[meteorite-list] interesting speculation Pacific "Basin" origin

[Darren Garrison]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 16:30:44 -0500, you wrote:

>>Just for fun, before we understood about plate tectonics
>>and thought that land only moved up and down, not back
>>and forth, it was widely believed that the Pacific Ocean was,
>>not an impact feature, but an "outpact" feature, the place
>>where the Moon spun off the Earth, leaving what would be
>>the largest "basin" in the Solar System (if it were true, that is).

>Hadn't heard this before but often considered the "break up" of Pangea etc., 
>a result of impacts.

I don't know just how long people still clung to that possibility (modern plate
tektonics theory coming around, IIRC, in 1969) but I remember reading books in
the late 70s-early-80s (I was born in 1972) that still had the "moon ripped out
of the Pacific" as a serious theory.