Please could anyone with half a brain explain something which is bugging me? Ok - Earth is where it is and what it is due to essentially a random process - a settling of material after the big bang. The land masses of earth are the shape they are due to currents, tectonic plate movements etc which are the consequence of the type of material we have after that big bang - but what's the story with the pointy bits??? If it's all a consequence of random or chance events why do so many of the Earth's pointy bits (where land tapers off) point southward? Surely chance, coincidence etc would suggest a fairly even spread of pointy bits? Or is there a force I'm not factoring in which would make them taper off towards the South?

Think of South America, India, Finland, South Africa - they all taper Southward - why? It seems more than a 'chance' occurence to me? What force makes them point southward?

Thanks in advance -

Ben

Edited to add - or is it because we are so conditioned to view the globe in a particular way that I can't see as many pointing 'upward'?

dude i see what you mean which scares me..LOL and i have absolutely no idea why :headscrat

Pondering pointy bits? You have too much time on your hands! Ponder how the sofa pulls apart will ya!

hmmm...that raises a good observation Ben...I would have to venture out and say this...

As the Earth was well into its cooling process (4 billion years ago) Magma and core were still synching up currents and the distribution of elements. My guess is the magnetic nature of Earth played an important role in earley tectonic movement.

Another guess is the constant overlapping, upheval, erosion and other geological movements of Earth has finaly gotten to a point where geological stasis appears to be showing a "pattern" of "pointy southern tips"....lol I have truley gone mad.

peace,
Austin

Could be due to fictional forces resulting from the earth's rotation.

I'll take that as 'frictional' forces Andrew?? Yeah rotation came to mind but then I thought even if there is a miniscule degree to which land is 'forced' to move in a particular direction it would be against the direction of rotation - a bit like the jetstream of a moving vehicle - I just can't get my head round this at all....

Ben

No, I meant fictional, or perhaps more accurately fictitious. Examples of fictitious forces are coriolis and centrifugal forces.

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/CoriolisForce.html

Although if it were a coriolis-caused effect you would probably expect the effects to be mirrored about the equator and that doesn't seem to be the case. The earth appears to have the greatest proportoin of land mass in the northern hemisphere and continents appear to taper to the south. I am not aware of any reason for this.