Earth Expansion, Pacific Breakthrough and Subduction - Director's cut

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

1.  Curvature correction of the crust on an enlarging substrate

1. Brittle Pangean crust tends to retain curvature and correct slowly to the increasing radius of the Earth.

2.  The Distribution of Earthquakes shows that they belong to the continental side of the subduction zone rather than the oceanic side, favouring overriding of the crust over the mantle rather than subduction of the mantle under the crust.  The concept in Plate Tectonics of earthquakes defining a subducting 'slab' is based on faster travel times which is probably more a function of the foliated fabric of the contact zone related to overriding and collapse of the Pangaean crust (Fig.1B; seismic waves travel faster along the fabric of the rock than across it), than it is of 'coldness' of the oceanic lithosphere (cold slabbiness extends to hundreds of kilometres depth?  Who are they kidding?)

3.  Energy release  balance is the wrong way.  The paltry number and shallow depth of earthquakes at the spreading ridges in no way compares to the profusion, greater intensity and much greater depth of earthquakes at the subduction zones.  Moreover, the ocean floors are virtually seismically dead, i.e., in a system that is supposed to be continuously linked from the spreading ridges to the subduction zones, and implicitly loses 'half-a-world's-worth' of energy getting from the ridge to the subduction zone, there are virtually no earthquakes in the stretch linking the two zones, .. but on arrival at the subduction zone the dissipation of energy is supposed to crank up to maximum to overcome the tipping point and collapse into the mantle (.. because the continental side which is floating on the mantle, is pushing it down.) (Rather like sailing ships push the water down to the sea-floor and circulate the ocean, we are to imagine..)

4.  That is, the earthquakes at the spreading ridge and those at the Pacific margin are not paired the way that Plate Tectonics says (as opposite margins of a convecting mantle cell).  They have nothing directly to do with each other.  They are both related to a third factor which has the dual effect of causing spreading at the ridges, and the continentla crust to be everywhere collapsing, particularly (for some reason) around the Pacific margin (extending to the Mediterranean hinge zone).  This reasonable third factor, when we rationalise the various geological dynamic elements, is concluded to be the Earth getting bigger - by the extents of the ocean floors. (Because it looks like a duck.)

Fig.1.  So-called 'subduction' as seen by Earth Expansion - is overriding.  (A) The old Pangaean crust (continental lithosphere) pushes out over the mantle (oceanic lithosphere) as it adjusts to the curvature of the enlarging Earth (which is why there is the intensity of Earthquakes around the Pacific - above link).  (B), detail at (A). Curvature flattens with gravitational correction.  No oceanic material is returned to the mantle.  The dynamics are overriding from the continental side, not subduction from the oceanic side.  The continental lithosphere 'floats' on the asthenosphere (dashed lines) according to Plate Tectonics - or is more deeply rooted (Earth expansion). Small crosses in ''B' represent earthquakes. The foliated zone is the interface between continental and oceanic lithosphere and being foliated would give faster seismic travel times (interpreted in plate tectonics as a colder, more brittle 'slab', but interpreted here as a zone of intense shearing, partial melting, and crust - mantle mixing.
Which is what we get.

Fig. 2.  Diagrammatic section across the Pangaean equatorial zone of collapse.  Faulting or folding responses are according to ductility of rock type, rates of gravitational correction, crustal depth, and pull-or-push connectedness through the system.  The break in the middle represents the split duplicating the Roof of the World (Tibet, left) as the Mongolian Highlands (right). The steep lines at A and B are the earthquake ("subduction") zones that separate continental lithosphere (central block) from oceanic lithosphere ( inset 'B' in Fig.1).  (No subduction from the oceanic side, just 'leaning' and collapse from the continental side; keystone collapse in the middle, overthrusting towards the periphery.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plate_tectonics_map.gif

Fig.3.   Schematic location for Fig.2 across the zone of uplift in Fig.2.  General principle of crustal relaxation applies to the whole Pangaean equatorial zone; much disrupted east of the Indonesian (proto-Pacific) bubble due to the growth of the Pacific. Blue teeth mark upthrown block (click on the wikipedia link for a bigger figure, to see how all the blue teeth (elevated zone) are broken up by the Indonesian Bubble and its marginal extents. (Image courtesy of NASA.)

[Addendum 2011-10-05 : Compare the above profile with Benioff's original across what later came to be called the 'subduction' zone.  The figure is from Menard, 1986, quoting the original, 1949 : -

(From Menard, 1986, The Ocean of Truth, Fig.15b.)

"These great faults now appear to be tabular zones of earthquakes called "Benioff zones" ( .... ) Benioff proposed that these zones develop because the boundary between a high-standing continent and an ocean basin is unstable.  It should adjust by surface flow toward the basin and deep conterflow towards the continent.  Consequently, the great boundary fault of the Benioff zone is tilted as observed.  Despite the enormous area of the fault plane, Benioff did not visualise a large displacement.  The lithosphere in the vicinity of the zone of deformation could support stresses for decades even at great depth." - Menard, 1986, p.125.]

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2.  Pacific Breakthrough - the Indonesian Bubble

Fig.4.  Earth hemispheres partitioned about the split in the equatorial circumglobal zone of elevation ('mountain belt').  The Indonesian mantle bubble (blue) marks the proto-Pacific breakout through the Pangaean equatorial zone.  The 'tail' marks the Western Pacific margin, formed as the roof of the bubble swivels open northwards on flat structures.  North and South America are both dragged northwards by the dilating northern hemisphere to about the top end of the tail before South America detaches and swivels south, .. while North America continued on its north / easterly way, ..both swivellings creating the gap-fill of the Pacific.  The analogue of drag to the south (as South America detaches from North America) defines the structure from Melanesia to New Zealand to Antarctica.  West of the bubble and coming east through the Western Mediterranean, the Caspian and Black Seas, the split duplicates the Tibetan Plateau as the Mongolian Highlands (Takla Makan desert = Tarim Basin = the split). To the east the American Cordilleras scissor open about the Caribbean pivot.  The dashed line round the back is the Mediterranean Hinge. 

Fig.5.  The pre-Atlantic circum-global mountain belt loop on a flat map.  Like a watch band around a ball ('ball' = Earth in Fig.4; just the watch band is shown here) the pre-Pacific circumglobal mountain belt encircles the Earth, with the watch face (circular zone) representing the breakout of the proto-Pacific mantle bubble (blue; the watch buckle 'round the back' is the hinge of hemispherical dilation).

Fig.5b The 'watch face' in Fig.5.   Listric fault swivelling open, as it might appear in the Indonesian bubble (should be domed to reflect the changing curvature of Pangaea), but it shows the likely style of opening of the bubble.  A series of them makes up the Western Pacific (upper mantle is exposed in the gaps  (purple in Fig.6).

Fig.6.  Morphotectonics of the Western Pacific margin.   The width of '1' is duplicated and triplicated by splitting and listric detachment along the axis of the Pangaean equator (Fig.4, left of the blue tail) leading to hemispherical partitioning /dilation /swivelling (Fig.2 here).  The Indonesian Bubble (circle at A) collapses on breakthrough of the mantle.  Arrowed line represents the trace of torsional decoupling and duplication of the crustal 'lid' central to the equatorial (circumglobal) mountain belt (1, 2, 3; duplications = 2 to 2a; 3 to 3a) to form the Western Pacific margin.  Collapse of the lid following mantle breakout results in marginal out-thrusting and leaning of the crustal lithosphere over the oceanic lithosphere, pushing it down (Fig.2).  Dismembered orange circle 'A' continues north as the eastern edge of the Japan Islands.  Swivelling listric faults (torsional hemispherical adjustment related to Earth rotation [Fig.5b] exposes upper mantle as 'back-arc basins' (purple) and intraformational dislocations in the crust (yellow).  Lower mantle emerges along the periphery of the solid orange arc of 'A' and its dashed northerly extent through the Marianas (grey; = fossil proto-Pacific  ridge) to become the current Indian - Pacific spreading ridge.  The northern orange circle represents the duplication (/triplication) of the southern one, along multiple dislocations like Fig.5b, strung out by the triplication 2 > 2a > 3a.

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Arcuate crustal shapes preserve the greater Pangaean crustal curvature.  The Indonesian circle is the focus of early uplift and spreading, then later collapse; the Russian Peninsular circle is its torsional flat (listric) duplication (movement vector = arrowed line between circles A-A'.  The split peripheral to 'A' combines with the  top-down  equatorial split (Tarim Basin) to form the spreading ridge of the Indian - Pacific Oceans (Fig.7)

(A bit repetitive, but I hope you get the gist.)

Fig.7a  Doppelgangers of the  Pangaean equator - 1. in the continental crust; 2. in the mantle.  The certain 'convergent parallelism' links these two as structurally and dynamically paired, but diverging (an expression of expansion; see a similar divergence in the Atlantic margins here) east of the Mediterranean hinge.   Crustal and mantle elevations are naturally vertically-paired, parallel expressions of crustal pull-apart; as the crust is pulled apart the mantle rises to occupy the gap along the axis of pull-apart.  The same is (sort off, with some qualification) true of 'push-apart'.

Fig.7b.  Doppelgangers #2.  Showing the segmented great circle dilation of the Indian - Southern - Pacific Oceans (the fuzzy sector of the red line is 'round the back', in the Pacific).  Note the spoon-shaped break in the red line just south of India (defining the cusp between the Himalyan arc and the Indonesian Bubble) is back *and* front of the Earth; means the dynamics of the crossfaults at the spreading ridges back and front are operating to keep that red-line break roughly on a great circle. 

Fig.7c.  Doppelgangers #3.  Just highlighting the divergence of the once vertically-paired, equivalent structures. In your minds eye, insert the Indonesian bubble from Fig.7b  to complete the symmetry.

Fig.9 Retrofitting the red line (Indian - Pacific spreading ridge) in Fig.7b, c about its major breaks shows the extent of growth of the ridge from the margin of the Indonesian Bubble.

... All of which highlights another aspect that Plate Tectonics does not take into account : the extent to which the crust skates on the mantle - hence forget all about those GPS measurements indicating 'no expansion'.  I reckon they're probably quietly zeroing them anyway, if they suspect they might mean something, .. which I don't.  How long for example would we have to be wait before confirming vertical measurements show that the Earth is expanding, .. rather than, say, just a block of crust tilting?  The crust is full of blocks tilting - and not necessarily just this week either.  Which is probably why they'll say they feel justified zeroing the vertical component.  And what if it goes into reverse and starts to sink, .. as bits of crust do all the time over geological time.  How long should we wait say, before writing to Nature and telling them unequivocally that the Earth is getting bigger? Stepped erosion profiles indicate a respectable degree of periodicity about vertical change over millions of years, .. so what is this 'measuring' over a few days weeks and months - even years - supposed to prove?

And they want to go looking for evidence of Plate Tectonics on Mars (at enormous expense)? .. when they can't even suss it out on this planet?  (Shame on them, B'Jesus!). If they wanted to do something useful they could look for for evidence of Earth expansion though, .. beginning with the Great Big Valles Marineris, and all those excellent examples of related gravitational collapse, ..which *didn't* exactly happen last week, or last century for that matter (so again, .. what's this 'measuring' all about?).  Where do they think all that collapsing's going anyhow?  Has the planet got hollow legs or what?  If they can concoct such rubbish as Plate Tectonics on this planet, there's no knowing what they could concoct on others. It's not as if there are different opinions that others could use to assess a certain commonsense likelihood.  With something like 'measured cm/year Plate Tectonics' you just don't know what's in their collective mind .. -  ..other than the need for some funding.

Which is easier if everybody agrees on a story.

(Maybe Rupert could be approached for a quid. He's pretty approachable when it comes to entertainment.  .. And Myth Bonking.

("Paid Three?"  ...  "Yeth myth".)

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