( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )
1. There's no problem here. If you take the Earth as a spheroid, i.e., with a bulge round the middle (due to Earth spin and the mantle breaking out - equatorially - because the Earth is getting bigger), and with a big bubble pushing through in advance of this global breakout in the Indonesian region), .. the bubble is essentially driving the 'getting bigger', and the rest of the equatorial split is going along for the ride. OK? (Breakout is full of water and other gases and basaltic mantle.)
2. Now, (because of rotational instability - Moon capture? .. or?) the crust begins to slip off the mantle, dislocating the equatorial zone in the crust (above) from the equatorial zone in the mantle (below), Right? (Figs.7-9 here)
3. The big blow-up (bubble and lateral splits) in the crust collapses while the big blow up in the mantle continues to blow up (making the oceans). And the contact between the two is just a heck of a mess. .. Right? (Don't worry about the Atlantic, that's late(er) and easily retrofitted, in fact for the purpose of the point we can forget about it, .. but the earlier dislocation is maybe not so obvious, hence labouring the point here.)
4. No matter. (You either see it or you don't, .. like the Atlantic fit once upon a time. Children see it easily now, but previously it was highly contentious among very well informed adults with considered grey matter for brains; wonderful what a bit of being told, and training can do..) The esssential point here is the crux of the difference, which is subduction if you're a Platie, or curvature-correction giving overriding if you're an expander - meaning it's all a matter of which way the movement is.
5. So, ..draw a section
Fig.1 Plan (a) and Section (b) through the Earth's Pangaean equatorial zone with the mantle bubble. (a) Mantle bubble breaking through the equatorial split; arrows denote outwards movement of the roof of the Indonesian bubble as it collapses out over the foreland (continental to the north south and west; oceanic to the east) (b) Section AB across the Western Pacific margin; vertical collapse, .. sideways push as the bubble leans outwards. Call it overriding from the bubble side, or subduction from the mantle side. (Big G = gravity.)
The difference between subduction and overriding is in the real sense of movement. Earthquakes tell us that apart from the contact zone, movement is all on the continental side, and that the oceanic side is fixed (seismically silent).
The structure of the oceanic ridges and the difference in length between them now and when they started, tells us that the ridges are moving up, i.e., the ocean floors are not moving towards the continents (as in Plate Tectonics and subduction), but are in fact moving the other way - towards the ridges (as in Earth expansion).
Well, that's it. It's that simple. And if the ocean floors are moving towards the ridges, then they are not moving towards the subduction zone and regardless of what other crustal adjustments occur, the Earth must be getting bigger. However the crustal adjustments to accommodate it are quite staggeringly impressive compared to Plate Tectonics' model of convection in soup, rumpling tablecloths (lunatic stuff for the institutionalised).
And they do it with numbers, and all by sailing the high seas, .. with no continents needed?
Gee Whizz!
Well, they were mostly all young guys at the time (and since), .. trying to make a splash in a new field in which anything could get published. But it's time to move on. (But who were their mentors? And why? And isn't it time for, .. you know, .. a retrospective?
[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/
When I read your statement about rumpling tablecloths, I find an urge to reply.
ReplyDeleteIff plate tectonics was real,and the force real. The crust of the earth, and lithosphere is about as thick as a paper on a table. Compared to the magma beneath, and the magmas density is several times that of the lithosphere and the crust. Even if the magma is hot, which it is, and it will most certainly melt some lithosphere. There just is no way on earth, that subduction could push the lithosphere down there ... it's an unsound idea. The lithosphere would yield (crumble) and the crust would break. Which they do ... both
.. which is why they say now it's not being pushed down ("ridge-push"), but *pulled* down ("slab-pull"). It's supposedly just falling under its own weight. It's being pushed from the ridge (by gravity), then when it meets a continent there's a 'tipping point', and it decides enough of this pushing, I'll go into pulling mode. Don't ask anybody how it manages to do this without opening up any one of those zillions of old ridge fractures covering the ocean floors all the way back to the spreading ridges. That's a trade secret warranting "more research". :-)
ReplyDeleteI'm on the fence so not trying to make a case either way, but had a question about your rebuttal of the NASA data. It seems to me that you're saying that their data may be correct, but not their conclusion. Their data only accounts for the last 20 years, so is inconclusive, because expansion may happen in sudden jumps in geologic time. Is that a fair characterization of your rebuttal? My question: sea floor spreading is relatively continuous, adding several centimeters of new sea floor every year. Over 20 years, without any significant subduction, that would have to add up to at least a foot or two of radial expansion, right? If that's the case, then for Earth expansion to be correct, the NASA data itself, and not just their conclusion from it, would need to be wrong. Or are there other factors to be considered?
ReplyDeleteI don't know enough about GPS to comment on detail, but it seems to me Plate Tectonics argues from a quantitative position exactly as you have outlined, considering the Earth like a homogeneous ball. That "spreading per year" is an artifact of arithmetic; width of ocean floor (in thousands of km) divided by time to make it (in millions of years) = 'cm / year'. And the rainbow 'map-of-ages' will 'confirm' it. So what they're saying is that the separation over hundreds of millions of years is such and such, and if you do the division, then 'today' it must have moved xxmm. Which is silly. Movements happen in big jumps. Buildings /cities fall down. But not every year, or even every ten years. Or twenty. It's 'sticky'. If Nasa was around for a few thousand it might have something to say about it. In using satellite data as a test of the raibow map, it's like using apples to say something about oranges, just because both grow on trees. (You might as well use caterpillars.) Receiving stations are on the continents. It's the ocean floors are moving (/growing). If you're going to interpret anything from moving receiving stations it has to be specific in relation to place and time, not a blanket generalisation. I don't think I've ever seen anything saying that "such-and-such spreading at such-and-such oceanic ridge (according to GPS measurements) was matched by such-and-such destruction at whatsit subduction zone (according to GPS measurement). And I don't think you ever will. All you'll get is saying something like, scientists can use GPS systems to measure plate movements- confirming that plates move at x cm a year. I mean, how would they know what's a true signal, and what's due to just slipping about (because the Earth is rotating; crustal lag)? How could they ever? And that's the point of the way they go about it. Everything's predicated on supposition that follows itself from theory. And much of it unfalsifiable simply because it is sourced in theory, not the fact. Even if gpa supports supports Plate Tectonics (or expansion), it really means nothing. The story is told in the geology. GPS is for ballistics, not so you can get to your favourite restaurant with your eyes closed. Ask the families of Pakistan about the errors in GPS when it comes to drones. And that's just in between pressing the button and (not) hitting its target. Maybe they average their calculations there over twenty years too, .. to make them more accurate than just over a year, .. or a month, .. or a day
ReplyDelete(See what I mean? ..Arithmetic. You have to be very careful (and very specific) when applying to geology (if not drones). Looks great in the cinema though. When I use mine, I always check it against an easily accessible location, in case I need to know if its reliable. (Now why would it not be? Don't know, ..but sometimes it isn't. And that's just for a bit where I'm mapping. How you'd go about it for the whole world I don't know. (Teams of scientists, I guess.)
The point about Earth expansion is that the crustal movement as determined by geology (even including much of gps) is symmetrical with rotation (that we can see). Plate Tectonics is symmetrical with (hypothetical) convection - that we can't; so it's an unknown.
P.S. However, .. Having said that, you could look at this, which Google has just picked up:-
ReplyDeletehttp://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/view/4951
It's not just because I don't understand a word that I have an innate "philosophical unsatisfaction" about this way of going about it (and I think most people will be in the same boat). To me it's like saying we can determine the surface of the sea to within a fraction of a millimeter, when there's a five meter swell (and a tsunami on top of it) (on a Tuesday and a Friday respectively).
I can't comment on the numbers other than to say they are in Earth expansion's favour this time. I think the central argument *has* to be a geological one, for the simple reason that people *have* to understand it. If expansion's right then it has to show up in all ways (numbers included : note the article has a full text PDF link down the bottom) and it has to be glaringly obvious too. That's why I go with the ocean floors, .. not moving (sideways) .. but growing (upways). The geological argument is one I understand, and one I hope to be able to persuade others with. Numbers provide the support, ..confirmation even (within certain provisos dictated by geological time), but the evidence (/proof) is in the geology - once we properly order the facts so they speak for themselves.
(Remember I said Expansion was alive and well in China? ...
http://platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/2011/02/doing-hokey-cokey-on-great-wall-of.html
Well, ..keep an eye on the numbers argument if you like, but the real answer is in the geology (and the history and the sociology). We are now entering the world of ballistics, you see, .. and "the American way" of doing science (around some technological machinery that can be massaged to give us 'an answer') is catching on. We are now entering the next phase of the space race, .. to find out *exactly* what Earth expansion means in terms of physics. In geology we have to work out exactly what it means in terms of material creation and material growth.
The world is no longer a simple place beneath a bowl-like firmament of stars that you fall off, when you walk too far from the village.