Rosetta Stone - Mike Fuller Appendix 3: Introduction to and history of paleomagnetism and rock magnetism.

Introduction The studies of rock magnetism and paleomagnetism, which cover the magnetic materials in rocks and the record of the magnetic fields they carry, have a surprisingly long history, although the burst of activity at the middle of the C20th and since dominates the subject. As early as 1691, the chemist Boyle showed that bricks acquired a direction of magnetization parallel to the ambient field in which they were fired. In the middle of the C19th, Melloni in Italy had shown that when a basaltic rock was heated and then cooled in the geomagnetic field, it acquired a magnetization in the direction of the ambient field, as had Boyles brick. At the end of the C19 th, Folgheraiter published a series of papers in the proceedings of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei in which the work by Melloni was cited and expanded to include results showing that the direction of magnetization found in young basalts was parallel to the recent geomagnetic field. The classical method of measuring the magnetism of a sample was to observe the effect of its field on a suspended magnet in a torsion experiment. Fortunately, rocks contain fine particles of various iron oxides such as magnetite, titanomagnetite, maghemite, hematitie and sulphides such as pyrrhotite and greigite. These fine particles are excellent magnetic memory elements and indeed just like those used in magnetic tape. In this discussion we will not delve deeply into the origin of magnetism. For example we will not worry about the differences between ferromagnetism and ferrimagnetism, but simply recognize once again that magnets in the general sense are aligned in magnetic fields. Once magnetized, the fine particle magnets found in rocks need strong fields, or some other energetic process to reset their

Rosetta Stone magnetization. Given this, the reader may well ask how the weak geomagnetic field manages to set their magnetism in the first place. Once again somewhat fortuitously, the formation of the rock succeeds in setting this magnetization and recording the weak geomagnetic field. One such process upon which much of the paleomagnetic record is based is the magnetization that lavas acquire as they cool.

Neel theory. The magnetization acquired when rocks cool in a magnetic field is often misrepresented as the alignment of particles in molten magma that later becomes a rock. Actually, the magnetization is usually acquired 100s of degrees below the temperature at which basaltic rock solidifies. The properties of this thermal remanent magnetization, as it is known in the trade, were established in the 1930s and 1940s by Koenigsberger in Germany, Thellier in France and Nagata in Japan. Then, in the late 1940s, Neel published a theory of TRM that has survived to this day and is the cornerstone of rock magnetism theory. Neels theory takes as a starting point the well-known fact that a magnetic particle is in a lower energy state, if its magnetization is parallel to the ambient field, than if its magnetization is in any other direction. The magnetic of energy a particle in a magnetic field is the product of the magnetic moment of the particle and the field (-m.H), which in turn is equal to the product of the saturation magnetization and volume and field (js.v. H) Immediately below the Curie point when the particle has become magnetic, the magnetization carried by the particles is in an unstable state subject to thermally driven fluctuations in direction. Despite these fluctuations, there is a statistical bias at any instant

Rosetta Stone in favor of magnetization close to the field direction because that is the lower energy state. To be anthropomorphic, we may say that particles are happier in the lowest energy state with their magnetization close to the field and therefore stay longer in this state than in any other. As temperature continues to fall, the energy driving the fluctuations decreases and the bias in the directions of magnetization in the various particles is preserved as a record of the field present during cooling. As Neels theory explains this change is very sudden, so that the magnetization of particles changes from being unstable with changes in direction in nanoseconds to stabilizing, so that the record is held for billions of years, in a temperature drop of just a few degrees. We call this the blocking temperature of thermal remanent magnetization for a particular particle. Because the statistical bias was acquired at high temperature, the magnetic field needed to achieve the bias was relatively small and the weak geomagnetic field was sufficiently strong to be recorded. However, at room temperature the magnetization is blocked and given the insignificant thermal fluctuations at this temperature they cannot disturb the blocked magnetization. The weak geomagnetic field certainly cannot affect it any more. For this reason, the particle retains its magnetization and is not affected by the geomagnetic field any further. We can collect samples whose magnetization was acquired millions, or even billions of years ago, measure it, and build up the history of the geomagnetic field, Similarly the paleomagnetism of lunar samples and meteorites records the fields in which they acquired their magnetization and allow us to glimpse of these fields. As always there are complications and difficulties, but thermal remanent

Rosetta Stone magnetization can demonstrably carry a high fidelity record of the field in which it is acquired.

The discovery of Geomagnetic Field reversals In 1903, Brunhes reported one of the most important discoveries that would ever come from this paleomagnetic record of the ancient geomagnetic field carried by rocks. He discovered the reversal of the geomagnetic field. He had heard of the work with pottery by the Italians and knew that these fired clays gave excellent records of the field in which they were fired. He decided that natural baked clays, such as those baked by lava flows should also give a good record of the field. As related to me by Carlo Laj, Brunhes had a friend in the department in charge of road construction in France and so he asked this friend to let him know if any road cuts through lava flows with baked sediments turned up. When his friend did come across one such site, he told Brunhes, who collected from the fresh road cut. To Brunhes surprise, when he measured the direction of magnetization of the baked clay he found that it was magnetized not in the direction of the present geomagnetic field, but in exactly the opposite direction. Instead of being magnetized to the north and down, as was appropriate for the region of France where the road cut was, the clay was magnetized to the south and up. Brunhes also chiseled out some of the basalt and found that this too was reversely magnetized. He interpreted his results as evidence of a reversed geomagnetic field at the time the lava initially cooled. The description of his work in his papers takes us back to a wonderful era in science.

Rosetta Stone Additional evidence for reversals accumulated during the first half of the C20th. Work by Matuyama in Japan demonstrated that all of the youngest lavas he investigated were magnetized in a direction similar to the present geomagnetic field, but about half of the clearly older flows were magnetized in the reversed direction. With the advent of the new paleomagnetic efforts in the early 1950s, Roche working in the Massif Central of France and Jan Hospers in Iceland produced convincing evidence of the geomagnetic field reversal, as did members of Blacketts group at Imperial College. Hospers had even suggested that in recent geological times the field had reversed roughly once every half million years and took less than 10,000 years to do so. Both estimates were on the money. Nevertheless, the topic of reversals was still controversial at mid-century. Much of the reason was the discovery by Dr. Seiya Uyeda and Professor Nagata of Tokyo University that some rocks when cooled in a magnetic field, acquired a magnetization in exactly the opposite direction to that of the field. For some people, it was easier to accept that the record in rocks was faulty than that the field could actually reverse, so field reversals remained controversial.

The record of secular variation. Meanwhile accurate records of the recent history of the geomagnetic field were being built up. These studies established the history of what is termed secular variation. Just one year after Boyle had shown that bricks could record the magnetic field in which they were heated and allowed to cool, Halley had shown that this secular variation involved a westward drift of the field. It was nearly another 200 years before Chevallier

Rosetta Stone developed a secular curve using a series of flows from Mt. Etna that were historically dated and could be used to show that Halleys observation persisted from earlier time. In France, Emile Thellier and his wife had taken up the challenge of the recent record of the geomagnetic field and laid the modern foundations of what is now called archaeomagnetism. So far in this account we have only discussed the direction of magnetization, but magnetization is a vector having direction and magnitude, as is the geomagnetic field. The Thelliers were interested in the strength of the field, as well as its direction and they found, like the Italians before them, that pottery was an ideal material for these studies. That pottery contained very fine magnetic material, which was magnetized during the firing of the clay and retained a faithful record of the field was well known when they started work. Koenigsberger, Thellier and Nagata had established that the intensity of thermal remanent magnetization is proportional to the field in which it is acquired. One might therefore think that it would be very easy to get the intensity of the field in which the pottery was fired and acquired its magnetization. All that was needed would be to measure the intensity of the magnetization of the pottery, give it a thermal remanent magnetization in a known laboratory field and the ratios of the strength of the magnetizations would give the ratio of the strengths of the fields. This did not turn out to be quite so simple because the heating required to give the thermal remanent magnetization in the laboratory sometimes destroyed the magnetic material in the pottery, so that there was less material to acquire the laboratory thermal remanent magnetization and the ratio no longer gave the correct ratio of fields.

Rosetta Stone In the 1930s Koenigsberger in Germany and independently Emile Thellier in France developed an incremental heating method that took advantage of the way in which thermal remanent magnetization is discretely blocked in certain temperature intervals. The method was based on the three laws of partial TRMs (pTRM) that had been demonstrated by Thellier. By partial TRM we mean TRM acquired in some restricted temperature range below the Curie point. The first law was the law of reciprocity which states that the pTRM acquired in a temperature range of T(1) to T(2) is demagnetized in the same temperature range. The second law which is the law of independence states that the pTRM acquired in a particular temperature range is independent of pTRM acquired in any other temperature range. The third law, the law of additivity states that pTRM are additive in the sense that the pTRM acquired between

pTRM T(1) to T(2) + pTRM (2) to T(3) ..+ pTRM T(n-1) to T(n) = pTRM T(1) T(n)

Taking advantage of these relationships one can compare the ratio of thermal remanent magnetization to the natural remanent magnetization that the rock, or pottery carried incrementally. In this way one can detect the destruction of the magnetic phases and hence has an idea of the fidelity of the intensity estimate. Without going further into the details of how the method worked, it is worth noting that despite many attempts to improve the method, including some by the author, the method is still the gold standard of intensity determinations. It is usually referred to as the Thellier-Thellier method. Following Nagatas example, lets call it the Koenigsberger-Thellier-Thellier method to

Rosetta Stone acknowledge the contribution of Koenigsberger, without any disrespect for the work of the Thelliers. As early as 1938, Koenigtsberger had worked out the basis of the method and presented results in the form we use to day. This was the same year as Thellier presented his famous paper on the baked clay. The results obtained by the Thelliers after the war began the process of building up the record of the intensity of the magnetic field. It soon became clear that the remarkable decrease in intensity that had been established by observatory records of the field since Gausss determination in 1837 continued back through the two millennia since Christ. In 1958, only the first few intensity determinations were available.

The paleomagnetic test of continental drift. In addition to the use of these techniques of modern paleomagnetism to investigate the past history of the field, paleomagnetism had plunged into a second more controversial area - Wegeners theory of continental drift. The theory had for a long time had its advocates, but also its disparagers, among whom were many of the more distinguished theoretically inclined geophysicists of the time, who quite reasonably did not see how the relatively thin crust of the earth could move around independently of the material below. Remember that on the grand scale of our planet, the crust, mantle and core are in about he same ratio as the skin, main fruit that we eat, and core of an apple. Some of the strongest advocates were southern hemisphere geologists, who were familiar for example with the detailed similarity of the geological sections in parts of South America and Africa. These suggested the two had been contiguous at some stage and moved apart subsequently. This strengthened the notion of drift based upon a simple

Rosetta Stone comparison of the west coast of Africa with the east coast of South America. Another advocate was Arthur Holmes, who wrote a classic text entitled The Principles of Physical Geology, much read by physicists, needing to brush up their geological knowledge. Nevertheless for most people in 1950s, continental drift was not satisfactorily demonstrated - given a room full of geologists, roughly half would argue vehemently for continental drift, whereas the other half would argue equally strongly and convincingly against it. Clearly, some new data was required to settle the question. Probably, Mercanton, who worked between the World Wars in France, was one of the first to see that magnetic record of the geomagnetic field in rocks might be used to test the idea of continental drift. Later Blackett1 became interested in this possibility, after reading the 1948 paper of Johnson, Torreson and Murphy entitled the Pre-History of the Earths magnetic field. He too saw the possibility of using the paleomagnetic record to test continental drift. The recorded ancient inclination of the site could be compared with present inclination. Then, assuming that the earths magnetic field had the same simple form, when the rocks formed as it does at present, the difference recorded a change in latitude between the rock present location and where it was when it acquired its magnetization Any departure of the magnetization from north recorded a change in orientation of the site by rotation. The situation is analogous to a sailor navigating by _____________
1

Blackett had been a graduate student of Rutherford in the 1920s and had won a Nobel

Prize for his beautiful work with cloud chambers that had revealed collision products of atomic nuclei hit by alpha particles.

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sextant, he can tell the latitude he is at and he can keep a record of the heading of the boat, but he does not know his longitude without a clock. Blackett also had a sensitive

magnetometer capable of measuring the weak magnetism of sedimentary rocks. Although the lavas had played a central role in the discovery of reversals, the record from sediments was needed to build up the paleomagnetic record to test continental drift. Unlike the lavas and baked clays that acquired a thermo-remanent magnetization (TRM) during cooling, sediments acquired their magnetization during formation at essentially room temperature. The process whereby sediments acquired their magnetization is in principle simpler than TRM, but is still not completely understood in detail. Certainly, particles falling through water in the oceans, or in lakes experience a torque due to the geomagnetic field and tend to align like compass needles. Eventually they reach the bottom of the water column and become a part of the accumulating sediment. Initially, they are still free to rotate in the water logged sediments and so in their new environment they show a statistical bias towards the direction of the geomagnetic field. However, the process of sedimentation, including, such indignities as bioturbation produce a good deal of randomization. As the rock loses water and solidifies, the particles are less and less free to rotate and eventually they are locked in place and their magnetization is locked in with them. A magnetic record of the field is then retained. become a part of the accumulating sediment. Initially, they are still free to rotate in the water logged sediments and so in their new environment they show a statistical bias towards the direction of the geomagnetic field. However, the process of sedimentation,

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Rosetta Stone including, such indignities as bioturbation produce a good deal of randomization. As the rock loses water and solidifies, the particles are less and less free to rotate and eventually they are locked in place and their magnetization is locked in with them. A magnetic record of the field is then retained. This depositional, or detrital remanent magnetization (DRM) tends to be about a thousand times weaker than the saturation remanent magnetization that the rock carries after being exposed to a very strong magnetic field, say from an electromagnet. This is about a factor of ten less efficient than the TRM process. Because sediments often have less magnetic material in them than do basaltic flows, their magnetization may be very weak indeed and require very sensitive magnetometers to read the record. The reason that Blackett had a sensitive magnetometer was because he had wanted to test a theory of his about magnetic fields and the rotation of massive bodies. The idea was that the origin of the magnetization of stars was a fundamental property of their rotation. To check this idea, he built an astatic magnetometer underneath which the magnetism of a gold cube was to be measured, so that the field predicted by the theory could be detected. The work developing this system and the negative result were described in a famous paper by Blackett entitled A negative experiment relating to magnetism and the earths rotation and published in the Transactions of the Royal Society.

Paleomagnetic techniques. This is perhaps a good place to introduce the nuts and bolts of paleomagnetic studies from sample collection to measurement and analysis.

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Fieldwork and collecting samples Initially of course the sample has to be oriented and this was done by the simple geological technique of finding and marking a dip and strike on a convenient flat surface. The strike was found with what is essentially a spirit level in a Brunton compass. The magnitude of the dip was found by aligning an inclinometer (also in a Brunton compass) perpendicular to the strike, and measuring the angle by which the surface dips down from the horizontal. The samples were then cut, or chiseled out of the face, avoiding destroying the orientation marking. The large (about 6 x 6 x 6 inches) sample was then lugged back to the vehicle used for collecting and transported it back to the laboratory for preparation and measurements. The next stage was messy and slow. The samples were set in plaster of Paris with the original dip and strike directions now horizontal. Finally, small inch sized cylinders were drilled and cut for measurement. It was soon found that taking a portable drill into the field was a much better method and so we all converted chain saws to rock drills and lugged water and drills around. The orientation was done after the core had been drilled but before it was broken out. The great advantages are not lugging the samples back and the fact that the cylindrical drill samples only have to be trimmed for measurement on returning in to the laboratory. All of us who have collected samples for paleomagnetism around the world have had our share of adventures that this sort of behavior in remote parts of the world is heir to and I have related some of mine in this text.

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Rosetta Stone Magnetometers The initial workhorse of the subject was the astatic magnetometer based on Blacketts approach. The principle of an astatic magnetometer is simple, but hard to realize experimentally. Two magnets of equal strength and opposite polarity are mounted on an assembly that also supports a mirror. This assembly is then mounted on a torsion fiber and its deflection can be observed with a lamp and scale. In theory, such an astatic system will not respond to a homogenous magnetic field because the torque that is experienced by the upper magnet is opposed by an equal torque in the opposite sense from the lower magnet. It therefore will not respond to the main geomagnetic field, which does not vary significantly on the scale of the distance between the two magnets. The tricky part is of course to get the two magnets very well balanced and aligned. When this is achieved a sample can be placed below the bottom magnet and its field is stronger at the lower magnet than at the upper, so that it unbalances the astatic system. The system will then rotate and the field from the sample can be sensed. This is a classical torque experiment used for generations by physicists. With multiple readings the magnetization direction and intensity can be determined. These astatic magnetometers are unfortunately tricky instruments to use, as well as to make. One of the problems is that to make the system more sensitive, the torsion fiber has made weaker, so that it responds to weaker torques. One type of fiber used was finely drawn quartz, whose preparation was a very delicate art. As a consequence of making the fiber weaker, the period of the instrument increases, so measurements take longer and instrument drift problems become serious. Drift of an instrument may occur due to any number of small changes in the equipment in response most often to minor

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Rosetta Stone temperature changes. Many a graduate student of my vintage has cursed these instruments, as hours were spent watching minute deflections of a spot on a scale to measure weak samples. We have already seen what an important role the astatic magnetometer had played in measuring the weak magnetization of sediments. Initially the Jodrell Bank magnetometer was used by both Blacketts and Runcorns groups. In a recent talk at an American Geophysical meeting, Ken Creer acknowledged what an important role Blackett played, not only in providing the equipment, but in lending his considerable reputation to the whole endeavor of paleomagnetism. There were other instruments that measured the remanent magnetization of rocks by spinning them near to a pick up coil hooked up to sensitive amplifiers. As Michael Faradays celebrated law of induction formalizes, an electromotive force is induced in the coil and a current flows proportional to the magnetization perpendicular to the spin axis. To cut down noise the pick up coil is placed in a
-metal shield. By spinning the sample successively about three mutually perpendicular axes, the total remanent magnetization of the sample can be found with some statistical redundancy. Eventually with advent of modern electronic techniques, these became very sensitive and replaced the astatic magnetometers. Nevertheless most of the classic paleomagnetic studies related to the movement of landmasses were made using astatic magnetometers It had also been realized from the early work that rock samples often carried a magnetic record that consisted of a signal plus noise. The signal could be related to the field that the rock had initially recorded during its formation. The later magnetizations acquired by the rock could be of interest, or could be noise picked up by as mundane a

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Rosetta Stone problem as being exposed to a magnetic field during collection, or processing. Evidently a procedure was needed to separate the signal from the noise to improve our paleomagnetic records of the ancient field. In our discussion of the Koenigsberger-Thellier-Thellier method of intensity determination we saw that the original magnetization in the pottery, or rock was incrementally replaced. Thus for example, the magnetization up to 100C was demagnetized by heating the sample to 100 C, which unblocks that fraction of the magnetization. The rock was then cooled down in a laboratory field to give a thermoremanence in the same temperature range. Now, if instead of cooling the sample in the laboratory field, it is cooled in zero field, or as near as we can get to zero field, then the magnetization blocked below 100C will be largely randomized and eliminated. We would have preferentially eliminated the magnetization blocked at low temperature and we can then remeasure the sample. We can repeat the process going to progressively higher temperatures. Often the noise is blocked in a lower temperature range compared with the signal, so we improve the signal to noise ratio. If we are lucky, we may totally eliminate the noise leaving our signal untouched. There are other methods of demagnetization, such as alternating field demagnetization and chemical demagnetization. All of them depend on somehow separating the signal from the noise and eliminating the latter. The most commonly used is alternating field demagnetization. Figure A3.5 (A) illustrates a situation in which the signal and noise are carried by particles whose magnetization can be reset, or switched, by different fields. In alternating field demagnetization, we take advantage of these distributed switching fields of the particles carrying the magnetization. Figure A3.5(A)

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Rosetta Stone could also be plotted against temperature to illustrate the principle of thermal demagnetization, in which case it would be the distribution of blocking temperatures that would be used to separate signal and noise as described In the previous paragraph. If an alternating field is applied in the absence of any ambient field, for example when the sample is being shielded from the geomagnetic field. All particles whose magnetization can be switched by the field are in equal numbers in each direction of the alternating field. This field is then decreased to zero leaving the particles equally magnetized up and down as shown in figure A3.5 (B). Those particles not switched by the field are untouched. If we apply a field in between the switching fields of the signal and noise, as shown in figure A3.5(A), then we will eliminate the noise and leave the signal untouched. The application of the technique is rarely quite as simple as the textbook example, but it is a very powerful technique universally used. It was pioneered by the Dutch workers and in particular Hans Zijderveld, who also invented a clever diagram to help interpret the results. In this technique, magnetization, which can be randomized by a small alternating field is first eliminated and then the sample is remeasured. The procedure is repeated with the field strength is progressively increased thereby increasing the signal to noise ratio and again if we are lucky we may isolate the signal from the field the rock was formed in.

The new results bearing on Wegeners continental drift. One of the earliest papers to provide convincing evidence that the magnetization of sediments required movement of at least parts of the crust relative to the magnetic field was by Clegg, Almond and Stubbs in 1954. They recorded their results in the form of

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Rosetta Stone radial frequency plots (fig.A3.6). These clearly showed that the declination was rotated clockwise from north, which was interpreted as indicating that the site had been rotated by this amount since the rock had been magnetized. The inclination results were a little more complicated in that they were not antipodal. Presumably, they had not been entirely successful in cleaning out all of the noise. However, it was clear that the rocks must have become magnetized at lower latitudes than those at which they were now found. The authors were able to apply two tests of stability on a geological time scale that had been published by John Graham in America in 1949. The first of John Grahams tests is called the fold test. For this, the magnetization is observed across fold, which are the rumples one sees in sedimentary sections, like those in a carpet that has been buckled up. If the magnetization is constant when observed with the sedimentary layers folded, it must have been acquired after the folding. On the other hand, if the magnetization is constant when the fold is flattened out and the bedding planes returned to their original configuration, then themagnetization must have been acquired before the folding. The results from the New Red Sandstone passed this test. A second test that is not quite so directly useful, but still can be a helpful indicator is the conglomerate test. Conglomerates are sediments made up of fragments of earlier sediments including coarse material that can reach boulder size. If the magnetization of boulders of the sediment of interest are found to be randomly magnetized in the conglomerate, this is good evidence that their earlier magnetization has survived and not been reset by the processes of transportation and formation of the conglomerate. On this count too, the remanent magnetization of the New Red Sandstone passed muster as a

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Rosetta Stone stable magnetization, probably acquired when the sediment formed some 150 million years ago. Another remarkable aspect of this study was that the rocks gave two sets of results one group was magnetized with an easterly declination and a downward dip shallower than the present field. The other was magnetized to the south an upward with again a smaller dip than the present field and a direction rotated clockwise from due south. If one assumed that the Triassic geomagnetic field was dominantly a dipolar field aligned close to the rotation axis as is the present field, then it appeared that these sediments must have been nearer to the equator when they formed and had subsequently rotated clockwise. Moreover, the two directions were nearly exactly the reverse of each other, so that the results were also consistent with the field reversing during the Triassic. Meanwhile the group led by Professor Runcorn, first at Cambridge and later at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, had made major progress. Ted Irving, who was to play a pivotal role in the vindication of continental drift by paleomagnetic methods, carried out a study of the Pre-Cambrian Torridonian sandstone from Scotland and published it as a Masters thesis in the same year as the Clegg, Almond, Stubbs paper came out in 1954. He too had found that sites at which he had collected from the Torridonian had moved far from their location when the sediment acquired its magnetization. The results also fell into what appeared to be normal and reversed groups, so Irvings results also argued for reversals. Indeed Irving had plotted his results in a way that suggested the use of the patterns of the sequence of reversals to correlate different geological sections within the Torridonian.

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Rosetta Stone Controversies in paleomagnetism. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that by 1958 there were plenty of data from paleomagnetism consistent with reversals of the earths magnetic field and continental drift. Why then were these ideas not accepted? The controversy over reversals continued for another decade. The principal reason, as we noted above, was the discovery of self-reversal - the process of acquiring magnetism in a direction to the ambient field. If rocks could acquire thermo-remanent magnetization in the laboratory opposite to the field in the laboratory, why shouldnt this happen in nature. There was also a suggestion that there was a correlation between the more highly oxidized lavas and those that were reversely magnetized. This strengthened the case for self-reversal because self-reversing magnetization had initially been found in more oxidized lavas. Yet these ideas neglected the good work of so many people demonstrating the reality of reversals that it was relatively easy for me to accept the reversal of the geomagnetic field. Perhaps this was also because of my early experience of the fieldwork in Arran. John Leng had demonstrated that where the dykes were reversely magnetized, so was the magnetization of the Old Red Sandstone that had been heated and reset when the dykes were intruded. Conversely where the dykes were normally magnetized, so were the baked sediments. This was a convincing argument that the field had sometimes been reversed and sometimes normal during the period when the dykes were intruded. Both the dyke and its baked contact had acquired the magnetization of the field when they cooled. The demonstration of field reversals was eventually to come much later when it was found that rocks younger than about 780,000 years were all normally magnetized,

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Rosetta Stone that before that there was period of some 200,000 when the rocks were reversed. This pattern was repeated back through geological time with rocks of the same age having the same polarity. Clearly it was very unlikely that all rocks of a particular age were selfreversing and much more likely that the geomagnetic field spends time in the normal state and some in the reversed state. However, the general acceptance of field reversal came still later when reversals played a key role in establishing the grand unifying theory of the earth sciences. The continental drift controversy continued on for years. The possibility of explaining the results by polar wander was suggested. For some it was easier to accept the motion of the pole of rotation with respect to the mantle. Tommy Gold had pointed out in a characteristically amusing way that if a beetle moved on the surface of the earth, the distribution of the earths mass changes. The moment of inertia of the earth changes and the rotation pole will adjust or tilt to give rotation about the axis of the maximum moment of inertia. In 1957, Runcorns group published work that took the view that polar wander could explain the observations. They described their results in a paper authored by Creer Irving and Runcorn in the form of Apparent Polar Wander curves. This was possible because one could always calculate the magnetic pole that accounted for the magnetization direction observed providing one made the assumption that the field of the earth always had the same simple form as the field of a sphere. The horizontal component through the angle of declination from the meridian gave the direction to the pole. The inclination, the angle by which the field direction deviates from the horizontal, gave the distance to the pole through a simple relationship. The curves for the succession of poles

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Rosetta Stone for Europe and North America are shown. While they were aware that continental drift could explain the results they preferred the recognized possibility of polar wander. This hypothesis required fewer assumptions to be made and did not involve the difficulty of continental crust plowing through the mantle, which was highly implausible. Within Runcorns group the recognition of continental drift occurred at different times for the various members. Ted Irving says that he had always been sympathetic to the idea of continental drift, having been taught it in school. Ken Creer, who took the crucial step of plotting the first polar wander curves based upon the paleomagnetic results, must have recognized drift by the late 1950s. Neil Opdyke claims to have been at Keith Runcorns Damascus Road like enlightenment. He tells of a lunch in the spring of 1956 with Westoll, a distinguished Professor of Geology at Durham University, who was a strong supporter of drift. At that lunch Runcorn accepted continental drift. Although there are always difficulties in tracing the development of ideas and temptations for revisionist history, it is clear that although Runcorn eventually argued very strongly and correctly for continental drift, he took a lot of persuading initially. In 1958, the London group favored continental drift and in 1960, they published a landmark paper An analysis of rock magnetic data by Blackett, Clegg, and Stubbs. In this paper they presented the data by reducing the results to a standard city for each continent and recorded its ancient latitude and rotation given through geological time by the rocks to give figure A3.9. As we can see the different landmasses have moved with different velocities, with Indian being the fastest. The landmasses also had different histories of rotation. In the initial tabulation of the results they used the difference in inclination between the ancient and present latitude, and the rotation, which they defined

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Rosetta Stone as the difference between the observed declination transformed to a positive or negative quantity depending upon whether it was clockwise or anticlockwise. Here they anticipated methods to be used decades later for determining the rotational history of small regions with respect to the continental mass, of which they were a part. Without wishing to reopen old battles, this paper has not, in my opinion, really received its due. Of course, I may be prejudiced by my relationship with the London group through my family. Be that as it may, I will quote in detail from the abstract of the paper as follows. The results of this analysis strongly support the supposition that the observed wide divergence between the directions of the remanent magnetic vectors of older rocks and that of the present field is systematic and not a result of purely random processes occurring through geological time. The most reasonable explanations of the phenomenon appear to be that (a) the directions of earlier rocks have been changed by some widespread physical or geological process since the time of their formation, (b) the earths magnetic field has had strong multipolar components in past geological ages, (c) a relative drift of the continents across the earths mantle has occurred. Of these hypotheses, (c) appears to be the most plausible. On the tentative assumption that the rock magnetic results can be explained by continental drift, it is possible to estimate the ancient latitude and the orientation relative to the earths rotational axis of each continent although by paleomagnetic measurement alone changes in it relative longitude cannot be revealed. By 1962 it was clear that the polar wander paths for America and Europe, deviated systematically from each other when the paths were plotted in the configuration of the landmasses today. However, when the masses were moved into the hypothesized

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Rosetta Stone drift positions the paths agreed. This was pretty convincing evidence of continental drift. Yet, continental drift was still not generally accepted until like reversals of the field, it came along as part of plate tectonics - the grand unifying theory of the earth sciences that we keep anticipating. This then gives some idea of the state of development of paleomagnetism that had taken place up to about the end of the 1950s when I started my research.

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Figure A3.1 Illustration of energy in a magnetic field H

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Normal magnetization in France Towards the North and Down.

Reverse magnetization in France Towards the south and Up.

Present Field

Figure A3.2 Cartoon illustrating the discovery of reversely magnetized rocks in France by Brunhes.

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Figure A3.3 Cartoon of depositional remanent magnetization process.

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(a) torsion head

(b) remote configuration to cut down noise. Figure A3.4 Astatic magnetometer and (b) remote configuration to cut down noise.

Figure A3.5 Spinner magnetometer.

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Fig. A3.4 Equipment for thermal demagnetization (a) Use of field Helmholtz coils within a shielded room to minimize ambient field by Bob Dunn and (b) Use of nested mu-metal magnetic shields to minimize ambient field by Schonstedt Co.

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(A)

(B)

Figure A3.5 Alternating field demagnetization. (A) distribution of switching fields of particles carrying noise (JA) and signal (JB), (B) process of demagnetization.

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Figure A3.6. The remanent magnetization in the New Red Sandstone from various sites in England presented as frequency polygons. Upper plot declination, Lower plote inclination.

Figure A3.7 Fold, Conglomerate and baked contact tests.

Figure A3.7 Stability tests (a) the fold test, (b) the conglomerate test and (c ) the baked contact test.

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Figure A3.8 Apparent polar wander curves for Europe and North America.

Figure A3.9 Paleomagnetic results compiled for different continents.