how many hemispheres on our planet and what they are called and got the best answer

Answer from TaSha [guru]

The Southern Hemisphere has five continents (Antarctica, Australia, most of South America, parts of Africa and Asia), as well as four oceans (the southern Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and the entire Southern). The Southern Hemisphere includes the following countries: Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and others.

About ⅔ Africa, north of the Congo River
Source: there were always only 2 hemispheres))

Answer from Maxim Korablev[guru]
2 hemispheres: North and South, separated by the equator

Answer from Oman[newbie]
There are SIX!
In geography, the following hemispheres of the Earth are distinguished:
North hemisphere
Southern Hemisphere
Eastern hemisphere
Western hemisphere
Hemisphere sushi
Hemisphere of water
That's it, mathematicians!

Answer from Angelica Konovalova[newbie]
There are several answers to this question. There are Northern and Southern Hemispheres, there are also Western and Eastern. If you look at the globe, we will see that most of the land is concentrated in one of the hemispheres, and the other is mainly
covered with water. Therefore, they also distinguish between the continental and oceanic hemispheres. Try to spin the globe very, very much, and it looks blue, because blue, it denotes seas and oceans, more than others. And the rest of the colors will mix and disappear against this background.
You probably already guessed that the ocean occupies most of the surface of our planet (70.1%), while land accounts for only 29.9%. If you mentally wrap a rope around the globe at its widest point, then this line will be the equator. The equator is an imaginary line, in fact it does not exist. The Equator divides the Earth into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
The globe rests on an axis - the rods. The places where this axis "pierces" the Earth are called the geographic poles - North and South. A conventional line drawn on the surface of the globe from pole to pole is called the meridian. In all localities lying on the same meridian, noon occurs at the same instant.
Conditional lines of various lengths, which run perpendicular to the meridian and parallel to the equator, are called parallels.
Geographic coordinates are determined by parallels and meridians: latitude and longitude, indicating the location of a particular geographic object.

Answer from Yatiana Bazhenova[newbie]
The Southern Hemisphere is the part of the Earth located south of the equator. Summer in the Southern Hemisphere lasts from December to February, and winter from June to August.
The Southern Hemisphere has five continents (Antarctica, Australia, most of South America, parts of Africa and Asia), as well as four oceans (the southern Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and the entire Southern). The Southern Hemisphere includes the following countries: Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and others.
The Northern Hemisphere is the part of the Earth located north of the equator. Summer in the Northern Hemisphere lasts from June to August, and winter from December to February. Due to the Coriolis force, low pressure zones and hurricanes in the Northern Hemisphere almost always spin to the left, that is, counterclockwise. Much more land is concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern. The continents are located: Asia (Indonesia is mainly located in the Southern Hemisphere), Europe, North America, A small part of South America, north of the Amazon
Near? Africa, north of the Congo River

Our planet is conventionally divided into four hemispheres. How are the boundaries between them indicated? What are the features of the Earth's hemispheres?

Equator and meridian

It has the shape of a sphere slightly flattened at the poles - a spheroid. In scientific circles, its shape is usually called a geoid, that is, "like the Earth." The surface of the geoid is perpendicular to the direction of gravity at any point.

For convenience, the characteristics of the planet use conditional, or imaginary, lines. One of them is the axis. It runs through the center of the earth, connecting the upper and lower parts, called the North and South Poles.

Between the poles, at an equal distance from them, there is the next imaginary line, which is called the equator. It is horizontal and is a separator into the Southern (everything below the line) and Northern (everything above the line) hemisphere of the Earth. is just over 40 thousand kilometers.

Another conditional line is Greenwich, or This is a vertical line passing through the observatory in Greenwich. The Meridian divides the planet into the Western and Eastern Hemispheres, and is also the starting point for measuring geographic longitude.

The difference between the southern and northern hemispheres

The equatorial line divides the planet horizontally in half, while crossing several continents. Africa, Eurasia and South America are partially located in two hemispheres at once. The rest of the continents are located within one. So, Australia and Antarctica are completely in the southern part, and North America - in the north.

The Earth's hemispheres have other differences as well. Thanks to the Arctic Ocean at the pole, the climate of the Northern Hemisphere is generally milder than that of the Southern, where the land is located - Antarctica. The seasons in the hemispheres are opposite: winter in the northern part of the planet comes simultaneously with summer in the south.

The difference is observed in the movement of air and water. To the north of the equator, river flows and sea currents deviate to the right (on the right, river banks are usually steeper), anticyclones rotate clockwise, and cyclones counterclockwise. To the south of the equator, everything happens exactly the opposite.

Even the starry sky overhead is different. The pattern is different for each hemisphere. The main reference point for the northern part of the Earth is the pole star; the Southern Cross serves as a reference point. Above the equator, land dominates, therefore, the majority of people live here. Below the equator, the total number of inhabitants is 10%, since the oceanic part prevails.

Western and Eastern hemispheres

To the east of the prime meridian is the Earth. It contains Australia, most of Africa, Eurasia, and part of Antarctica. It is home to approximately 82% of the world's population. Geopolitically and culturally, it is called the Old World, as opposed to the New World of the American continents. In the eastern part there is a deep trench and the tallest mountain on our planet.

The Western Hemisphere of the Earth is located west of the Greenwich meridian. It covers North and South America, part of Africa and Eurasia. It completely includes the Atlantic Ocean and most of the Pacific. It is home to the longest mountain range in the world, the largest volcano, the driest desert, the highest lake and deep river. Only 18% of the population lives in the western part of the world.

Date line

As already mentioned, the Greenwich meridian separates the Western and Eastern hemispheres of the Earth. Its continuation is the 180th meridian, which outlines the border from the other side. It is the line of change of dates, it is here that today turns into tomorrow.

Different calendar days are recorded on both sides of the meridian. This is due to the peculiarities of the planet's rotation. The date line for the most part runs along the ocean, but also crosses some islands (Vanua Levu, Taviuni, etc.). In these places, for convenience, the line is shifted along the land border, otherwise the inhabitants of the same island would exist on different dates.

Answer left by: Guest

The plane, because the plane is more convenient and cheaper than the rest of the mode of transport

Answer left by: Guest

One day after watching a wildlife movie, I decided to take a jeep ride in Africa. Soon I flew to Africa. I wanted to start my journey from the Nile Delta and end in the African jungle.
As I drove through the desert, a rolling stone rolled past me. This is a plant that has no roots. It rolls where the wind blows.
Some time later, zebras ran past me, followed by a cheetah. For a while we were on a par, and I managed to see it well. He had sharp teeth, he ran on three legs, and the fourth was trying to get the zebras. He himself was red with black spots. Soon he hooked on his victim and bit her neck.
When I wanted to drink, I found that the water was running out. Fortunately, I came across an oasis. Not only did I get drunk, but I was able to admire the rhinos! They nibbled on grass and drank water. They were just wonderful! Huge creatures with a horn over their noses - shine!
The time was approaching night. I was already approaching the jungle. When I arrived, I immediately caught sight of large stones. But when I looked closely, I realized that they were stonecrops - stone plants. I also noticed a date palm, on which I thought the dates were ripe. I plucked them and tasted them. I liked them and I grabbed more of them. Soon I went to bed.
The rustling woke me up. I stuck my head out of the tent. A giraffe stood directly above me and nibbled the foliage of a tree that was above my tent. Four more animals ate foliage from a nearby tree. They were so beautiful!
This was the end of my journey.

Answer left by: Guest

● waste from enterprises, factories
● exhaust gases of cars
etc...

Answer left by: Guest

Special properties:
Mineral quartz is a piezoelectric and pyroelectric, can exhibit triboluminescence - a glow under mechanical action (friction, scratching, cracking, etc.).
Selection form
Mineral quartz forms crystals, solid masses of various density and granularity (from coarse to cryptocrystalline), fine-fibrous, spherulite, sintered (chalcedony) and earthy aggregates.
Origin
Magmatic quartz is present mainly in felsic intrusive and volcanic rocks, in granite pegmatites.
Metamorphic quartz is found mainly in quartzites and crystalline schists.
Hydrothermal quartz is formed in ore veins, veins of the Alpine type, and forms concretions and nodules in sedimentary rocks.
Secondary quartz is often present in oxidation zones of ore deposits.
Deposits / Manifestations
Quartz is found all over the world.
Application
Quartz single crystals have been used in optical instrumentation and radio engineering; quartz sand - in the ceramic and glass industry. Many varieties of quartz (agate, amethyst, rauchtopaz, citrine, etc.) are used in jewelry.

The Earth as a planet obeys the laws of harmony. Johannes Kepler considered harmony "a real form-building factor", and many inquisitive thinkers traced aesthetic laws in the spherical shape of the Earth and in its correct movement in world space. Harmony is also manifested on the physical map of the world. As a rule, aesthetically organized structures on the earth's surface are not immediately apparent, but become clearly visible after a detailed analysis of the globe or map of the earth's hemispheres.
The English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626), apparently, was the first to notice that all the continents of the Old and New Worlds in their shape resemble triangles with sharp ends facing south. Then it was noticed that all any significant islands and peninsulas also face their extremities to the south or southwest. These are Greenland, California, Florida in America, Scandinavia, Iberian, Apennine and Balkan in Europe, Hindustan, Indochina, Korea and Kamchatka in Asia.
Reingold Forster (1729-1798), scientist and observing companion of J. Cook in his circumnavigation, indicated three more similar features in the structure of continents. Firstly, the southern extremities of all continents are high, rocky and have the appearance of mountain ranges terminating abruptly at the sea coast. America ends with Cape Horn, Africa - the Cape of Good Hope with the Table Mountain. In Asia, on the Deccan Peninsula, the chains of the Western and Eastern Ghats extend to the south, forming the huge cliffs of Cape Comorin. The Southeast Cape of Australia has the same character. Even Europe, which is not strictly speaking the mainland, but part of Eurasia, ends in the south with the rocky Cape Gibraltar.
Secondly, there is one large island or group of islands to the east of the southern tip of each continent. America has the Falkland Islands, Africa has Madagascar and the surrounding small volcanic islands, Eurasia has Ceylon, Australia has two large islands of New Zealand and the island of Tasmania. Some continents along their eastern outskirts are even framed with garlands of islands. In this case, the island garlands form arcs, sometimes strongly curved. Their convex side always faces east. There are no such garlands on the western side of the continents. In this respect, the Aleutian arc is part of the East Asian islands, although it belongs to the American continent.
Thirdly, all continents have large bays in the west, jutting deep into the land. In America, this is a deep bend of the western coast at the foot of the Andes in Bolivia (Gulf of Arica), in Africa - the Gulf of Guinea, in Australia - the Great Australian Bay. In Asia, this feature is less noticeable, but it can also be traced in the outlines of the Arabian Sea. In the east, all continents, on the contrary, have ledges towards the ocean.
In the middle of the 19th century the geographer Steffens pointed out that the continents of our planet are grouped in pairs, forming three double parts of the world: 1) North and South America; 2) Europe with part of Western Asia and Africa; 3) Asia and Australia. Moreover, all the southern continents seem to continue the northern ones. They are interconnected either by an isthmus, or by a series of islands, and at the same time separated from each other by the deep Mediterranean seas. In addition, there is always an archipelago on one side of the isthmus, and a peninsula on the other. The southern continents are also noticeably shifted east of the northern ones.
The clearest example of such a connection is North and South America, with the Isthmus of Panama connecting them. The archipelago in the east is the Antilles, the peninsula in the west is California. Europe and Africa are connected through Italy and Sicily. To the west of this ruptured isthmus lies the Iberian Peninsula, an archipelago to the east - the Greek islands. Asia and Australia are connected by a long series of islands, starting from the Malacca Peninsula and tracing through Sumatra, Java and other islands of the Sunda Archipelago to Australia itself. The peninsula to the west of this isthmus is Hindustan, and the huge archipelago to the east includes the islands of Indonesia and the Philippines.
The mountain chains form the frame of the continents. America is, as it were, attached to the chain of the Cordilleras and the Andes, just as Australia is to the Great Dividing Range. The same frame of Eurasia forms a vast mountain belt between 20 and 45 ° N. sh., from the Himalayas to the Alps. Where mountain belts are wider, continents are usually wider. In the ocean, mountain ranges often continue as islands.

Reason for the similarity

The slenderness and similarity in the location of the continents do not look accidental, and R. Forster made a detailed attempt to explain their cause. If the western shores of all continents are inclined to the southwest, steeply descend into deep water and are cut by many bays and bays, then there must be one common reason for this similarity. Forster saw her in the waves of a high flood that washed over the continents from the southwest. A gigantic wall of violent ocean waters, hitting the barrier of the continents, dug deep bays off their shores and tearing off all the light earth left only the cliffs of the present capes.
In those days, scientists often associated the event of a global flood with the impact of a comet. This idea was first expressed by the English astronomer Edmond Halley (1656-1742). In 1694, he presented to the Royal Society a report on how the impact of comet fragments when they hit the Earth caused the Great Flood described in the Bible. Halley saw the traces of the impact in large depressions on the surface of the Earth, one of which he considered the Caspian Sea.
R. Forster's ideas were developed by Pyotr Pallas (1741-1811), a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. By the impact of a giant catastrophic wave, he explained the origin of deep bays in the south of Europe and Asia and the formation of vast plains in the north, especially Siberian ones. In his opinion, the soils of these plains were formed from rocks that were torn off by ocean waves from the continents of the Southern Hemisphere. Waves of a terrible flood, advancing from the southwest, carried these rocks to the shores of the continents facing the Arctic Ocean, and besieged them there. This happened after all the fury of the giant waves hit the Himalayas and Tibet.
As a result, according to Pallas, rocks were brought into Siberia from the southwest, from the Southern Hemisphere. Together with them, numerous corpses of elephants and other tropical animals and plants were buried. On the geological and tectonic maps of Northern Eurasia, it is also clearly seen that the main directions of the strike of rocks are extended mainly from the southwest to the northeast.
Pallas also drew attention to the disparity in territory between the southern parts of Asia, south of the Himalayas, and the vast plains lying north of the main mass of the mainland. This shows that most of the southern countries were washed away by the waters of a terrible flood.
Then Pallas applied these constructions to America, the entire part of which to the west of the Cordillera and the Andes is a narrow strip, while to the east of the Cordillera-Andean chain almost the entire space of America is enclosed.
Although the distribution of continents and oceans, rivers and mountains on the planet does not look geometrically correct, in their outlines the great thinkers of the past discovered a rich history of catastrophes that once drew the face of our planet. Now their traces are imprinted in the mysterious drawing of the earth's surface and decorate it even more. But the attempts of Halley, Forster and Pallas to explain the order in the structure of the Earth's surface were not included in the scientific constructions of the twentieth century. All were forgotten. The harmony of grace and the purpose of the structure of the earth's surface looks unsolved until now. Today, the reason for the wedge-shaped continents is intricately explained with phrases such as: "the reason is the increase in oceanicity to the south and in the downward movements in the equatorial plane of the earth's ellipsoid of the lithosphere."

Mainland and Oceanic Hemisphere

Almost all land on the earth's surface is concentrated north of the equator, while seas and oceans are south of it. North of the equator, the amount of land and sea is related to each other as 1: 1.5, while south of the equator - as 1: 6. Using the globe, it is easy to see that the continents, as a rule, are opposed by the ocean, in other words, continents and oceans are antipodal. If you mentally draw a diameter across the globe through any point on the earth's land, then the opposite (antipodal) point in 19 cases out of 20 will be not on land, but in the ocean or sea. Only the southern part of South America has land as its antipode in China and Transbaikalia.
You can mentally move the poles of the Earth so as to outline the most continental and most oceanic hemisphere. In the oceanic will lie only 1/8 of the entire land. The most oceanic hemisphere forms the Pacific Ocean together with Antarctica. The total area of \u200b\u200bthe Pacific Ocean is only slightly inferior to the area of \u200b\u200bthe Atlantic, Indian and Arctic Oceans combined. The Pacific Ocean occupies more space than the entire land area and almost a third of the entire surface of the planet (32.4%).
The mainland hemisphere contains 7/8 of all land. Although, no matter how you move the hemisphere on the globe, absolutely the continental hemisphere, that is, one in which land would predominate, will not work. The greatest possible "continent" will not exceed 47% of the area of \u200b\u200bany mentally outlined hemisphere, that is, more than half of its surface in all cases will be covered with water.
The division of the globe into continental and oceanic hemispheres characterizes the asymmetric structure of our planet. There are only two continents in the oceanic hemisphere, and the smallest ones, Australia and Antarctica. Most of the oceanic hemisphere has no continents at all. The mainland hemisphere covers a wide belt of land around the Arctic Ocean and the Indo-Atlantic half of the globe. It contains Europe, Africa, North America, a significant part of South America and almost all of Asia.
Almost the entire continental hemisphere is dominated by similar plants and animals that make up the Palaearctic flora and fauna. They are especially close to each other in the Arctic regions. The peoples are similar here among themselves. The exact opposite of the Palaearctic region is the sharply different South African, Australian and South American worlds of plants and animals. These sectors are also examples of the greatest contrasts on earth and racially. The consequences of the uneven distribution of land and water are also manifested in the cultural and political predominance of the Northern, land-rich hemisphere.

Young basalt rocks are developed over a vast area of \u200b\u200bthe oceanic hemisphere. The earth's crust here is devoid of the ancient granite-metamorphic layer characteristic of continents and reaching a thickness of 15-20 km there. IN AND. Vernadsky gave this phenomenon the term "dissymmetry (asymmetry) of the globe", seeing in it the result of the impact on the Earth of some powerful geological factor, possibly the separation of the Moon. At the same time, V.I. Vernadsky believed that the Moon originally came into contact with the Earth, and called the Pacific depression the place from where it came off. But the average density of the Earth is 5.5 g / cm 3, and the Moon is 3.3 g / cm 3. The formation of such a binary system from the same material is not possible. The difference in the composition and, what is especially important, in the internal structure of the Moon and the Earth allows us to think that the Moon, alien to the Earth, most likely, on the contrary, came to her once from the black depths of Space.
It is more appropriate to explain the formation of the oceanic hemisphere not by the separation of the Moon from it, but by the collision of the Earth with a large cosmic body. Most likely it fell on the current water area of \u200b\u200bthe Pacific Ocean. The entire Pacific Trench resembles a colossal ring structure. Her environment is even called the "Pacific Rim". Outwardly, it very much resembles a giant, largely already destroyed crater, similar to those formed on other planets of the solar system in collisions with huge asteroids. It can be assumed that a powerful and grandiose impact of such an asteroid on the Earth fell on the southern and central parts of the Pacific Ocean. There is no land left here, except for the fragments of the Pacific islands. The main direction of the attack fell on the two American continents, along the western edge of which the grand chains of the Cordilleras and the Andes grew. The blow was so powerful that continents grew up on the opposite side of the globe. Some features of the ring structure can be traced in the Indian Ocean, to which North America is antipodal on the opposite side of the globe.
The global asymmetry in the distribution of low and high areas can be traced on other planets of the solar system. The surface of Mars, for example, is characterized by an asymmetry in the arrangement of plains, which make up 35% of the Martian surface, and elevated regions covered with many craters. Most of the plains are located in the Northern Hemisphere, while the continental uplands are concentrated in the Southern Hemisphere. The border between the plains and the elevated regions in some cases is represented by a special type of relief - flat-topped mesas.
The more ancient the surface, the more impact craters it carries. Therefore, the ancient continental territories of Mars are strongly cratered, and on the young plains of the northern hemisphere of Mars there are either no craters at all, or they are very rare. Ancient craters here were destroyed by younger ones, which formed a flat region of Mars, similar to the oceanic hemisphere of the Earth. It is possible to assume that the asymmetry of both the Earth and Mars is based on the same reason.

Slow drift or instant split?

The great natural scientist Alexander Humboldt (1769-1859) was also engaged in the search for patterns in the structure of the continents. In his book Cosmos, he demonstrated the remarkable parallelism of the Atlantic Ocean. Throughout their entire length, the concavity of the opposite corresponds to the land ledge of one continent. The protruding part of one bank corresponds to the depressed bends or bays of the other. For example, the part of Brazil convex towards the ocean corresponds to the Gulf of Guinea. The entire Atlantic Ocean thus looks like a giant valley. This correspondence between the continents is especially pronounced if we consider the outlines not of the shores themselves, but of the shelves that outline them. Between them one can sometimes trace such geometrically correct forms that one involuntarily creates an idea of \u200b\u200btheir quite recent unity.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the German scientist Alfred Wegener drew attention to the fact that the Atlantic coasts of Africa and South America are composed of the same rock of crystalline shields and overlying sedimentary layers containing the same fossils of plants and animals. A striking similarity of sedimentary layers can be traced between the northeastern United States and Great Britain, while completely different layers lie in the Atlantic Ocean separating them.
The idea of \u200b\u200bthe former unity of the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean is further strengthened when comparing organic life on the shores of the Old and New Worlds. The same freshwater fauna inhabit their lakes, separated by a salty ocean. Between its opposite shores, not only a huge number of common genera and even species of plants and animals are found, but also landscape consonance. Appalachian forests were strikingly reminiscent of the forests of their native Europe. The organic world of tropical latitudes turned out to be similar on both shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
Moreover, the life of the peoples inhabiting the opposing shores of the Atlantic Ocean has also found striking correspondences. African Gottenots turned out to be similar in many respects to the tribes inhabiting the Brazilian jungle. The way of life, way of life and way of life of the primitive population of Europe, it is believed, resembled the one encountered by Europeans among the North American Indians. The cult of the pyramids among the Mexican Aztecs was practiced by the ancient Egyptians. Both in Egypt and in Mexico they made stone sarcophagi, mummified the dead, and used a similar hieroglyphic script. On both sides of the ocean there was a separate caste of priests, the cult of the Sun was practiced, there was a similar reckoning system and a fairly developed astronomy. As the Aztecs, Incas pointed to their teacher, the Maya pointed to Quetzalcoatl who came to them from the east, and the Egyptians - to Osiris who arrived from the west.
So many were discovered of all sorts of similarities between countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean that the idea of \u200b\u200bthe mysterious Atlantis, which disappeared as a result of a gigantic catastrophe, appeared in the middle of the present Atlantic Ocean. However, it did not so much arise as it was borrowed by atlantologists from numerous legends, legends, historical sources.
Similarities have been found in the opposite continents of other oceans. So, the rocks of the ancient basement of Madagascar turned out to be very similar to the South Indian ones, although they also resemble the South African ones. But the organic world of Madagascar and its Malgash people have very little in common with the African continent. At the same time, the living world of Madagascar reveals many similarities with the organic world and the peoples of Southeast Asia. True, the inhabitants of Madagascar, according to modern views, are considered simply to have moved here from Indonesia.
Especially many striking similarities are found in the various distant regions of the Pacific Ocean and adjacent countries. Many geologists consider the Pacific Basin to be a very ancient formation. However, a number of biogeographic and ethnogeographic data do not agree with this. In particular, for the distribution of some genera of endemic (nowhere else found) palms and lizards in the Pacific islands, it is necessary to assume that the islands of Oceania were previously a single landmass. The flora of Polynesia contains a number of species characteristic of the southernmost part of South America.
There are so many similarities in the organic world of the Pacific countries that in order to explain them, it is necessary to assume the existence, even recently, of a wide continental bridge stretching from southern Japan to Hawaii and across the Galapagos Islands to Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. According to some ideas, such a bridge also contributed to the resettlement of ancient human tribes. In this case, it should have existed geologically quite recently, perhaps already at the dawn of the early civilizations of Latin America. Then this bridge collapsed for some reason. Only numerous chains of islands have survived in the form of its fragments.
And the Pacific depression itself is then quite young.
By the way, the extremely small volume of precipitation accumulated on its bottom testifies to the youth of the Pacific depression. The oldest sediments in the deep parts of the oceans are no older than the Lower Cretaceous in age. This means that the underlying basalt layer was also formed no later than the Lower Cretaceous. But on the middle ridges, as well as on the ridges of volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean, the age of the basalts is Cenozoic, predominantly Neogene.

The recent origin of the Sea of \u200b\u200bJapan Basin is evidenced by the features of the distribution of freshwater fish, to which the biogeographer G.U. Lindbergh. So, in the rivers of the Amur basin, the Korea Peninsula and East China, on the one hand, and Japan, on the other hand, there are a number of completely identical fish. How did these fish get from the mainland to the Japanese islands? If for some species of animals and plants it is possible to assume their accidental penetration through sea water, then for freshwater fish this assumption disappears. For them, both sea and land are insurmountable obstacles.
Freshwater fish could penetrate from mainland rivers into the rivers of the Japanese Islands only if these rivers were connected by a freshwater reservoir or directly continued each other. But this can be imagined only on the condition that in the place of modern seas there was land on which rivers or other freshwater bodies were located. At the same time, the fauna of typical river fish in Japan did not have time to change any dramatically in comparison with the river systems of the Amur and Yellow River and retained almost complete identity of species. This means that the gap between them happened recently. G.U. Lindberg explained the reason for the formation of such a rupture by the catastrophic failure of the central part of the bottom of the Sea of \u200b\u200bJapan, which occurred already at a time close to us. His hypothesis is confirmed by the absence in the fauna of this sea of \u200b\u200btypically deep-sea fish, known in the marine bodies of water adjacent to the Sea of \u200b\u200bJapan.
Alfred Wegener hypothesized that 200 million years ago, all the continents formed a single massif of Pangea, which was washed by a single proto-ocean Pantalass. This supercontinent consisted of the northern part - Laurasia, in which the present Europe, Asia and North America were united.
Another part of the Southern Hemisphere was located - Gondwana, consisting of South America, South Africa, Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica. There are also many similarities in geological structure and the ancient organic world between all these distant regions.
About 150 million years ago, Gondwana and Laurasia split into American and Euro-African parts. Wegener believed that large blocks of the earth's crust diverged under the influence of tidal forces and the waters of the World Ocean penetrated into the formed depressions. This is how the Atlantic Ocean was born.
At first, Wegener's hypothesis was accepted with a bang. But it soon became clear that the geophysical data contradicted the explanations of the processes that Wegener gave. The hypothesis was discarded as unscientific. However, since the 60s, the movement of the continents was remembered in connection with the discovery of the giant underwater mountain system of the Sredinno-Atlanichesky ridge, about 1 thousand km wide. Its highest peaks form the islands: Bouvet, Tristan da Cunha, Ascension, Sao Paulo, Azores, Iceland. In the Arctic Ocean, it continues along a number of ridges, including the Gakkel ridge. On average, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rises to depths of 2000-3000 m, with a height of 3-4 km, which corresponds to the high mountains on the continents. Later it was discovered that a single global system of mid-oceanic ridges, the total length of which exceeds 60 thousand km, encircles the entire globe.

But that is not all. Studies have shown that a giant underwater canyon stretches along the tops of the mid-ocean ridges, in their central parts. It was named rift, from the English word for rift - crack. In some cases, rifts are represented by deep valleys without sedimentary rocks. In other cases, these are uplifts limited by ruptures and faults. The rift zone contains the youngest crust, and further along the slopes of the oceanic ridges, older rocks are located. The most ancient rocks of the ocean floor are located on the continental margins.
It also turned out that subparallel stripe magnetic anomalies are located along the mid-ocean ridges. It is known that in the past, the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field has repeatedly changed to the opposite. Therefore, different rocks in different regions of the oceanic crust were magnetized by fields of different polarities. As the distance from the ridges increases, the age of the stripe anomalies, like the rocks of the ocean floor, increases, and the most ancient rocks are located near modern continents. The nature of the aging of the zones of magnetic field polarity change, located in stripes parallel to the rifts in the rocks of the ocean floor, suggests that the ocean floor was expanding in the direction away from the rifts.
The increase in the age of rocks and magnetic anomalies from the oceanic ridges to the continental margins gave rise to the idea of \u200b\u200bthe emergence of the material of the future oceanic crust in the zone of the middle ridges and its spreading to the continents. According to one of the hypotheses, the continents with the underlying parts of the mantle form strong plates. The slabs move apart as molten material from the mantle rises up into the space between the slabs. The gaps between them are filled with expanding material that has risen from below, which, as it cools, forms a new crust of the ocean floor.
It was concluded that under the lithosphere, in the mantle, there is a kind of boiling of matter. As a result of convection, a kind of giant elevator is created that delivers molten basalts to the rift zone. Along the axis of the mid-oceanic ridges, intrusion, swelling and squeezing of basalt matter from the earth's interior to the surface of the earth's crust occurs. Here is the youngest crust. Further, the basalts spread in both directions at a rate of 1-2 to 10-15 cm per year to deep troughs on the outskirts of the continents, where the crust sinks into the mantle. According to these views, the ocean floor is drawn like a giant conveyor belt. This model of its formation is called the "theory of global plate tectonics."
According to the theory of plate tectonics, when an oceanic plate moves under a continental plate or when two continental plates collide, mountain ranges are formed. For example, the Indo-Australian plate collided with the Eurasian one and gave rise to the Himalayas.
Physically speaking, the notion of global plate tectonics looks completely unnatural. First of all, the question arises: why did convection in the mantle form such gigantic linear structures, and did not arise in the form of local foci or convective cells of different scales? For this it is necessary to allow, notes A.N. Romashov3 that the substance inside a certain linear "cauldron" boils without cooling down for many millions of years, which obviously contradicts the second law of thermodynamics. Of course, it can be heated by the decay of isotopes of radioactive elements, but in this case the heating should fade out over time. And the processes of disintegration of the practical continent last, according to the modern theory of plate tectonics, 150-200, and according to some estimates, 400-500 million years.

Further, the drilling of basalts adjacent to the mid-oceanic ridges showed that there is no clear striped structure of the magnetic field with movement inland. The magnetic properties of the rock at depth do not change significantly. The formation of such a magnetic field can occur with the rapid formation of basalt and its rapid magnetization reversal. Some American scientists believe that changes in the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field during the formation of rocks on the ocean floor did not occur as it is now, for tens of thousands of years, but at a staggering speed.
Finally, can it be argued that if today's rates of continental drift are 2-15 cm per year, then over many millions of years the plates were moving apart at the same rate? Obviously, if some cart itself is moving at a given moment at a speed of 2 cm per second, then a minute ago its speed should have been much higher.
Under the influence of friction, the movement of the "conveyor" pushing the continents apart can only slow down. Computer simulation of the processes occurring during the movement of tectonic plates, made by American scientists Austin and Baumgardner, showed that initially they had to move apart at incredibly high speeds, up to several hundred meters per second. When the Indo-Australian and Eurasian platforms collided at such speeds, the Himalayas heaved. Then the speed of moving the continents slowed down due to the force of friction, and now we are observing their damped oscillations in the form of a very slow drift. They don't even drift so much as they fluctuate slightly. And at the same time, the modern slow friction of tectonic plates against each other is accompanied by the release of heat, especially at the edges of the plates, which gives rise to volcanic phenomena, earthquakes and the illusion of slow drift. But all these processes are already dying out.
Thanks to the well-established collection of information about modern earthquakes, we know a lot about them. In other years, they bring a huge number of victims. Such a terrible year was
1976th. It was even called "the year of catastrophic earthquakes." The number of victims of earthquakes then exceeded half a million people. The earthquakes in 1980 claimed about 30 thousand lives, and in 1988 25 thousand people died during the Spitak earthquake in Armenia. Opinions are expressed that the number of casualties and material losses associated with earthquakes is growing every year. In fact, the quality of collection of information about these events is growing. In the past, people have experienced more earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and they were more powerful.
The Bible mentions frequent earthquakes in Palestine, where these calamities are quite rare today. During the powerful eruption of Vesuvius on August 24, 79 AD. the flourishing Roman cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were buried under a layer of ash. After that, Naples, located nearby, prospered quietly. In Rome, in just one year of the Punic War (217 BC), 57 earthquakes occurred. During the excavations of Troy, it was found that it was destroyed by an earthquake.

The whole earth's crust cracked:
Here there was an abyss, there - a mountain.
There were a lot of coups here:
The top is the bottom, and the bottom is the top -
And people are just exactly all then
In theories, they put it upside down.

J.W. Goethe. Faust

What could have been the primary reason for the split of the continents? Obviously, it was a grandiose tectonic catastrophe that cracked the earth's crust into separate plates. Ustin Chashchin believes that it could have been caused by a large asteroid hitting the Earth. This is consistent with the views of other scientists. Thus, the German atlantologist O. Muck, studying the traces of the fall of the Karolinska meteorite (diameter 10 km, mass 200 billion tons, speed 20 km / sec), came to the conclusion that it was the cause of the death of Atlantis. The impact force was equivalent to the explosion of 30 thousand hydrogen bombs. The Polish atlantologist L. Seidler believed that Atlantis perished when the Earth collided with a comet.

S.I. Dubkov. History of Astronomy. - M .: Bely Gorod, 2002, 192 p.
G.U. Lindbergh. Large fluctuations in sea level in the Quaternary. - L .: Nauka, 1972, p. 10-13, 69-72.