Ice age

An ice age is a period of long-term reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Within a long-term ice age, individual pulses of cold climate are termed "glacial periods" (or alternatively "glacials" or "glaciations" or colloquially as "ice age"), and intermittent warm periods are called "interglacials". Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, we are in an interglacial period—the Holocene—of the ice age that began 2.6 million years ago at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sheets still exist.

Origin of ice age theory

In 1742 Pierre Martel (1706–1767), an engineer and geographer living in Geneva, visited the valley of Chamonix in the Alps of Savoy. Two years later he published an account of his journey. He reported that the inhabitants of that valley attributed the dispersal of erratic boulders to the glaciers, saying that they had once extended much farther. Later similar explanations were reported from other regions of the Alps. In 1815 the carpenter and chamois hunter Jean-Pierre Perraudin (1767–1858) explained erratic boulders in the Val de Bagnes in the Swiss canton of Valais as being due to glaciers previously extending further. An unknown woodcutter from Meiringen in the Bernese Oberland advocated a similar idea in a discussion with the Swiss-German geologist Jean de Charpentier (1786–1855) in 1834. Comparable explanations are also known from the Val de Ferret in the Valais and the Seeland in western Switzerland and in Goethe's scientific work. Such explanations could also be found in other parts of the world. When the Bavarian naturalist Ernst von Bibra (1806–1878) visited the Chilean Andes in 1849–1850, the natives attributed fossil moraines to the former action of glaciers.

Ice age (disambiguation)

An ice age is a geologic period of major glaciation.

Ice Age may also refer to:

Science

Music

Film

2012: Ice Age

2012: Ice Age is a 2011 disaster film produced by the independent film group The Asylum. It is the third and final film in The Asylum's 2012 trilogy, which are mockbusters of the Roland Emmerich film 2012.

Plot

Bill Hart and his son, Nelson drive his daughter Julia to the airport. Bill contacts Dr. Divya who informs Bill a team of scientists he works with has left Iceland. Divya is able to tell Bill an entire range of volcanoes has erupted and a 200-mile long ice shelf is breaking apart before he is killed by the volcanic eruptions. While Bill is distracted, Julia heads into the airport. At his office, Bill is advised to leave Maine and head to the West as soon as he can to avoid the destruction of the glacier. Bill and Nelson head to the Senator’s office and pick up his wife Teri. The glacier travels at high speeds, races towards the East Coast of North America, bringing heavy snow and giant hail. The Air Force attempts to break apart the glacier with aerial attacks, but fails.

Continental drift

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other, thus appearing to "drift" across the ocean bed. The speculation that continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, but his theory was rejected by some for lack of a mechanism (though this was supplied later by Arthur Holmes) and others because of prior theoretical commitments. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed by the theory of plate tectonics, which explains how the continents move.

In 1858 Antonio Snider-Pellegrini created two maps demonstrating how the American and African continents might have once fit together.

History

Early history

Abraham Ortelius (Ortelius 1596), Theodor Christoph Lilienthal (1756),Alexander von Humboldt (1801 and 1845),Antonio Snider-Pellegrini (Snider-Pellegrini 1858), and others had noted earlier that the shapes of continents on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean (most notably, Africa and South America) seem to fit together. W. J. Kious described Ortelius' thoughts in this way:

Continental Drift (novel)

Continental Drift is a 1985 novel by Russell Banks. Set in the early 1980s, it follows two plots, through which Banks explores the relationship between apparently distant people drawn together in the world under globalization, which Banks compares to the geologic phenomena of continental drift. The first plot features Bob DuBois, a working class New Englander who heads to Florida in the hopes of striking it rich; the second plot traces the journey of Vanise Dorsinville from Haiti to Florida. It is an avowedly political work, whose stated aim is to "destroy the world as it is." Despite its scope, it is according to critic Michiko Kakutani "somehow, acutely personal."

After publishing Continental Drift, Banks won the Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

References

Ice Age: Continental Drift

Ice Age: Continental Drift is a 2012 American 3D computer-animated comedy adventure film directed by Steve Martino and Michael Thurmeier. It was written by Jason Fuchs and Michael Berg, and features the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Nicki Minaj, Drake, with Jennifer Lopez, and Queen Latifah.

It is the fourth installment of the Ice Age series, produced by Blue Sky Studios and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It is the first sequel in the series not directed by Carlos Saldanha, and the second Ice Age installment that utilises Digital 3D. It was released in the US on July 13, 2012, three years after its predecessor Dawn of the Dinosaurs. This was the first Ice Age film to be presented in the 2.39:1 aspect ratio.

Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, the film became a box office success, with a worldwide gross of over $877 million, marking it the highest grossing animated film of 2012.

A fifth film, titled Ice Age: Collision Course, is scheduled for release on July 22, 2016.