Would there be a huge equatorial current? How would if affect climate?
Before the Isthmus of Panama formed about 3 million years ago, there was a strong current between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Closure of the isthmus completely changed oceanic circulation; it is thought that these changes helped initiate repeated glacial cycles in the northern hemisphere (the Ice Ages).
I don’t think this can happen. My understanding (and I could totally be wrong, I don’t even remember where I learned this) is that the equator is on the stretch of earth with the most mass (land, mountains, etc), so I guess earth would tilt on it’s axis so that the most massive parts of the earth (land presumably) would be at the new equator. Maybe what used to be the equator would be like the Atlantic and Pacific with polar caps at each end.
This is completely wrong. A glance a globe will indicate that there isn’t nearly as much land at the equator as there is at 50 degrees North. The amount of mass in the continents is small compared to the entire mass of the Earth, and their position doesn’t cause the Earth to “tilt on its axis.” During the Cretaceous there was very little land at the Equator.
Oh. Sorry for the wrong answer, I guess that is what the internet is for.
You should never get your science from old Jimmy Olsen comics.
Superman actually digs the giant crater in Antarctica and fills it with “millions of tons” of objects, because when super-brain Jimmy looked at a globe he saw that the continents are mostly north of the equator, throwing the weight of the earth off.
This was before we understood continental drift. We know now that the visible continents are a light skim of froth that easily and constantly move along the surface. Their weight is neligible compared to the whole. Their location may have effects on climate - air weighs even less than land, but not on the earth itself.
People also tend to forget that continents float. They are composed of lower density rock than the ocean basins.
While you’re otherwise right, it isn’t correct to use this statement to disprove dukette’s hypothesis. It is not possible to tilt the Earth to shift a latitude line to become a new equator. Instead, one can disprove the hypothesis by finding a great circle with more land along it than the current equator.
As I understand it, that won’t happen to the Earth because the presence of the Moon stabilizes its axis. Without the Moon it could happen; I recall reading that it apparently happened to Mars in ancient times. Major volcanic activity caused a concentration of mass, and the crust slid over the mantle until the mass was at the equator. They can tell because Mars is covered with craters from captured asteroids that eventually crashed, leaving oblong craters at the equator; the older craters form a ring that is no longer at the present equator.
Regardless of how the earth is tilted, with respect to its plane of orbit around the sun, the equator will never change. Even if the earth were to be tilted 90 degrees the equator would always be the part of the earth that is spinning the fastest.
The moon does regulate the earths tilt by being tidally locked to it (the same side of the moon is always facing the earth) but that would never change where the equator is. The land over the equator can certainly change due to continental drift, but the land masses, whether they are over the equator or not, has nothing to do with where the earths equator is or the tilt of the earth.
My original question was what type of current would exist at the equator if there was no land in the way? Would it be a very fast current?
You mean like Rodinia and the Snowball Earth hypothesis?