Well-Traveled Granite
Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has a nice post about the recent discovery of a piece of granite in Antarctica. You may be thinking: “Oh boy, a rock in Antarctica. What’s the big deal?”
The big deal is that this specific piece of granite matches up with granite found in North America, and it means that the two continents were once attached, billions of years ago! Hooray for plate tectonics! Check out Phil’s post for the full story.
July 30, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Has any body considered the fact that maybe,just maybe that piece of rock that is small enough to fit in ones hand,may have been brought there by one of the THOUSANDS of humans that have visited the continent in the past thousand years or so?
I mean it is a small chunk of granite,maybe someone pitched it out of a plane window.
It is just one small rock ,it’s not like a huge bolder or a mountain.
July 31, 2008 at 10:30 am
Now that is impressive!
Imagine skiing there… lol You would get a shock if the weather suddenly took a turn for the worse ;)
Andy
August 13, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Tim: Yes, thousands of humans have visited Antarctica, but it’s not like this was found along the side of the road at McMurdo base. I get the impression that this sample was found out in the ice fields where, literally, “no man has gone before”. As for the airplane idea, I’m pretty skeptical that anyone would be flying around with a window open in Antarctica. Brr!