Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-jbqgn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-04T18:23:53.527Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Radioactivity and the Earth's Thermal History. Part V: The Control of Geological History by Radioactivity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Arthur Holmes
Arthur Holmes
Affiliation:
The University, Durham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In Part IV of this paper the theory that the earth has continuously cooled down from a former molten state was shown to lead to limitations of temperature and to a distribution of rock-types at moderate depths which, taken together, made it impossible for igneous activity to have taken place as we know it to have done. It was argued that this conclusion definitely proved the theory to be wrong. Now, instead of deducing the distribution of rock-types in depth from their radioactive contents, the method of attack will be reversed and an attempt will be made to determine the downward distribution independently, so that the radioactive effects may be deduced without reference to any limiting hypothesis of a steadily cooling earth.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 62 , Issue 12 , December 1925 , pp. 529 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1925

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 529 note 1 Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. xxxiii, 1922, p. 375.Google Scholar

page 530 note 1 Nachr. Ges. Wiss. Göttingen, math.-phys. Kl., 1921, p. 21.Google Scholar

page 530 note 2 Beit. z. Geophysik, xiii, 1913, p. 217Google Scholar, and xiv, 1914, p. 188.

page 530 note 3 Jeffreys, H., The Earth, 1924, p. 180.Google Scholar

page 530 note 4 Adams, L. H., and Williamson, E. D., Journ. Franklin Inst., vol. cxcv, 1923, p. 520; and Smithsonian Rep. for 1923, 1925, p. 250.Google Scholar

page 531 note 1 Roy. Astr. Soc. Monthly Not., Geophys. Suppl. I, 1923, p. 15.Google Scholar

page 531 note 2 Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxxix, 1919, p. 158.Google Scholar

page 533 note 1 For a good recent discussion of thermal gradients and their increase in depths near the surface, see Daly, R., Am. Journ. Sci., v, 1913, p. 349.Google Scholar

page 533 note 2 For values of A see Part I, 1915, p. 66.Google Scholar

page 533 note 3 For a discussion of thermal gradients in this connection see Poole, H. H., Phil. Mag., 09., 1923, p. 406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 535 note 1 Phil. Mag., 06 and 07, pp. 1167 and 170, 1923.Google Scholar

page 535 note 2 Vidensk. Skrift. I. Math. Nat. Kl. Kristiania, No. 11, 1922, No. 3, 1923, and No. 2, 1924.Google Scholar

page 536 note 1 Certain areas may have sunk and disappeared as land, and others like Barbados and Borneo may have been deeply submerged and have risen again with a layer of deep-sea deposits.Google Scholar

page 541 note 1 Strutt, R. J., Proc. Roy. Soc., A. 1906, p. 479.Google Scholar

page 541 note 2 Poole, J. H. J., and Joly, J., Phil. Mag., 11., 1924, p. 829.Google Scholar

page 541 note 3 Smeeth, W. F, and Watson, H. E., Phil. Mag., 02., 1918, p. 213.Google Scholar

page 542 note 1 Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. xxviii, 1917, p. 885.Google Scholar