Quote:
Originally Posted by ballaratdragons
The Pole Shift I am referring to is when the Earth tips over and the 'old' Poles are now at the Equator (or some other place other than where they were), and the old Equator is now the North and South Poles.
Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l0SC3bRLn8 |
Crustal Displacement.....yes it does happen and has happened in the past to several of the terrestrial planets and the Moon. It's a slow process...takes millions of years. Unlike Plate Tectonics, crustal displacement occurs when the crust and the mantle rotate with respect to the core of the planet, as a whole. It's basically the planets balancing out their centres of mass created by instabilities due to uneven mass distribution, which in Earth's case can be caused by the continents clustering more to one side of the axis of rotation than the other.
