Geophysical global cooling

With the thickness of the crust, the "boiler plates", being estimated at ten to fifty miles, the downward pressure would be hundreds of thousands of pounds per square inch.

[2] In the early 1900s, Professor Eduard Suess used the theory to explain the 1908 Messina earthquake, being of the opinion that the Earth's crust was gradually shrinking everywhere.

He declared that as the process of sinking went on, the Calabrian and Sicilian highlands on either side of the Straits of Messina would be submerged, only the highest peaks remaining above the sea.

[2] Similarly, Professor Robert T. Hill explained at that time that "the rocks are being folded, fractured and otherwise broken or deformed by the great shrinking and settling of the earth's crust as a whole.

[2] The Pacific Ring of Fire had been noticed, as well as a second earthquake belt which went through:[clarification needed] A contracting Earth served as framework for Leopold Kober and Hans Stille who worked on geosyncline theory in the first half of the 20th century.