The latest xkcd makes the point that science changes over time, and that the early days of space flight preceded the widespread acceptance of plate tectonics. Ha ha, there were astronauts in the 1960s who hadn’t yet caught up on the latest ideas in geology, and thought the continents were static.
The inflection point was probably in late 1966 or 1967, so when Neil Armstrong flew to space on Gemini 8, plate tectonics was not widely accepted, but when he landed on the Moon three years later it was the mainstream consensus.
—xkcd
How far we’ve come. Now, in the 2020s, we have astronauts who think the Earth is less than ten thousand years old, and that the continents zipped into their current position at hyperspeed, four thousand years ago.
Somebody should tell Ken Ham that most astronauts weren’t selected for their scientific knowledge, and that he is intentionally selecting from the bottom of the spaceman barrel.
Don’t know much about geology
Don’t know much biology
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about how long it took
But they do know that Jesus saves
And the bible says if they owned slaves
What a wonderful world this would be
Ironically, the continents on the Moon have been stable.
@ ^ Reginald Selkirk : Well, our Moon has no continents – although it does have seas that were once liquid – abeit lava.
Aswe as we know so far Earth is actually the only planet withcontinents or atleats plate tectonics. venus and Mars might have had or been starting to have them but now don’t at leats not moving ones.
^ As far as we know..
The Cytherean continents namely Ishtar Terra here :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar_Terra
As well as Aphrodite and Lada Terra :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Terra
Plus the Martian kinda equaivalent fo continents like Tharsis bulge are intresting and kinda continent~ish but not really the same as we get on Earth :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tharsis
How many exoplanets – obvs for the rocky ones – actually have plate tectonics like our globes rather than the sort of crustal activities / areas that we see on Venus and Mars is a fascinating question that we still don’t know what the answer is.
I was taking geology courses in college in 1972 and by this time plate tectonics was just accepted as proven and our textbooks were now obsolete. It was kind of sobering. Science is not static and can change radically and suddenly.
I was reading geology books ca. 1972 and they brought up both the old views and plate tectonics.
In retrospective it seems obvious that a world without plate tectonics would stagnate.
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The fundie astronaut launched by the private company was not selecred by NASA. Ironically the capsule had such problems the crew had to stay up on ISS for months.
The presence of plate tectonics (and the collision with Theia that brought non-refractory elements and water along with creating the moon) is probably part of the “cosmic filter”.
The final cosmic filter ahead of us is represented by corrupt do-nothing politicians.