大陆漂移：一个曾被嘲笑的想法，如何改写了整个地质学
A century ago, the idea sounded absurd. A German scientist named Alfred Wegener suggested that the continents were not fixed in place but slowly drifting across the surface of the planet. Africa and South America, he pointed out, fit together like pieces of a torn page. Matching fossils and rock layers appeared on shores now separated by a wide ocean. To Wegener, the conclusion was obvious: the land had once been joined, then split apart. To most scientists of his time, it was nonsense.
一个世纪前，这一想法听起来荒谬至极。一位名叫阿尔弗雷德·魏格纳的德国科学家提出，大陆并非固定不动，而是缓慢地在地球表面漂移。他指出，非洲和南美洲像撕碎书页的两片碎片那样能够拼合在一起。如今被广阔海洋分隔的海岸线上，出现了相匹配的化石和岩层。对魏格纳而言，结论显而易见：陆地曾经连为一体，后来才分裂开来。然而在他那个时代的大多数科学家看来，这纯属无稽之谈。
The problem was that Wegener could not explain how something as vast as a continent could move. Without a believable mechanism, his theory was dismissed, even mocked. He died on an expedition in Greenland, his great idea still in disgrace. For years it lay almost forgotten, a curiosity at the edge of respectable science.
问题在于，魏格纳无法解释如此庞大的大陆是如何移动的。由于缺乏可信的机制，他的理论遭到摒弃，甚至遭到嘲笑。他在一次前往格陵兰的探险中去世，他伟大的构想仍蒙受耻辱。多年来，这一理论几乎被人遗忘，只是作为边缘科学界的一个奇闻轶事而存在。
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