Sausages, ley lines, necking and Earth expansion.

Or, .. The Tectonics of Mantle Growth.
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

Fig.1. Rhegmatic fracture patterns of the mantle : schematic representation. Transform faults and spreading ridges define mantle extension and growth (not movement by convection).   (a) The Atlantic ( the cradle of thought on continental drift, Plate Tectonics, and Earth expansion); passive longitudinal spreading - Americas to the left, Europe and Africa to the right;  (b) Earlier forceful equatorial mantle breakthrough in the Pacific centred on the Indonesian bubble (= grey circle, which is on the front face of the sphere); older than the Atlantic and more complex.  (c) Longitudinal section A-A'  in (a), showing essentially vertical orientation of normal growth faults, usually described as "transform" faults ('T'); note that their vertical orientation implies their configuration as great circles, which debunks both Morgan's and McKenzie's concept of Euler poles, and by itself nails the lid on the coffin of Plate Tectonics; dashed line represents crust-mantle detachments adjusting to spin. (d)  Switching roles of transform faults ('T') and spreading ridges ('R') according to gravitational loading and spreading.  Grey =  plane of crust-mantle detachment (dashed line in (c)); 'G' = gravity.   Read this figure in the context of [1], [2], [3]

[Rhegmatic : roughly meaning global in scale, usually with systematic significance, of deep basement origin, and operative over an extensive span of geological time.  The term long predates exploration of the ocean floors, but is well illustrated by transform faults and spreading ridges.]

The above figure synoptically describes mantle tectonics in the simplest possible terms.  I'm posting it now for perspicaceous schoolies who might be reading this, as a  thought-op. to consider in conjunction with the above-linked posts 1, 2 and 3.  Hopefully those who can be bothered might have a go at lifting us out of the dark-aged, geological mess of Plate Tectonics that my generation and the previous one have landed us in, 'cos *they* won't do it.  (Can't do it; allegiance is compromised).

But first, a bit of history and a tribute in passing to the work of Jan Kutina in Europe and America, and Tim O'Driscoll in Australia, who recognised the control of continental-scale lineaments on the distribution of mineralisation.  They documented in no uncertain terms the empirical evidence for the commonly held view today (that wasn't one back then) that many ore deposits, particularly those of giant size, are in some way related to disturbances in the deep continental basement, and probably have a mantle control in some way.

Beginning well before the rhegmatic fracture patterns of the ocean floors (= exposed mantle in Fig.1) were becoming known, both gentlemen pursued and promoted the empirical association that was often observed to exist between crustal-scale lineaments and ore deposits.  The association implied gravity-driven, global-scale continental  extension that spoke for vertical tectonism and that was counter to the emerging paradigm of Plate Tectonics. It is a credit to both men that they pursued and were guided by the empirical field evidence that connected deformation in the crust to that of the mantle, and were not inveigled to follow the emerging fashion of Plate Tectonics.

The tribute is futher warranted on account of the subtext to this blog, which is the schism that exists between the fairy-floss, Hollywood, Christmas-jamboree-stocking, everyone-can-have-one, hypothesis-driven 'American Way' of doing geology -  and the harder European (and mostly rest of the world) way, where 'doing it' draws battle-lines with the empirical geological facts and respects and recognises the unknown (and often unknowable) as the no-man's land in between, not the up-for-grabs freebie territory for colon-isation according to the Principle of Multiple Working Stories of the American Way (make up any old hypothesis and see if, by spreading a few numbers around, you can get it to work). 

Tim's work in defining lineament patterns across Australia is well known.  I never properly knew him.  He left the company I worked for literally the day I joined as a newbie. He left in the morning, I arrived in the afternoon.   It would be a number of years later when I met him briefly in the late seventies in Adelaide airport.  Can't remember exactly when, but it was literally within a day or so of him having received from Western Mining acknowledgement and credit for his pivotal role in the use of structural lineaments in identifying Olympic Dam (Roxby Downs) as a drilling target, .. an acknowledgement that was apparently quite difficult to winkle out of them.  'Lineament' you see, was a naughty word for many.  Lineaments were the stuff of the supreme magic art of arm-waving linesmanship.  Combining as much geological information as possible, you could recognise them by closing one eye and squinting the subject information with the half-closed other one.  They were regarded by many as very much like ley lines, and dismissed as such - more as a joke, than something to be seriously regarded.

The geological significance of such 'ley lines' lay in the control that the deformation of the basement was thought to exert on the crust, particularly in relation to the occurrence of ore deposits which in many cases appeared, somewhat equivocally depending on the degree of one's squinted belief in the principle, to be located along them.  Clusters of deposits occurred where two lines (or lineaments) intersected. 

Their interest to me lay in the supporting confirmation they gave to another principle, one that had virtually no precedent and that I had myself observed, and which likewise attracted the view that I too was something of a quirky nutcase - that ore deposits were commonly located in the necks of large-scale boudinage structures, and those that were, were most likely formed by the conditions of the neck.   'Ley lines', or lineaments, were simply the necklines of crustal-scale boudinage structures.

The particular connection with Tim's work lay in the Kambalda nickel deposit, some 50km south of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, close to where I had been assigned to work.  Tim had pointed out that the orebodies lay at the intersection of certain lineament structures, and attributed the 'embayments' hosting the orebodies to the effects of shearing of the host rocks, and therefore insisted that the mineralisation was structurally controlled. The consensus of the day however (promoted by the best researches of the CSIRO) was that these 'embayments' were in fact scour channels formed by lava flows during the Archaean, and that the ores were crystal settling deposits on the basal contact - a view that is still generally held, very much mistakenly (in my opinion) to this day.

As a young fella and unaware of this altercation (which difference in exploration terms was highly significant) I had already observed the spatial coincidence that existed between the Kambalda nickel deposits and two of the best-connected large-scale boudinage structures one could hope to find anywhere.  The venue for such an epiphany (as these insights often are to the partially prepared) was the office where I was being interviewed for my first job. I had just completed the write-up for my degree (Glasgow), and had travelled to London for the interview. 

[ |||  Flashback ]  My degree work had been an exercise in structural chronology in multiply deformed quartzo-feldspathic gneisses.  Riddled with amphibolite dykes and with some calc-silicate layers these rocks formed the most excellent examples of variation in boudinage structure one is likely to find anywhere.

Essential to the work though not central to it, was recognising the importance of boudinage structure in deciphering structural chronology ; simply put, the older structures tended to be preserved in the more competent boudins, the younger structures were developed in the more ductile host. Some problem lay in scale of approach, but once that was resolved then what before seemed an indecipherable 'pother-of-bother', fitted well .. ("..as tight as a finger in a bum" - as I would later learn from my colleagues in Oz was the better way to describe it.) 

A peripheral offshoot of the work was recognising the importance of *large-scale* boudinage structure - important for the implications that followed for understanding the larger chronological framework of Archaean - Proterozoic sequences in Western Scotland generally: megaboudin structures tended to preserve the older terrains, whilst 'younger' terrains (but which were part of the same deformation event) were described by the less competent host rocks  - obvious today to the point of hardly needing mention, but not so obvious back then when there were virtually no descriptions of large-scale boudinage in the literature. 

With such paucity in the literature I turned to whatever geologial maps I could find, to try to document their further existence.  The strike extent of basement rocks along the western seaboard of Scotland was insufficient to address the question, and so I turned to whatever regional maps I could find.  The department at the time had few maps of other countries at suitable scales, .. some early editions of maps of Canada and South Africa at scales I don't remember, but also some of Australia at 1:250,000, which did suggest (if not confirm), their existence.  Maps of those days were not as accurate or as good as those of today. [Ends Flashback ||| ]

Fig.2.  the northern end of my very nice thesis area, Durness, NW Scotland, overlooking Ceannabeinne Beach.


Back to London.  This was late 1970, coming up to Christmas.  As a student I was entirely unaware of the literature on ore deposits. In those days economic geology was not part of the curriculum, but something you picked up on the job by doing. Had it been, then undoubtedly I would have been suitably inducted into the consensus view, and aware of what to think and what not to. I would almost certainly *not* have formed the "blindingly_obvious_view" that the ore deposits were no more than simply the result of metamorphic reconstitution according to the conditions existing in the neck. With others, I would have had the view that all deformation was a fog to see through, and that the supreme effort of intellect was to be directed towards dismissing the fog and imagining (through it) how these ore deposits could possibly come about - if what was staring me in the face (namely the boudinage-ore association) was ignored.


Returning to the interview it was clear to me from the field maps posted on the wall that here was not only "the two best-connected large-scale boudinage structures of all time",  but a graphic illustration of the importance of necks in locating mineralisation.  Knowing nothing of ore deposits other than that they could be somehow a product of mobility of ore 'constituents' (if we disregarded coal and sundry alluvials), but knowing much of the variation in boudinage structure, it seemed obvious to me that some sorts of deposits *should* be located in necks; necks after all were simply 'stress sinks' towards which any mobile (ore) fluids or constituents would be drawn.


Thus was set my view that in this case at least, the mineralisation was related to the boudinage.  It would only be later on arrival in Australia when relating this view to indulgent colleaugues, that I would realise how off-the-wall they considered it (and me) to be, in (of course) the most colourful of language.  Perhaps the most extreme negativity was to be expressed by a senior CSIRO researcher of nickel ore bodies a couple of years later, that it was "an insult to the profession that such an idea should be even remotely considered, when so much is known about how nickel ores occur" - which was quite an impediment for a young lad entering the industry, .. thinking he had a hand on the Holy Grail only to spend a career discovering it to be more like a poison chalice (for reasons entirely other than the geology too.)   :-))    (Ah, .. Life!!)

As I came to know Tim's work in relation to lineaments and Kambalda it was clear both accounts were saying much the same thing, only where Tim was demonstrating the deep basement connection, I was providing a much more local expression of structural signature, .. one that was not only more empirically centred in the mapping, but also provided the field evidence for the key to the organising principle whereby the ores actually were constituted.  This, however, did not influence the good-natured joshing of colleagues when it came to mention of  'sausages and necking', for by 1971 descriptions of boudinage in the literature considered it to be little more than a small-scale passing curiosity.  Obviously it was nonsense to suggest, as I was, that this curio was the instrument whereby the Moon really could be converted to cheese.  I sincerely believe much of the language and expletives of Ozspeak must have been coined in response to my 'fanciful excursions' into cheese, ..sausages and necking (when swilled of course with copious amounts of grog as one does, when faced with cheese and sausages, and the possibility of a bit of ...  ).

Shortly afterwards, I became aware of Broken Hill, one of the world's largest deposits (Pb-Zn-Ag) in the same terms, and my conviction of the importance of boudinage as a control on the location of ore deposits was set. I assembled a number of other different examples illustrating the point and in 1976 sent it to Economic Geology.  A rejection was duly received in August, 1977. 

In doing the write-up I was conscious that the absence of large-scale boudinage from the literature could be an impediment, but really couldn't see why, if the maxim about small-scale structures reflecting the larger-scale picture had any value - and so, in order to make a point for their existence I had included a range of boudinage structures at scales that varied from centimetres to several tens of kilometres.  However structural geologists and ore deposit specialists who reviewed the manuscript were sceptical, both of the boudinage structures and of the association, and declared themselves to be ".. astonished at the way in which [I] rather superficially eliminated years of work on the origin of copper zinc and nickel deposits" - the deposits in question being Mount Isa (copper /lead-zinc), Broken Hill (lead-zinc-silver), and Kambalda (nickel), amongst others.  The overall tone was similar to that previously expressed (above) by the CSIRO specialist on nickel deposits.  Clearly there was something more than good-natured joshing afoot, and I considered myself very lucky this to be the only response by those colleagues closest to me, .. langwidge notwithstanding.

.................

Following rejection, a colleague suggested I send the manuscript to Jan Kutina in America for consideration for publication in the Journal Global Tectonics and Metallogeny, which I did.  Jan in turn recognised the similarity with ideas current in the then Soviet Union and agreed publication.  That paper published in 1982 formed the basis for later, fuller descriptions of boudinage for the invidual deposits, and a final round-up resubmitted as a note to Economic geology in 1998 was passed with  substantially more positive comments than before.  Evidently incubation and circulation in the interim helped somewhat.

I was priviledged to meet Jan some time later when in transit to a short job in America, in about 1983 /1984.  I will always remember him for his kindness, and his absolutely indefatigable energy and determination to rise above the tribulations arising first from the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia,
and second from the paranoid "Reds under Beds" syndrome that still posessed America at the time.


No doubt Jan's preparedness to publish stemmed partly from a small book I was unaware of, but which would have common currency in Eastern European literature at the time.  It would be another year before it was drawn to my attention by the office librarian who was perusing the still-in-progress newly digitised catalogue of the libary of the Geological Society of America : G.V. Tokhtuev (1967), Boudinage structures and their role in the localisation of ore mineralisation, with examples from the Ukranian Shield and other regions, Kiev, Naukova-Dumka, 215pp (in Russian).  The title for my original manuscript to Economic Geology was, "Boudinage, a structural control on the location and formation of metalliferous ore deposits in orogenic belts".  However, since reviewers had objected to the existence of large-scale boudinage structures, and since I had come to the view anyway that the operative process was one of making necks rather than boudins (a fine point), I changed the first word of the paper to 'necking'.  Probably not for the better.  (Acknowledging precedents, .. after all.)


Thus, thanks to Jan Kutina and the Russian connection was documented the link between outcrop-to meso-scale boudinage structure to the earlier-recognised work on deep mantle lineaments of both Tim and Jan (and others still earlier of Hobbs, 1904; Hills, 1947; Sonder, 1956; Hupe, 1958, Carey 1962 - amongst others, and especially Menard, 1964).  Especially Menard, because Bill Menard was hands-on with the emergent theory of Plate Tectonics and had the authority to step out from the continents to the ocean floors and detail the extent of mantle lineaments.  One at least has its catastrophic surficial expression in the San Francisco Fault and leaves no doubt of the control that mantle lineaments have on the continental crust.  With the recognition of mantle lineaments (Fig.1) the ridicule of "squinty-eyed, arm-waving linesmanship" in relation to mineralisation suffered by Kutina and O'Driscoll prior to the advent of Plate Tectonics was debunked.  If some of the examples appeared ambiguous, 'linesmanship' itself was vindicated.


[ (Conspiracy theory?)]   Despite the declared scepticism from Economic Geology it seems to me in retrospect quite possible that the manuscript circulated for peer review in 1976 could have seeded the ideas of boudinage as a model for understanding the metamorphic core complexes of the Basin-and-Range of North America ( Coney, P.J., 1980, Cordilleran metamorphic core complexes, an overview, in Crittenden et al., (eds), Cordilleran Metamorphic Core Complexes, Memoir of the Geological Society of America, v.153, pp.7-34)

In the then absence of any precedent for descriptions of regional-scale boudinage it seemed to me only natural that anyone proposing such a model for the Basin-and-Range would take care to document, as I had done, the progressive increase in scale of observed boudinage structure that led to such a conclusion, particularly when this conclusion formed a central theme of the publication.  However there was none.  The view of those authors promoting it appeared to be based on a common 10cm-scale illustration of boudinage taken from 'the garden' so to speak, a curiosity that matched the less-than-a-page illustrations of the day.  It seemed only the idea of large-scale boudinage was described, the support from the illustration seemed slim to the point of unjustified.  From the descriptions it seemed that the necks were being described as boudins and vice versa, .. and in a later compendium (1987, Geological Society special publication 28, "Continental Extension Tectonics," the same authors did not mention boudinage at all as a model for Basin-and-Range core complexes.   More recently however, parallel with the increasing interest in lithospheric-scale boudinage, the authors do appear to have resurrected boudinage as a model for the Basin-and-Range.  Of course, *had* my original manuscript seeded the ideas of megaboudinage, it could never be referenced (since it was rejected), so we are left with the question, is this another example of the same model arising in different places at the same time - carried on the back of a 10cm analogue on one hand, and scales ranging to kilometres on the other?   Who can tell?  ... such paper trails often end in dead ends.

------------

"There seems to be nothing in the arts or in nature which can be compared in mechanical origin to boudinages, which makes them the more interesting and the more worthy of study." (Quirke, T. 1923. Boudinage, an unusual structural phenomenon. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, v.34, pp 659-650)

So Mr Quirke has a point.  Can it really take a century for something so obvious, to find its proper status in the geological lexicon?   Apparently so.  Even by 1990 a textbook in structural geology (Price and Cosgrove, 'Analysis of Geological Structures', 502pps) devoting 30 pages to boudinage, would mention neither the large-scale mportance of boudinage in continental extension, nor its importance in locating mineralisation - even as its introductory sentence states:-

"Relatively little attention has been given to geological structures that form when layered sequences, or rocks with a fabric, are compressed at a high angle to, and/or extended in, the plane of the layering or fabric. The reason for this is not clear, for 'extension' structures are much more common in nature than one would infer from the paucity of literature concerning them. In this chapter two of the main structures which result from such deformation, namely boudins and pinch-and-swell structures, are discussed."

There is little use (to my mind) discussing them if no mention is made of the value for doing so.   Otherwise they are simply justifying the issue they complain about.  Why would one pay attention to a structure that had no contextual value?  

However, thus is brought to our attention the structure that has the potential to address the two most important questions in geology in a century:- 1. By what means is the Earth getting bigger (which has its further extrapolation in the physics of mass creation) and 2. where do we look for ore deposits to sustain our civilisation.  Not only are neither of these quesions (with few exceptions) being addressed through the structure that has the greatest potential to answer them , but they are regarded by the mainstream ensconced as it is in the security of consensus, as questions not worth addressing.

One has to wonder, what sort of a scientific culture are we living in (when it comes to geology)? 

(Sausages, ..ley lines, .. necking, .. and Plate Tectonics.  Reck'n I'll have to see my Aussie mates for some fitting lingo to deal with this one, .. bein' about civilisation an' all. )


[ See also - "Debunking Plate Tectonics", at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]

Folding, Plate Tectonics and the impossible dream.

( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

Whatever the truth or otherwise of Earth expansion, we do have to take a more catholic view of folding to include geological reality, rather than just how we think it (folding) happens, and add it to our collection of geological facts.  When we do, we are led to futher consider the negatives of Plate Tectonics, and the positives of Earth expansion.

Our current concepts of folding are sourced in the work of almost two centuries (maybe more) in what could be seen in outcrop and further afield in mapping.  In those earlier days it seemed natural to regard extension and compression as coupled behaviours of Earth forces, with extension forming sedimentary basins, and compression later heaving them into folds.  The fact that we could actually walk about on those folds and map them - and see their metamorphic characteristics, was proof of massive upheaval of the land, regurgitated as it were from the maw of the nether regions, by the hand of Earth forces (according to some) and (since it was two centuries ago) by the hand of God according to others.  "Arising" according to Preston Cloud. 

Mountains - high stands of the Earth's crust - occurred in  linear 'chains' or 'belts', testifying to the movement of huge slabs of the Earth's crust.  It would be a century later (and a change easily spanning half a century), that the stamp of veracity would be put on this view, first by the tentative proposal of continental drift, then by the more aggressively bullish assertion of Plate Tectonics, in which plates were free to ("independently") roam the world, searching out other independent plates and challenging them in a contest of 'crumple-and crush, heave-and-toss' of their margins according to the dictates of their convection-cell minders, who if unpredictable, were at least dedicated to the task of messing the crust to an extent that no edge should escape their attention.  Nor were there any tracts of old ocean floor allowed to escape this edgy battleground, to lie heaving and groaning, ..expiring in a corner of the globe somewhere while the gladiatorial contestants went on their arbitrary way seeking conquests in other parts.  Well, not conquests, because there were never any winners.  It was all very democratic if edgy stuff, with both contestants (and for some reason there were only ever two) being able to claim supremacy.

With today's endorsement of Plate Tectonics it is apparently considered no longer necessary to supplement field observations with field work, .. indeed, no longer necessary for any work at all.  The theory (for those who believe it) is fair representation of the facts - and in fact has come to be regarded as more factual than the facts.  ("Why should I believe the evidence of my own eyes, when so many people, far more knowledgeable than me, tell me I'm wrong?"). 

However the evidence of mine tells me that this 'arising' of mountains (at the edges of independently moving plates) is just wrong, because the chains or belts of mountainously crumpled edges of plates are (when we look at their global distribution) circumglobal, and therefore cannot be formed by any independently moving 'plates'.  If the Earth must be regarded in terms of plates then I would argue from their integrated oceanic and crustal reality (rather than simply an oceanic one), there are really only two, the northern and southern hemispheres, and that "independence" has to be seen in this context.  I would certainly argue for the old Pangean crustal ones (hemispheres) becoming completely independent of each other if the oceanisation of the Earth's surface continues.  Further, today's hemispheres are built impressively more all-of-a-piece of the ocean floors than they are of continents, but even here there are clear indications from hemispherical offsets in the Atlantic and the Indonesian region of the Pacific, that hemispherical indepence is in progress here too as the oceans further recede, old mantle is exhumed, and the stress-memory of the planet dissipates in a continuing hemispherical splitting.

When this hemispherical, two-plate crustal configuration is reconstructed to its once smaller size, the folds that fringe them are seen to be configured around the Mesozoic (Pangaean) equator, and have axes that lie parallel to it.   This cannot be regarded as a result of any 'independent movement of plates' according to plate tectonics, but there are clear implications in a context of Earth expansion : "What terrestrial forces could make the earth's crust crumple all around its equatorial zone? ..and align the folds parallel to it?"   In Plate Tectonics and except for a conspiratorial cooperation of so-called independence numerous plates (or rather convection cells) to a degree that defies all credibility, there are none.

But without such conspiracy there are two that I can think of.  The first is a return to the work of Frank B. Taylor of a century ago (Fig.3 here)  who recognised this folding to be due a migration of the crust towards the equator, due to the Earth's spin (skater's skirt analogy; the faster she spins, the more elevated the result).  The second force is the gravitational correction that would occur when the following creep of the mantle catches up with this 'elevation', and make the crust collapse off the rising diapir.  Relaxation follows breakthrough.  This 'sloughing off' is expressed in the arcuate loops which define the belt, which are folded at their outer perimeters and which others recognise as gravitational collapse.   

What proportion of folding is due to build-up, or collapse would be no easy matter to determine, but the preponderance of loopy shapes that define the segregate elements of the circumglobal belt as a whole, suggest the emphasis is on collapse, when the question of mantle rise and extrusion in relation to the equatorial oblateness of the planet must therefore be addressed :  "What made the mantle extrude around the equator, .. with the focus of extrusion being in the Indonesian region?  And further (the sixty-four thousand dollar question) made the planet bigger by the extents of the mantle?

Well, .. what about a big stony meteorite, at 3am once on a Thursday, .. a real biggie, .. just like that, .. Whop!!  thumping its way to the Earth's core and making its presence felt on the other side (no mantle, you see), in what is now the Indonesian region, but has ballooned to form the Pacific?

Fig.1.  Geophysical and geological evidence for meteorite impact?  (a) Gravity map of Africa; white arrow points to the deep circular structure taking up the whole width of the continent (image courtesy of P.H. Dana, National Image and Mapping Agency).  (b) Geological map showing the 'hole' filled now with Mesozoic sediments (blue; image courtesy of Unesco)  Right click / new window for a bigger figure.)  (See also Keith Wilson's work on early impacts shaping the continents with a consequence for Earth expansion at http://www.eearthk.com/Articles09.html )


Sheer speculation of course, but solves the question of "extra mass" in a trice, if such a question must arise - and it usually does when Earth expansion is raised.  It also solves the question of extra energy, if this is the way to go, .. but raises another regarding if that energy could be made into mass - if only we knew how. 

Well, of course, we do know how, .. it's just the doing it is a problem.  In fact, if there is one thing that terrorises the world at large, it is exactly this 'how', .. or one half of it at any rate as described by Mr Einstein's famous reversible equation  E = MC^2, .. converting mass into energy.  Going the other way, of converting energy into mass, could well just be a matter of scaling up the experiment, and needing more energy and a bigger laboratory.  Maybe in the Earth we're looking at one, .. maybe the meteorite doesn't need to be quite so big as to equate to the whole mantle, .. maybe just imparting the energy of a punch big enough would do most of the job by itself, of accentuating the impact through to the other side of the Earth, of bursting out as the Pacific and thereby splitting the Earth in two and having its hemispheres swivel apart.  Maybe, once a certain threshhold of energy is crossed, the metorite could act as a nucleus for the rest of the energy to fix on, .. be a 'seed' as it were that enlarged to the whole mantle as the energy it imparted was converted to mass and taken up by the growth of the seed.  Maybe in the face of all that energy the seed crossed a divide from the material world to the quantum one and kind of 'gastrulated', .. turned inside out and got bigger as it used up the energy of its own impact, .. a kind of mass creation by 'cell' division?  -  Just like you and me, .. but at the quantum atomic level of course, rather than the biological cell, ..  (or is there really that much of a difference when reduced to its elementals?  I don't know.  I expect there is a big difference between Gaia's plumbing, and 'Mother's', but I take a lot of things on trust from those who say they do (know).

Except Plate Tectonics.  I think that's rubbish.

And am beginning to wonder too about much of what I thought I knew about folding. Just about everybody you read (including those I once trusted) talks about it in the context of it building mountains - when mountains are clearly not built, but are the results of erosion, even so-called 'fold mountains'  ..  ..    And even if the crust did creep and heap up towards the equator on account of Earth spin, then it will find a lot of water already there for the same reason, only it would have got there much sooner and faster.  So I reckon there wouldn't be anything above it to call a beach, much less a mountain. 

The timing of such an event would of course be called into question though, just on account of life on the planet if nothing else.  All life would have been obliterated by major impacts at any time during the Phanerozoic, but it seems feasible (to me) that by the Mesozoic and in the breakthrough of the ocean floors we could be witnessing a milestone in the protracted response of the planet to a much earlier such impact event (or events).  But with all that time in between impact and adjustment to the present day, and crustal mobility that goes with it, we would have little (if any) hope of documenting it. 

But that fold belt needs to be accounted for - the one going right round the planet that predated the collapse of the Pangaean equatorial zone when the emerging mantle split the Earth into northern and southern hemispheres and spun them apart and formed the Pacific.  That circumglobal aspect of folding is totally ignored in Plate Tectonics need to maintain independent movement of a collection of plates doing the impossible - getting their act together to create a circumglobal mountain belt. Even by its own measure of crashing and bashing, grinding and crunching, heaving and tossing, it scuppers itself - tires itself out.


(Plate Tectonics - the impossible (wet) dream.)



[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]

Christchurch's December Earthquakes, 2011

Making New Zealand's third island?
( Blog for Website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

Fig.1.  New Zealand drifts eastwards over the deflection in the subduction zone (red line) around the Chatham Rise.  Axis of the rise is shown by the yellow line and the white dots constructed in Google Earth.  White line around New Zealand = 'continental' shelf.  USGS arrow showing rate of subduction (88mm) is a furphy, .. movement is the other way ("overriding").  (Right click / new window all figures for bigger images.)


It was noted in an earlier post how, seismically,  the South Island went very quiet during 2010 before the Christchurch Earthquakes started up in February this year (following September the previous year).  The New Zealand earthquake seismic warning centre said those earthquakes were related to a new fault that hadn't been noticed before, .. cutting across the island.  Since the fault lies right on the crest of the Chatham Rise (which seems to be important in swinging the subduction zone from the leading side of crustal drift on the North Island, to the trailing side on the South Island), I suggested we might be seeing a change to include this fault as a new and important part of New Zealand structure.  Makes me wonder if this fault might be implicated in the break-up of the South Island - making New Zealand in three, rather than just two, and eventually have an expression like that separating the present two islands.   Is this maybe the way the separation of North Island from South Island started millions of years ago (possibly as it too once crossed the Chatham rise)?

Of course, such an event would probably take longer to be noticeable than the lifetime of the human species, much less yours and mine, .. and just because the fault has been seismically inactive till now doesn't mean to say it hasn't been sleeping for a while.  Well, if it was, then it seems to be wakening up again.  That volcanic complex forming the peninsula just to the south of Christchurch could be related to the same thing

Fig.2.  Current crop of earthquakes, past 7 days or so

It's like Japan in a way, situated on the crest of the Marianas Ridge.   Both appear to be 'sticking' on ocean-floor 'highs', which are stopping the natural eastwards crustal drift, .. then letting go with quakes when the stress is released.

The liquifaction of the soils is interesting.  Being right on the coastal plain I guess it's a fairly common expression of earthquakes in suchlike situations, but I wonder if, with time, we might expect an increase in the salt content of the groundwater, a change in the vegetation, ground subsidence and ponds of saltier water to appear that will get bigger, with the margins eventually separating to become lakes then shorelines then coastlines.  Of course, no-one will be around to see it, .. probably not even the human species unless evolution finds a way for it to outlive the erosion of the mountainous hinterland, so as a prediction it's pretty useless, but the rumbling on that fault for the last year - and the silence over the South Island for the preceding year (2010) suggests a 'salty separation' might well happen in the future.

The old pattern does seem to be resuming, but it is still not back to normal by a long way.  Maybe we are witnessing the start of severance of the South Island to make New Zealand into three, instead of two?

Fig.3.  Earthquakes for the last six years, showing the silence of 2010 prior to the onset of the Christchurch earthquakes.



[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]

Growth along the spreading ridges

... Means they move up - and keep moving up.
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

Fig.1.  First order consideration.  The smoking gun, .. is the length difference between the African coast, i.e., where the spreading ridge used to be, and where it is now, which is about times two, and which  reflects the enlargement of the Earth since the ocean floors broke through.


Now, .. this is not where (my own) realisation of Earth expansion began, and very like doesn't occur to most regurgitators of Plate Tectonics, who probably never give it as much as a passing thought, but if I were to take a best shortcut along the path of empirical observation from years ago to the present time (and the theme of this blog), then the increasing length of the spreading ridges as the ocean floors grow would probably be it, .. because it can only mean one thing, .. that the ocean floors grow *UP*.   (Shortcut that is, .. it's not the only cut.)   In other words, the continents don't move away from the ridges - the ridges move away from the continents, which means 1.  that there is no subduction, and 2. that the separation of the continents is an artifact of this upwards movement as the spreading ridges grow.  Continuing upwards growth means that the surface of the Earth moves out from the centre, .. actively at the spreading ridges (by upwards growth) and by curvature correction for the rest of the Earth, which is continually gravitaitonally correcting its curvature to keep up with ridge growth.  The continents are therefore to be seen as the surface expression of a smaller Earth, and lack the plethora of faults that make up the growth of the ocean floors.  Correction is therefore most seismically destructive within the continents, particularly at the juncture with the newly developed ocean floors, which is the locus of most differential movement.  The reason the ocean floors don't show the same seismicity as the continents is exactly the corollary of the reason why the continental crust does, .. namely that the ocean floors are riddled with the plethora of faults that facilitated the growth of the ocean floors, .. faults that the continental crust doesn't have.  Just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so we can regard faults as 'weak links', .. and a chain full of weak links has virtually no strength whatsoever.  In-situ correction of the ocean floors is then little more than local subsidence.  The seismicity would hardly noticed, and would be either recorded as insignificant - or not recordable. It is, more or less, seismically silent.  The continental crust however, lacking this plethora of faults, is a comparatively deeply rooted, strong chain.

The difference in a dynamical sense between continents that move away from ridges, and ridges that move away from the continents (expressed as upwards movement at the ridges and curvature correction elsewhere) means that the 'rainbow' map of crustal ages does not truly represent the growth stages of the ocean floors, because it does not properly represent the along-ridge growth.  Ridge insertion is taking place all at the same time, so that some sectors of the ridge are older than others. The simple linear congruence of 'coloured ages' with the spreading ridges is just that :- simple .. or, rather, simplistic.  And simplistic to the extent of being misleading.

The devil of discrimination however, is in the detail.  Average magnetic profiles reflecting field reversals are 'noisy', but in that noise resides the signal of along-ridge spreading that is being missed.   These days, almost certainly there would be no encouragement to revisit the raw data to check this, since it is to the detriment of the ruling paradigm, and even if one could, the noise factor would anyway render it inconclusive.  But it doesn't matter.  The point is apparent at a glance (Fig.1).  If the continents once fitted together, then no matter how plate 'movement' is conceived to accommodate spreading along the ridges, the ridges as they appear today have virtually doubled in length compared to where they used to be when the continents first parted.  They haven't just moved away, .. they've doubled in length.
This face value evidence is supported by the total integrated picture of the ocean floors as a whole, .. transform faults as normal faults,  .. their aggregate configuration relative to continental rupture, .. the difference in length of continental margins compared to the length of spreading ridges today, .. the stepped distal offsets of transform faults, (.. etc.) and of course everything that spells the failure of plate tectonics in the face of young ocean floors and the fallacy of a Panthalassa.

Plate Tectonics simply ignores this difference in lenth of the spreading ridges compared to the continental margins.  Or more accurately, plate tectonicists simply ignore it.  Why? Because to be part of the club you have to publish. If you don't publish you probably don't even have a job. 

There's no mileage (and no future) in publishing controversial stuff.  That's the bed that science of the consensus sort makes for itself, .. the pay-off that returns to science when it takes scientists on to the payroll.  Consensus is a human affair, and not in the interest of science.  Those who think it is, and that scientists ("The Team") are doing a great job, should take this into account.



[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]

Sea-level rise and climate change

( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

Fig.1.  Location of the Carteret Islands, Papua New Guinea (arrowed).


A recent programme on the (Australian) ABC Radio National Law Report (22nd November, 2011) highlights the plight of the people living in the Carteret Islands of the Pacific in regard to rising sea-levels.  However, attributing the problem to rising sea-levels unnecessarily politicises what, surely, has been a long-standing problem for people living on atolls in the Pacific, namely that it is not the sea-level that is rising, but the atolls that are sinking, .. although to the people of the islands the result is the same - and serious.  The difference lies in the politicisation.

Charles Darwin was the first (as far as we know) to work out how atolls formed, and related them to the demise of volcanoes.  However, it is quite likely that Darwin (as a competent researcher) would have asked the indigenous peoples how they saw their atoll in the context of others similar, and probably would have got some rational explanation (though possibly not in the exact same terms as those of today).  So who knows, .. the origins of understanding may lie with the people themselves.  Certainly the word does.

Darwin's explanation is still accepted as correct, for the probable and good reason that he was an astute observer and logical thinker, and perhaps suitably attentive to local opinion as well. Volcanoes that emerge from the sea form the foundation for coral growth around their fringes.  With the death of the volcano and the cooling and subsidence of its foundation and the erosion of its top, the coral growth around the vent is left as a rim.  As the volcano finally sinks beneath the waves the coral continues to grow upwards.  The height of the atoll above sea-level is eventually little more than the height of the tallest tree + tidal variance.  That is, it is not sea-level that is rising, but the foundation of the volcano that is sinking, and it is remarkable that this should be noticeable within living memory.

Fig.2.  Carteret Islands.  The flat top represents the infilled rim of a volcano, whose foundation is sinking, causing sea-level to rise.  Rising sea-level may be also attributable to the failure of coral growth to keep up with subsidence.  Note the similar flat-topped islands in the distance.


Melting glaciers contributing to a rise in sea level is not quite the same thing as the ocean floors sinking due to global tectonics, though mediated through the mantra of  'climate change' and consequent rising sea-levels (and the Report of Law) we are being encouraged to think that they are, when sanctioned by the media and the ever-present need of the science community for funding.  In this case though, a little common sense appears to be called for, coupled with what we already learned in school.  To represent sinking atolls (as Charles Darwin called them) or similar edifices as 'guyots' (as Harry Hess called them ) as due to rising sea-level on account of climate change, is a serious misrepresentation the situation, and a good example of uninformed and inelegant adversarial legalism.

Atolls belong to the ocean floor largely in the Western Pacific, which subsides as the spreading ridges recede.  Consequently sea-level on the atoll rises.  However the string of larger islands from Indonesia through Papua New Guinea to New Zealand and thence to Antarctica, represents the 'keel' of Pangaean oblateness of continental crust, and as such is slow to correct to the reducing curvature of the Earth as it gets bigger.  This glacially slow behaviour of the continents compared to the immediacy of change in sea-level means that continents have a tendency to remain above the plimsol line, so that sea-level recedes as the Earth gets bigger, leaving raised beaches (Fig.3).

Fig.3.  Raised beaches of the Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinean mainland, showing falling sea-level.  (See also..)


So it's not the sea that's moving up and down, it's differential movement of the land, .. depending whether it is anchored to ocean floor or continental crust, and is simply an expression of the different rates of collapse as the Earth's surface moves out from the centre;  the continents move more slowly than the oceanic crust (but precipitously sudden in geological terms from time to time), and sea-level change is immediate.

So with respect to sea-level, away from the spreading ridges the ocean floors appear to be sinking (because they are no longer being uplifted as the ridges recede), and continental margins appear to be rising in some places, but sinking in others (as different domains subside at different rates).

Just thought I'd mention it (about the sea-level rising /falling) since rising seems to be getting such a bad rap these days on account of it being another whipping boy in the fear-bag of politics.  We need to cast a weather eye to the interests wherever politics is involved, ..  and take the political story with a pinch of salt.

It has me beat though what the Law Report is trying to make out of this one.  Are they trying to blame "the emitters" (or emitting nations) for sinking atolls (/guyots), when sinking is what atolls and guyots have always done?  Seems so, but couching it in terms of sea-level rise.  But just take a cruise on Google Earth through the Western Pacific and see the volcanic roots that support those atolls, .. flat-topped all, the results of erosion of the volcanoes that continued to build in the wake of the detachment of the Americas from Asia, .. sinking.  It's been going on for the last two hundred and fifty million years.  Any legals wishing to stake a claim are out of time by any measure, and certainly risk the ire of the man on the bench, since it has nothing to do with emissions anyway other than those naturally attributable to volcanoes.  (Though to be sure we could enquire the health of the coral around the atolls; if it's not building up at the same rate as the ocean floor is sinking, there could be trouble hiding in the reasons for lack of growth.)

But coral growth isn't mentioned in the complaint at all, much less the lack of it.

And as far as Bangladesh (the other area that gets a mention in the Report as being prone to flooding) is concerned, as we see every year it is far more at risk of flooding from the landward side, than it is from the oceanward side.  And when all that muck settles, the ground will be just a little bit higher (with every monsoon).  Which is why much of Bangladesh exists in the first place.

[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-

http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]