot that he had predicted. 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.359 Later in World War One, Wegener was transferred to the 0:20:36.400 --> 0:20:39.399 Eastern Front and then back to the Western Front. He 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.080 kept working on his book on tornadoes, which came out 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:46.000 in nineteen seventeen. Once the war was over, Weginar had 0:20:46.040 --> 0:20:48.960 trouble finding work at a university, and this seems to 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:51.679 have been at least as much about economic conditions as 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.840 it was about his controversial theories about how the earth worked. 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:58.159 He and Elsa eventually moved in with her father, and 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:01.200 Alfred went to work at the German Marine Weather Observatory, 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:04.159 in a position that his father in law had previously held. 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:07.280 Begener held his position for five years, and he did 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:10.680 have teaching privileges at the university of Hamburg. In nineteen 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:14.680 twenty one, Wegner published research on the causes of lunar craters. 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:18.359 At the time, there were four primary hypotheses about what 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:21.359 had caused the craters on the lunar surface. That they 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.359 were the remnants of some kind of bubbles that had collapsed, 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.560 That they had been caused by tidal forces, that they 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:31.760 were volcanoes, or that they were the aftermath of meteorite impacts. 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:36.400 Wegener used cement powder to simulate both the lunar surface 0:21:36.560 --> 0:21:40.320 and the meteorites, basically throwing little bits of cement powder 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:43.760 at a layer of cement powder with a teaspoon. Then 0:21:43.760 --> 0:21:47.320 he would carefully missed the surface of the simulated moon 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:50.359 to set the powder. Once that was done, he would 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.720 measure and document the craters that had been formed. In 0:21:53.760 --> 0:21:56.760 the pamphlet that he published on this subject, Wegener outlined 0:21:56.840 --> 0:22:01.120 various arguments against the other three hypotheses before detailing how 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:05.399 these simulations supported the idea that meteorite impacts had caused 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:08.879 the creators on the moon. I love this so much, 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:12.840 honestly so do I. It's Alfred Wegener's crafty time that 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:19.560 is very scientifically grounded. I love it it's simultaneously very 0:22:19.640 --> 0:22:23.680 charming and really cool. It's ingenius. In nineteen twenty two, 0:22:23.800 --> 0:22:26.680 Wegener published another edition of his book on the Origins 0:22:26.720 --> 0:22:30.159 of Continents, and this one was translated into several languages. 0:22:30.560 --> 0:22:33.119 It was still a controversial work, but it was not 0:22:33.359 --> 0:22:37.320 unanimously dismissed. Two years later, in nineteen twenty four, Vegener 0:22:37.400 --> 0:22:40.440 and his father in law published a book called Climates 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:44.280 of the Geological Past. That same year, Begener became a 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:46.760 professor at the University of Grutz, where he was the 0:22:46.840 --> 0:22:50.760 chair of the departments of Meteorology and Geophysics. He also 0:22:50.840 --> 0:22:55.280 published another expanded edition of his earlier work on continental drift, 0:22:55.280 --> 0:22:58.120 this one also called The Origin of Continents and Oceans. 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:02.240 By nineteen twenty six, theories on continental drift were well 0:23:02.280 --> 0:23:05.240 known on both sides of the Atlantic. In that year, 0:23:05.280 --> 0:23:09.520 the American Association of Petroleum Geologists held a symposium in 0:23:09.520 --> 0:23:12.840 New York City to discuss them. Wegener was not there, 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:16.800 and overall the symposium was very critical of him. When 0:23:16.840 --> 0:23:19.080 he wrote the next edition of his book on Continents 0:23:19.119 --> 0:23:22.000 and Oceans, he tried to address at least some of 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:26.280 their criticisms. In nineteen twenty eight, a tornado touched down 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:30.040 near Gratz, and that rekindled Wegener's interest in that subject. 0:23:30.440 --> 0:23:33.440 He and Elsa walked the path that the tornado had followed. 0:23:33.520 --> 0:23:37.160 They took statements from eyewitnesses, and Wegener agreed to work 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:40.639 with meteorologist Johannes Letzmann on a project to try to 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:45.320 determine the causes of tornadoes. The following year, Wegner published 0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:48.080 the final edition of his book on the Origins of 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:52.240 Continents and Oceans, this one proposing six possible mechanisms for 0:23:52.320 --> 0:23:56.439