"If we take a terrestrial globe and examine it carefully we must be struck by the fact that almost all the large land forms taper to the south, while the great waters narrow towards the north. In other words, the continents are V-shaped and the oceans A-shaped. Look at Africa, Arabia, India, Australasia, North America and South America among the lands, and at the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Indian Oceans among the seas. What does this mean?

"The triangular forms of land and water set geographers thinking, and they came to the conclusion that an arrangement so general could not be the result of accident, but must be governed by some law. Much attention has been given to the matter in recent years, and men of science believe that the theory that best fits facts is that the earth is becoming tetrahedral in shape. [...]

"As a matter of fact, the Tetrahedral Theory is the only one that explains the three fundamental facts of physical geography - the opposite positions of the continents and seas, the triangular shapes of lands and seas, and the excess of water in the Southern Hemisphere with an elevated continent at the South Pole. [...]

"The question may be asked why the earth in cooling should tend to become a tetrahedron, and an interesting answer is given by men of science. When the earth was first formed it was spherical, and a sphere is the shape which encloses more space for a given surface than any other figure. As the earth began to cool, the surface solidified, and a crust was formed, the core being still hot. But this core continues to lose heat, and as it does so it must necessarily contract and occupy less space. The hardened shell of the earth, however, is unable to contract: being already solidified, it must continue to maintain the same surface area, and the way it accommodates itself to the shrinking interior is to change its shape to one occupying less space for the same surface area.

"Now, while the sphere is the figure occupying the greatest space, for a given surface, the tetrahedron occupies the least space for an equal surface, and therefore, mathematically, if the process described goes on, the earth should one day become a tetrahedron."

-- "What the World May Come To," My Magazine, May 1918.