xkcd #3132: Coastline Similarity
Title text:
Hey! A bunch of the early Cretaceous fossils on each coast seem to have been plagiarized, too!
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3132/
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
352 points (98.6% liked)
xkcd
13241 readers
620 users here now
A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It would not. The mass of the Earth doesn't change, and angular momentum is conserved.
I was curious since mass would seem lopsided. I guess not enough. Thanks for answering.
The crust of the earth is relatively thinner than the skin of an apple from my understanding. So I wouldn't expect anything happening on the crust to have a huge impact on that kind of behavior. Granted, even small changes could be noticable.
That's a great point. When it comes to the Earth's mass, the surface is barely a factor.
My layman's understanding is that the water mostly makes up for it, and that more wobble comes from the moon than any inconsistency in land-mass distribution