if a person had the resources and time, could divers make the contients into islands by chipping away at them?

Answer 1

i think by the time you had finished, the part where you started would have reconnected, through landslides, plants and compression.

ADD: In reply to bh8153:

your statements about the canals cutting africa etc into islands are not technicallycorrect. they did not cut down all the way to the sea bed, they only cut away what they needed. the two blocks of land are still connected, you just can see it because its under water

Answer 2

That's a very odd question-yet I think there is some rationalism behind it. I know for a fact that when coral is damaged or killed, the coasts are in danger and erode off into the oceans but I don't think that's possible since land is like mountains in the ocean, the ocean floor rises up out of the sea creating land so it's not like they're floating bars of soap that can be carved and shaped. There is continent drift though, Japan for example moves .001 millimeters towards China every year--scary huh?

Answer 3

It has already happened. When the Suez Canal was dug around 1880, it technically made a huge island of Africa, which it hadn't been before. Similarly, when the Panama Canal was dug around 1910, it made North and South America into two islands instead of one.

Answer 4

No. Continents don't just sit there. They're always moving and growing in some places and shrinking in others. The natural rate of change would vastly overwhelm a bunch of divers with icepicks.

Answer 5

Certainly, yet I doubt the resources exist or the time--even if the whole human species became obsessed with this goal.

Answer 6

A better question would be, "If you put a million monkeys at a million typewriters for infinity would one of them eventually write 'War and Peace'?"