Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

southern tips like pulled taffy. Both continents have young, high mountainsin the West and less high, older mountains in the East. Between these aremighty river systems that have deposited vast alluvial plains. Both continentsthereby repeat the anatomy of the entire earth, which consists of a northernhemisphere dominated by land and a south ern dominated by ocean.The North American plate rests atop a magma sea. What is underthe magma? In the October 1997 issue of Scientific American, geophysicistsacknowledged that in the center of our earth there exists a spinning crystallinestructure the size of the moon. Immense pressure on the inner core hassolidified the iron and caused it to take on a hexagonal crystal form that hasinherent directional/physical properties. Some unknown force apparentlykeeps the hexagonal iron crystals all in close alignment.This gargantuan single crystal is more than 2,400 kilometers across.The internal stress caused by the earth’s rotation is strongest alongthe north-south axis. Thus, the hexagonal iron that constitutes theinner core could crystallize in parallel with the spin axis as do micaflakes that form in rocks squeezed by tectonic forces. The tumultuouschurning of the outer core’s liquid iron creates the magnetic field,but the inner solid core is needed for proper stability. 2Glaciated land and lakes of the Canadian shield26