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Scientists Are Just Starting to Understand Earth’s Eighth Continent, Zealandia
- red5tar 9y agoThis is quite the extraordinary discovery.
- exabrial 9y agoHere I thought it was the Island of Sealand...
- jpollock 9y agoNothing like discovering a new continental shelf when an underwater mining gold rush is about to start.
- goodcanadian 9y agoZealandia, while interesting in many ways, doesn't come close to meeting my definition of a continent. I wish they would stop calling it that.
- justinator 9y agoWell, plate tectonics is what, a 70 year old theory, at best? In the 1950's, it wasn't generally believed that continents moved. So, I think the definition of what is, and what is not a continent is generally... fluid at this point. See also: definition of a planet. How can you define what a planet is, if you keep discovering new ones, that don't quite fit the old definition? Pluto was "discovered" < 100 years ago. I remember being taught in school that there was only three kingdoms of life! Science! It changes. And that's a good thing.
- goodcanadian 9y agoSure, the definition of a continent is somewhat subjective and subject to change, but in my personal opinion, continents are large land masses. Zealandia fails on two counts: a) It is much too small. b) It is underwater. The fact that it was at one time above sea level is not particularly relevant in this discussion. Much of the Mojave desert used to be underwater. Does that mean it is currently a sea?
- smhost 9y ago> in my personal opinion, continents are large land masses The point is that your personal opinion is badly formed. Your definition of a continent is almost completely useless, which is obvious when you just look at a map. How large is "large"? Is Greenland its own continent? How do you classify Indonesia? The new definition at least makes sense. It updates the word's meaning to reflect a more scientifically literate understanding of continent formation.
- goodcanadian 9y agoThere is a new definition? Pushing Zealandia as a continent is mostly just the opinion of one group of researchers. Granted their opinion may be more valid than mine in this matter, I don't see that there is yet a general consensus that I'm fighting against. You are right, of course, that the term is poorly defined and not very useful. It is defined mostly by convention and somewhat inconsistently. I don't believe that Greenland is generally considered to be a continent by anyone nor any of the islands in Indonesia. In my mind, even Australia is borderline, but it is generally considered to be a continent. Anyway, my point was that Zealandia is so far outside the conventional definition of a continent that it is not useful to call it that. I realize not everyone will agree with me, and I would be less annoyed if people were to refer to it as "A submerged continent" rather than "THE eighth continent." All that said, I've spent far more words on the subject than it is worth; I really don't care as much as it probably appears. I'm really only taking issue with your assertion that my "personal opinion is badly formed."
- smhost 9y agoYeah, same, I don't really care either. What actually bothers me is the concept that your personal opinion is a sufficient justification for perpetuating the status quo, regardless of the rigor of reasoning behind the proposal for the redefinition. I like your second comment a lot better. I agree that calling it a submerged continent is much better than just calling it a continent.
- truxus 9y agoYour definition is yet undefined...
- forkLding 9y agoSo we now have 8 continents and 8 planets? Just making sure my scientific knowledge is up-to-date.
- umanwizard 9y agoIt's not clear to me that there is a rigorous definition of "continent", since different cultures enumerate them differently. For example, in the US, North America and South America are counted separately, whereas in many cultures "America" is one continent (and, a related issue is that many people in Latin America would consider the US and Canada and NOT Mexico as part of "North America"). Also in some cultures Europe and Asia are separate, and in some they are one continent.
- KGIII 9y agoWhen this first cropped up, I asked a few geologists and not even they know what a continent is. As near as I could tell, they preferred we stop using the term.
- alok-g 9y agoA power of two always helps! ;-) Anyone now for 8 days in a week? (Just kidding.)
- deathhand 9y agoAn 8 day week would actually alleviate the pressures of modern society. Give people another day of rest. We have had enough efficiency increases that the extra day of rest wouldn't 'break the efficiency bank' so to speak. This would probably be in lieu of a basic income. I'd much rather have more time than some baseline of economic necessities but that is IMHO.
- Girlang 9y agoExcept that the day of rest needs to be on a 7 day cycle, corresponding o the day following the 6 days of creation.
- vorg 9y ago8 continents? I guess that's Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia, Antarctica, and Zealandia. But I see: * 1 mega-continent, i.e. Eurasia, which has sub-continents Europe and India tacked on * 3 normal continents, i.e. Africa, North America, South America * 3 "dwarf" continents, i.e. Australia, Antarctica, Zealandia Not only are those 3 dwarf continents far smaller than the others, but one's covered with sand, another with ice, and the other with water.
- rhn_mk1 9y agoIf we're talking geology, then we might as well look at the tectonic plates [0][1]. - 14 or 15 major plates - 38 small plates Yet people will talk about 5-7 continents all the time. Because people will be confused no matter which ill-defined definition is used, I'm switching to the botanical one [2] with 9. It seems to at least have some practical value. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_plate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_plate [1] http://peterbird.name/publications/2003_PB2002/2003_PB2002.htm http://peterbird.name/publications/2003_PB2002/2003_PB2002.h... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Botanical_continents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continent#Botanical_continents
- seszett 9y agoThere are actually many more "dwarf" continents (the usual name is microcontinent). The Kerguelen plateau and Madagascar are the two other large ones, as far as I know. Australia and Antarctica are much larger, and in fact microcontinents are defined as being smaller than Australia. Zealandia is just in the news because it's the latest one to have been formally called that, possibly because it's the largest one (but not enough to be in a different category) and probably also because there's an English-speaking country on it. But it's actually not especially notable.
- nether 9y agoGranted, the definition of "continent" is not rigorous, and depending on where you grew up in the world, you might have learned there are 5-7 "continents."
- kilovoltaire 9y agoIt seems like tectonic plates are less arbitrarily defined than continents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tectonic_plates
- thx4allthestuff 9y agoAs I've grown older, I've come to find peace in letting go of semantics. Is it a dwarf planet, or is it a planet? I'm content simply pointing at the things that I recognize and saying, "There is that thing. Whatever the kids / scientists are calling it these days. I know a lot about that thing, but perhaps not it's name."
- Jach 9y agoOr as Feynman put it, Names Don't Constitute Knowledge: https://youtu.be/lFIYKmos3-s https://youtu.be/lFIYKmos3-s
- meowface 9y agoThis piece does a great job explaining the follies of trying to categorize things: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-mad...
- emptybits 9y agoYes. Timeless wisdom, variations from many cultures: * The map is not the territory. * The finger points at the moon. One must not mistake the finger for the moon. etc.
- bitwize 9y agoWow, it really is a lost continent, like Mu, or Hyrule from Wind Waker. As I keep saying, the world is a strange and pretty awesome place.
- jessriedel 9y agoSeveral commenters on semantics in this thread (e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473604 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473604 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473705 , https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473402 ) seem to be missing the key empirical fact: that the Earth's crust comes in two distinct types: oceanic crust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceanic_crust) and continental crust (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_crust). More specifically, the distribution of crust density (and other properties) is bimodal due to being caused by distinct formation processes. The presence/lack of ocean water on top of a location on Earth is a consequence, not cause, of the crust type. This is why the continents are clearly visible on the Earth's topographical map without water. Otherwise, you'd expect the visible shape of the continental land masses to be highly dependent on the exact waterline, which is mostly not the case. So sure, popular media is often framed around silly terminology changes, but this does not mean that calling Zealandia a continent fails to have real empirical meaning, or detract from the fact that Zealandia is unusual in being continental crust largely covered by water. Likewise, removing Pluto from the list of planets reflected the empirical fact that Pluto is qualitatively different than the other planets, and qualitatively similar to the other dwarf planets.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago> Zealandia is unusual in being continental crust largely covered by water Fits the name, by happy coincidence?
- mkl 9y agoI don't think it's a coincidence. "Zealandia" comes from "New Zealand", but was probably chosen in part because of the meaning - it's mostly covered with water. "New Zealand", in turn, comes from "Zeeland" because it's surrounded by water, and "Zeeland" (= Sea Land) is so-named because it's largely water.
- nabla9 9y agoZealandia is named after New Zealand, which was named after Zeeland province in Netherlands, which is province with lots of water and islands.
- ihm 9y agoAll the semantic arguments here would disappear if we all simply recognized the "set of continents" for what it really is: a set-valued sheaf on some parameter space (https://xorshammer.com/2016/07/24/the-cgp-grey-topos-of-continents/ https://xorshammer.com/2016/07/24/the-cgp-grey-topos-of-cont...).