Polflucht (from German, ''flight from the poles'') is a geophysical concept invoked in 1922 by

Alfred Wegener Alfred Lothar Wegener (; ; 1 November 1880 – November 1930) was a German climatologist, geologist, geophysicist, meteorologist, and polar researcher. During his lifetime he was primarily known for his achievements in meteorology and a ...

to explain his ideas of

continental drift Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of pla ...

. He suggested that a differential gravitational force (horizontal component of centrifugal or Eötvös force) and the Earth's

flattening Flattening is a measure of the compression of a circle or sphere along a diameter to form an ellipse or an ellipsoid of revolution (spheroid) respectively. Other terms used are ellipticity, or oblateness. The usual notation for flattening is ...

would cause continental masses to drift slowly towards the

equator The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can als ...

. The hypothesis was expanded by

Paul Sophus Epstein Paul Sophus Epstein (; Warsaw, Vistula Land, Russian Empire, March 20, 1883 – Pasadena, California, United States, February 8, 1966) was a Russian-American mathematical physicist. He was known for his contributions to the development of q ...

in 1920 but the force is now known to be far too weak to cause

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (from the la, label=Late Latin, tectonicus, from the grc, τεκτονικός, lit=pertaining to building) is the generally accepted scientific theory that considers the Earth's lithosphere to comprise a number of large ...

. The strength of the layers of the

Earth's crust Earth's crust is Earth's thin outer shell of rock, referring to less than 1% of Earth's radius and volume. It is the top component of the lithosphere, a division of Earth's layers that includes the crust and the upper part of the mantle. The ...

is much stronger than assumed by Wegener and Epstein.

Literature

* ''The concise Oxford dictionary of Earth Sciences'' (topic 'Polflucht'), Oxford 1990 * Laszlo Egyed: ''Physik der festen Erde'' (Physics of solid Earth), 368p. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest 1969
Über die Polflucht der Kontinente, F.Nölke 1921
Geophysics Plate tectonics Obsolete scientific theories {{geophysics-stub