Solved cryptogram
Draw a dot for every earthquake and you have drawn the boundaries of the plates themselves.
Earth Science Facts, sourced to U.S. Geological Survey.
Solve it yourself
This fact is a cryptogram here: 75 letters over 21 different ones, graded hard.
Or go to the puzzle’s own page first.
What it means
The map was the argument. When seismometer networks spread worldwide in the middle of the twentieth century, the events plotted out as narrow lines across the ocean floors and around the Pacific rim rather than as a scatter. Those lines are where plates meet, and they made the case for plate tectonics before anyone could measure the plates moving. Interiors of plates do shake, but rarely, which is why the pattern is so clear.
The claim comes from U.S. Geological Survey.
- SourceU.S. Geological Survey
- CollectionEarth Science Facts
- Difficultyhard
- Length75 letters, 21 of them different
Nearby in the collection
The facts either side of this one.
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