Don Findlay's expanding Earth Blog

Summary of Global Tectonics (Earth expansion)

2012-02-01T15:40:00.000-08:00

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

Summary to be read in conjunction with [ 1 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ]
---------

Retrofitting global mantle dilations describes a belt of present-day, circumglobal elevation that originated as sea-floor sediments in Mesozoic times, that was part of an Earth that was once more oblate than it is now, and that remains despite gravitational equilibration, essentially flat.

Forceful mantle breakthrough axial to the zone and centred in the Indonesian region split the zone, partitioning the Earth into structurally distinct northern and southern hemispheres and resulting in breakthrough of the mantle dilating the crust to form what are now the world's oceans.

Eastwards of the central breakout, the northern and southern margins of the split swivelled open on crust-mantle detachments about a pivot in the Caribbean region. Massive rapid dilation formed the oceanic seaboards of North and South America.

West of the breakthrough, dilation was less and was floored in the continental crust, with incipient mantle breakthrough forming the Mediterranean, Caspian and Black Seas.

Central to breakout, the Indonesian 'bubble' swivelled northeastwards in a series of mantle-floored scissored detachments as far as the Russian Peninsula to form the 'back-arc basins' of the Western Pacific as they appear today. Advance effects of the same tectonics extend as far as the Urals.

Forceful equatorial dilation of Earth hemispheres was followed by slower, passive spreading of the Atlantic on an Earth that was larger by the amount of earlier Pacific breathrough and more spherical. Swivel-opening of the Atlantic on a roughly longitudinal line was pivoted at the North Pole and terminated around Africa in the Rodriguez Spreading Ridge. Westward drift of the Atlantic 'superplate' on asthenospheric detachments caused the Americas to override the Eastern Pacific as far as the spreading ridge.

Sequential breakouts of the mantle focussed on crust-mantle detachments resulted in an increase in size and surface area of the planet. A corresponding withdrawal of the seas from the continents was accompanied by the slower gravitational collapse of the crust around the equatorial zone, which is now some forty degrees north of its original position. Breakout represents a shift from forceful mantle extrusion (Pacific) to more passive spreading (Atlantic) as the Earth increased in size.

The cause of breakout which amounts to the extent of the present day ocean floors and a commensurate mantle volume, is not known, but the movements patterns of the crust in relation to mantle growth indicate disturbance of the Earth's equilibrium in the celestial sphere.

Global deformation occurred largely by swivelling dislocations of the crust on crust-mantle detachments, and upwards growth of the mantle.

Summary of the summary

Something happened to disturb rotational equilibrium of the Earth.
Which is associated with mantle growth.
Mantle grows, breaking through the crust, .. making the Earth bigger.
Crust swivells to accommodate breakthrough.
Most swivelling occurred earliest (least latest).
Forceful equatorial breakthrough was followed by passive longitutinal spreading.
Rotational equilibrium of the Earth appears to be re-stabilising.
Growth may be too.

[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-

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

Sausages, ley lines, necking and Earth expansion.

2012-01-29T19:18:00.000-08:00

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.

2011-12-31T16:16:00.000-08:00

( 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

2011-12-25T14:13:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-08T17:21:00.000-08:00

... 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

2011-11-23T17:09:00.000-08:00

( 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/ ]

Along-Ridge Spreading and Extension.

2011-11-21T00:47:00.000-08:00

.. or Plate Tectonics versus Earth expansion..
( blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

The essential argument for Earth expansion is not difficult to understand. It goes like this: -
The Earth is round and rotates.
The Earth is differentiated into a core, mantle and a crust.
The mantle has broken through the crust, making the Earth bigger.

See? That's basically it : what you see is what you get. It's that simple. Now let's tease it out a bit to see why there's the problem with Plate Tectonics.

There are two major breakthroughs of the Earth's crust, and they are linked - 1. the Pacific and its extensions into the Southern and Indian Oceans and up into the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, .. and 2. the Atlantic itself. The Mediterranean Sea is the hinge of latitudinal rupture of the older, Pangaean Earth that dilated to form the Pacific, and is itself broken through by the younger (longitudinal) Atlantic. The age relationship of the two is apparent in the Mediterranean /Azores region of the Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean at the Rodriguez Ridge.

Continental retrofits, i.e., being able to fit the continental margins back together again at the spreading ridge, are important because they show that the Earth's crust has been distended in the region of breakthrough by the extent of the ocean floor. In other words, the Earth's surface area has increased; or take the ocean floors out of the picture and see that the surface area was once less in that region.

As regards crustal separation, Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion agree on the significance of this retrofitting of continents back to the spreading ridges, but interpret specific instances differently, .. because Plate Tectonics chooses to overlook some key points,

The first point is that the ridges today are substantially longer than their original extents of continental breakthrough. Ignoring this difference in length, Plate Tectonics sees transform faults as basically like tramlines of ductile flow as the continents move away from the spreading ridges, and therefore sees the increase in surface area as simply an expression of movement of the continents away from the ridges. Plate Tectonics further rationalises that this 'sideways' movement is necessarily compensated by shortening elsewhere (in so-called "subduction zones").   Plate Tectonics needs this compensation because when we look at the extents of the ocean floors (= 2/3rds of the Earth's surface) it would mean (if there were no compensation) that the Earth had increased dramatically in size to the extents of the ocean floors. So ignoring this difference in length of the spreading ridges (and assuming compensation) Plate Tectonicists are is able to say, "See, the Earth remains a constant size - like a good Earth should, because if it was behaving the way it appears (getting bigger), then we wouldn't have a clue what's going on, and that's not possible - because we're clever, .. see? .. and we can't think of any way it could (get bigger)."

Earth expansion objects to this deliberate oversight, saying that transform faults are not the surface expression of lines of ductile flow, but are in fact normal faults that describe the way that the ridges get bigger, both across the way and along the way, and that this difference in length means (when their relation to transform faults is taken into account) that the ridges have moved up - and keep moving up, which in turn means that sideways 'movement' is apparent only, an artifact of this moving up of the ridges. In other words, in real terms the continents have not moved away from the ridges at all, .. it is the ridges that have moved away from the continents, obviating all need for any movement of the ocean floors towards subduction zones; and therefore the Earth's crust has got bigger by the full extents of the ocean floors. Moreover and in any case, even if the continents were moving away from the ridge (which they are not) by the time new oceanic crust formed at the ridges arrived at the subduction zone, the spreading ridge would have got longer, and therefore the Earth would have got bigger by this along-ridge amount anyway.

Also, Earth expansion sees the behaviour at subduction zones, .. not as worked from the oceanic side by cycling return of the mantle, but from the continental side as the continental crust necessarily curvature-corrects and pushes out over the mantle (Fig.4 here), and cites as evidence of this correction the distribution of earthquakes which are markedly preponderent on the continental side of the zone - and markedly absent from the oceanic side (Fig.1, same link).  Earth expansion says these earthquakes are an expression of the subsidence of the continental crust which necessarily must relax its older, tighter curvature to the increasing size of the Earth. As well (since relaxation implies crust-mantle dislocation to some extent), relaxation is helped by the Earth's spin.

It is important to note here that if Plate Tectonics recognised along-ridge extension in the first place, then it would have no grounds for any compensatory 'subduction' at all, and would have to interpret the continental margin of subduction as an expression of active continental (and not oceanic) dynamics. Which would mean Earth expansion.

So Plate Tectonicists just ignore the component of 'Along-Ridge Spreading /Extension' (the difference in length of the spreading ridges between where they are now, and where they used to be when they broke through the crust initially). (The difference of course is proportional to age; the older the breakthrough, the greater the length difference.) Which is really very bad of them, .. but it is also linked to another, even bigger one that they ignore - which is that the first-order deformation of the Earth is its oblate shape reflecting planetary spin. The implication of this of course is that if the first-order deformation of the planet is related to rotation, then the smaller-scale expressions of deformation should be linked in some way to spin as well.

This somewhat obvious point leads us to the further fact that Plate Tectonics ignores - which is that the chronological sequence of planetary deformation tells us (in FACT) that this relationship of global structure to rotation is just exactly so, .. and is spelt out in the symmetry of hemispherical deformation. On mantle breakthrough during the Mesozoic the Earth suffered two great-circle splits, first around its middle (equatorially), followed by splitting lontitudinally (pole to pole, virtually) to form the Atlantic, and that the transition from one to the other is recorded in the symmetries of global deformation, not as theory, but as FACT that is simply apparent from the proper ordering of global structural and stratigraphic sequence. In other words the argument for Earth expansion is not conceptual, but resides in the laid-down, built architecture of global geological facts : it is geo-*logical*.

So we note that in wanting to believe its own imagined reflection, and in not taking into account Along-Ridge Spreading and Extension (ARSE) and equatorial oblateness (BULGE)  Plate Tectonics is fact-deficient from the outset.   Earth expansion on the other hand explains more facts, and orders them more intelligently, where Plate Tectonics simply blunders self-contradictory explanations according to the PMWS syndrome of 'the American Way of doing science - by the Principle of Multiple Working Stories.

However Earth expansion does point to a very big question to which there is no good answer (yet), which is, "What is it that is making the Earth bigger by the extents, virtually, of the entire mantle. If energy and mass are equivalents, if mass can be turned into energy by nuclear process and if that process is reversible, then how is energy converted to mass? Where does that energy reside, what is its nature, .. and how does it convert to the mass of the mantle (and possibly of the core itself), .. and how then is this 'energy' related to gravitational force?

Such is the *destination* of geological exploration, and the point at which the 'geo-' must hand the job over to the '-physics'. The road getting there however means backing up a bit from the present paradigm of Plate Tectonics which has screwed up the 'geo' part of its story. Recognising the creation of the mantle as it broke through the continental crust ("sea-floor spreading") was surely a marvellous achievement and is the true legacy of the oceanic research that led to Plate Tectonics. However, the failure to recognise the corresponding continental (and oceanic) crustal adjustments was a corresponding blooper of such magnificence that it can only be described as superlative in its deliberate self-serving and resolute avoidance of those hard questions, and that can only leave one guessing how the mainstream of Earth science (and its supporting media cheer squad) sees itself when it fails, not just to address suchlike questions, but to acknowledge that they even exist in the first place.

Physics, already chastened by geological facts in its pronouncements of the way of the world, is evidently not ready for this particular one. So until it is, it behoves geology to reinforce the foundation for making the point of expansion. A worldful of potential careers for a worldful of geologists indeed. We have to wonder what's holding them up. Suchlike myths as mountain building - inscribed in the litany as orogenesis - that's what.

And that in a nutshell is the fact-deficient platform on which Plate Tectonics argues its case against Earth expansion, .. and being fact-deficient in the departments of ARSE and BULGE, .. well, .. it doesn't have much of a leg to stand on, does it? ... It's crippled, right from the outset.

That's what I reckon anyway.

("Mountain building" - .. indeed.)
Brown-nosers of the centuries,
Plodding their way to the consensus trough,
and not looking down at the squelchy mess
underfoot.

[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-

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

The Geological Cycle

2011-11-14T16:18:00.000-08:00

..or Mountains, erosion, and stratigraphic sequence.
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

Fig.1. The Grand Canyon. Flat to future flat. A spectacular example of reduction of an originally flat land (Fig.2) to one that in the future will also be flat, as the canyon walls are entirely eroded. Erosion follows the withdrawal of epicontinental seas towards the Pacific basin as the mantle broke through the crust. Not quite so spectacular as the Himalayas (along strike across the Pacific that has grown between them), but spectacular enough... (Courtesy of Panoramio; right click /new window for a bigger image)

If ever there was a point in geological history that deserves special mention then surely it was the time when the mantle broke through the crust and the epicontinental seas gradually withdrew towards the newly created ocean basins, leaving in their wake and increasingly exposed to erosion, the stratigraphic sequence of past aeons. This event lies at the heart of modern geology, for in the erosion that resulted from that run-off, in the major river systems of the world, their tributaries, and their further erosional extents, the whole story of geological time is revealed, as well as the responses of different levels of the Earth's crust to deformational events. Yet it remains unremarked in the geological story. Why? Because it is inconvenient for Plate Tectonics to consider the conundrum that, according to its model, globally distributed epicontinental seas and ocean basins must have existed side-by-side, when all the evidence is that seas on the continental crust existed prior to those covering the mantle-floored basins. Epicontinental seas were entirely responsible for the build-up of stratigraphic sequence we see on continental crust; the patterns of sedimentation do not correspond with those of continental margins of today, which build out over mantle substrate.

Just the very existence of stratigraphic sequence on continental crust is the smoking gun of Earth expansion, for the build-up of stratigraphic sequence records the relentless drive towards gravitational equilibrium by erosion of a landsurface that was continually, and globally, 'too high', a land surface that was continually worked and reworked back down to inexorable flatness - a land surface whose essential nature was little different from that of today, in which mountains were mountains, plains were plains, and erosion continually transformed the high plateau surfaces of the Earth's crust to the lower plains. Or to put it another way, maintained flatness in the face of an apparent rise in the land surface caused by the inexorable drop in sea level that finally exposed even the sediments of the sea floor, which are now exposed as the "Roof of the World".

Those thousands of metres of testimony to relentless flatness however, lie, not proximal to mountain belts at continental margins, as Plate Tectonics would have it by the erosion of mountain belts pushed up by colliding plates, but over the entire extent of the Earth's continental surface. There are no land-locked slabs of oceanic crust poised to descend back into the mantle ('failed subduction zones' at continental margins) testifying to once-ubiquitous collisions over the extents of the Earth's surface, .. and no tracts of ancient 'Atlantic-type' ocean floor either, similarly failed, that could support a view of widespread "convergent margins". Convergent margins are today in a very specific location with respect to global geological evolution, and there is no evidence of any global network of convergence that could support a corresponding network of collisional uplift to give the continental elevations we see today.

Nor is there any reason to think that mountains of yesteryear are any different from the mountains of today when from a mountain perspective 'today' reaches well back into yesteryear anyway. We have ample opportunity to study mountains and see that they are not being pushed up, but are being eroded down. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about high mountains, low mountains, or 'mountains' that are little more than name - just plain hills or mounds - the drive is always *FROM* flatness, *TO* flatness, not from crumpled uplift to flatness. No crustal crumpling such as might be imagined as due to 'plate collision' lifts the Earth's crust into convolutions of folds that might be called mountains. Though such convolutions are naturally exposed when high ground is eroded, the two are not related in the way Plate Tectonics says: subsidence (and folding) are natural results of crustal collapse - particularly of unconsolidated sequences that will eventually lithify (and be exhumed by erosion to reveal such folding).

Stratigraphic sequence that records the ebb and flow of the cycle of crutal adjstments to flatness, is the looking-glass we have to step through and see that there is no building of mountains, merely the different stages in the continuing evolution of flatness as gravitationally stable lands that were once low and flat and stable enough with respect to erosion, are now 'high', and subject once more to erosion, .. in an inexorable, staged progression towards flatness that culminated in wholesale dropping of sea-level towards the ocean basins.

Those ocean basins occupy two thirds the surface area of the Earth, which represents a lot of subsidence accommodation of the crust since the mantle broke through. Stratigraphic sequence on the continental crust represents the gradual subsidence accommodation of erosion prior to that, as the level of epicontinental seas dropped. Once the sea-level of epicontinental seas dropped to become that of the ocean basins, the stratigraphic sequence was eroded to reveal its deeply buried roots - which geologists have been myopically burying their heads in. But stand back and see the significance of its existence as a whole, and see it as testimony to the drop in sea-level as the Earth's surface moves out from the centre (Fig.1).

Whether we come at it from the stratigraphy or the structure, .. or even the geomorphology, *that* is the geological cycle, .. revealed not only in the erosion and build-up of stratigraphic sequence, but in its existence in the first place, built up in response to an Earth that is getting bigger. Just the fact of stratigraphic sequence on continental crust tells us of an increase in size.

No crustal crumpling. No 'building' of mountains. No 'orogenesis'. Just erosion as ever more crust is exhumed as sea-level drops, and ever more of the Earth's surface subsides to accommodate the increasing surface area of the planet as the ocean basins grow, .. leaving high stands of the planet to be eroded and deposited once more in the newly created basins. *That* is the geological cycle : flat-to-flat. But in the continuum of geological time there are no markers that define any 'cycle'. Local variations in sedimentation due to local gravitational collapse merge globally with each other around the kaleidoscopic collapse of subsiding crustal blocks.

When we take into account that there are no epicontinental seas any more we find that Plate Tectonics has no explanation for the fact of stratigraphic sequence on continental crust. ( And no, the Caspian and Black Seas are not epicontinental seas floored by continental crust, they are Mediterranean analogues = incipient mantle breakthroughs, .. not the pan-global sort that once built up the stratigraphic sequence on continental crust prior to sea-floor spreading.)

It is really a remakable indictment of the Earth sciences that this event, and what it signifies, is omitted from the geological story. The breakthrough of the mantle is recognised, and the growth of the ocean floors too (as "sea-floor spreading"), but not the corollary demise of epicontinental seas, nor what that signifies.

"Plate Tectonics has no explanation for the preservation of stratigraphic sequence on continental crust." (As well as a whole lot of other things.)

("Earth Science is an amazing place.")

Fig.2. The stuttering, kaleidoscopic collapse of continental crust. (C..C..C..C..) Erosion in the foreground, kalaeidoscopic collapse in the background. Looking north from the Grand Canyon (erosion) to the distant hills of the Basin-and-Range Province (collapse). (Right-click /new window for a bigger figure. Or Google Earth fly-to window; paste 39.356900, -116.106030 then zoom out to about 80km height for the 'amazing place'.)

[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-

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

Earthquakes, crustal subsidence, and Earth expansion

2011-11-11T18:00:00.000-08:00

Or plateaus, landslides, and sea level (and all that).

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

Fig.1 Looking Southeast along the edge of the Anatolian Plateau at Belenardic. Overlooking the Menderes Valley on the right. Yellow line in the distance (top left) is the Dinar Fault (see previous post). (Vertical exaggeration x3; right-click /new page for a bigger image.)

So, .. colliding plates, driven by subducting slabs, are pushing the crust up (but not crumpling it)? And only slabs around the Pacific (because the geology of continental margins tells us there are, and never have been, any others). I mean, who are these Plate Tectonics people kidding? This old cold, grandfather of a slab, with no energy left (which is why he's sinking back into the mantle), is pushing up the Earth's crust as he goes, .. not just around the draw-cord of the body-bag, but further afield as well. Gee, .. what a restless old git. One last hurrah, eh? Not for him the going quietly.

Well, .. good on him, .. but it's tripe. Hardly even half-cooked at that. Pushing up daisies, maybe, .. but mountains? I don't think so.

Now, .. if they said that the crust all around that draw-cord was getting pulled down with him and collapsing, .. that would be more credible - because it actually is, .. but PTeros play this down and advertise it as a zone of pushing up.

But it still wouldn't account for the the collapsing further afield, would it? Trace that surface all over Turkey and (in the language of Plate tectonics) it is rising due to the collision of the African Plate with the Eurasian one, and ask yourself if it is likely that those massive 'plates' are moving because subducting slabs of oceanic crust around the Pacific are pulling (or pushing) other pieces of crust around (as they fall, spent, .. back into the mantle). Because that's what they say. This would be a good exercise for schoolchildren before playtime, using Google Earth - to see how far the Anatolian Plateau can be traced, and see if it's politically correct and stops at the country's border.

Much more sensible to rationalise that it is not that bit of the land on the left that is rising, but the other bit of it on the right that is falling.

But how? There is nowhere for it to fall to, is there? The Earth isn't hollow, .. surely? There aren't big holes down there, lurking for unsuspecting lumps of crust to fall into, .. so how come there is such a thing as subsidence? Well, then we have to use our heads instead of reading what we're told, and instead of saying all that guff about subduction half a world away, say, .."Why isn't it just that the Earth's crust is being pulled apart, right there, .. sideways, making all those faults and rifts that we can map. It's not an ad-hoc postulate at all. We really can map them. They're real. Pull-aparts, .. faults,
.. rifts, .. some of them full of basinal sediments thousands of metres thick, .. and not just pull-aparts on the continental crust, but on the ocean floors as well. In fact the ocean floors are riddled with faults; it's virtually what ocean floors are - graveyards of grandfathered faults. They make up the biggest landform of the planet ( as abyssal hills)!   Both of them, continents and ocean floors, .. full of rifts.

And then, starting with the *FACT* of continental extension (and the many rifts and faults in it of the sort above), how do we rationalise the necessary increase in space on the surface of a constant-sized Earth that lets that fact exist?

The answer is we can't (on a constant-sized Earth). There needs to be an increase in surface area for the pre-existing crust to collapse, or the crust is forever supported by the mantle underneath. "Increase in surface area"? Did somebody say something about "sea-floor spreading"?   ("Deserving of a noble prize"?) (So it is/was. But they rather screwed it up with the stupid posutlate of subduction that denies the evidence and the logic apparent of everything geological we see.) ( Too bad. Long story, and an interesting one - as an illustration of the core values of science. We're pretty lucky we get the spin-off we do, when all's said and done - and paid for.)

The continental crust is full of faults, pull-aparts, and sedimentary accumulations in them, .. and hills. Even mountains, .. left behind as the tardy participants in this collapsing behaviour .   Switch on the Panoramio in Google Earth, and see the mountains that Turkey is riddled with, .. mountains that are the tracts of land that can't keep up with the erosion that's doing its level best to make them (level). Where's the logic in saying (as Plate Tectonics does), that these mountains are due to subducting slabs, the last hurrah before grandfathered slabs cark it, even as the strings on the body bag are drawn tight and they get shoved down into the mantle ? I mean, .. fair go! Gravity got the Earth together in the first place. Made it big, made it round. And differentiated it into a core, mantle and a crust. And put the radioactivity (heat) where it belongs. And now that heat is supposedly going to set up convection cells, which are going to do their level best to break everything up everywhere, .. and as a by-product of returning to the mantle when they have lost all their energy, do their level best to build mountains. Well at least it can be said that the best is a level one. It's about they only thing these 'convectioneers' have right.

Some trick! And there is a worldful of people calling themselves clever and asking for research money to work out how this can actually be done, while you and me can take just one look at that picture and say, "Bullshit", the land is clearly falling, .. the high ground on the left just happens to be falling more slowly than that on the right. And save everybody a lot of time and trouble (and money) into the bargain.

(Recap: the land is not rising by Plate Tectonics, because colliding plates and crustal crumpling is not a mechanism for forming plateau and near-plateau surfaces that were once the legacy of land getting eroded down to zilch - or even made up the sea floor, and that can now be extensively correlated around the world in the singular elevation of the circumglobal mountain belt, which the global geological picture tells us is the ancient Pangaean equatorial zone)

"So what's causing the land to fall?"
"The surface getting spread. The collapse is just it taking up the room that's becoming available."
"And why is the surface spreading?"
"Because the Earth's surface is moving out from the centre, .. it's getting bigger. Well, it's *got* bigger - by the extents of the ocean floors. The Mediterranean, .. if you do a local check. And the Caspian and Black Seas as well - incipient Mediterraneans, ..'Med-extensions', if you like."
"And why is it getting bigger? That's a hell of an amount (the ocean floors)."
"Sure is. Considered as a volume it's doubled the size of the Earth from where it used to be not so long ago. Guess you could say it's exploding."
"Wow!"
"Yeah, .. wow.. Ennyhow, it's not going to happen any time soon."

(?? But it *is* happening now. Earthquakes are happening all the time. They're going off faster than a lazer, .. geologically speaking. *That* (and tsunamis) is our experience of the energy release of 'exploding' as we experience it today - curvature correction by crustal collapse in response to mantle breakthrough as the Earth gets bigger.)

Fig.2. The deeply incised, last remnants of the undulating surface of the Anatolian Plateau further west towards the Aegean Sea. Dinar Fault just visible in top centre of image. The plateau surface appears to rise towards the mantle breakthrough of the Aegean.. (Vertical exaggeration x3; right-click for a bigger figure. Google Earth fly-to at 38.423753, 27.853712 )

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

Dinar Earthquake, Turkey, .. October 1st, 1995

2011-11-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

Falling down, .. or rising up?
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

Posting this one because after Van (previous post) I came across this rather nice image of the earthquake at Dinar, Turkey (October 1st, 1995), which combined with the erosional features of the landscape helps to emphasise the point that there are different ways in which gravity draws the land down to flatness. Erosion is drawing the loose detritus of the land down and building up the flatness of stratigraphic sequence, .. and the land itself is collapsing.

Fig.1 Dinar Earthquake, October 1st, 1995. The moire pattern when the waveform from the shake is represented getting out of step with itself just a little, makes the effect of the quake easier to see. Down on the left, up on the right. Black-and-white dotted line is the extent of the fault. Dinar itself is just left of the word 'uplift'. (Image courtesy of the authors of this publication on landslide and subsidence monitoring).

Fig.2. Google-location for comparison with Fig.1. Yellow line marks the trace of the fault. Right-click for a bigger image. Vertical exaggeration x2.

The point : All you can tell from the earthquake is that the relative movement across the fault is down to the left / up to the right, .. And if anything is so unlucky as to be shaken by it, it falls down. With enough shaking, it will all fall down; it will be shaken flat. And if that flat is not flat enough, rain and weather will do the rest. End of story - Flat. With time, everything is reduced to flatness. Anything that is hubristic enough to think it can stand up to the force of gravity - or even worse, tries to build itself in the face of it, gets its cumuppance eventually, .. or rather its cumdownance.

Right from the start, the land suffers by erosion. As soon as any bit of it gets a little too high for its boots, it gets rubbed down, ..as the mountains in the picture will show. They're all being eroded. None of them were "pushed up" as Plate Tectonics says, by 'Plate collision'. If any 'pushing-up' occurred at all (which it didn't) then it was an old, near-flat land surface that was already degraded (by 'falling down') - by the inexorable downward force of gravity.

In the face of this inexorable downward force of gravity it makes far more sense to say that both parts of the land surface are falling down, just that one is falling down faster than the other, than it is to say that one is being pushed up. So no pushing up, .. just two 'falling-downs', on which is superimposed the falling down of a third element, namely the rest-level of the agents of erosion represented by lake- and sea-level. As this surface moves down, so does the eroding skin of the land. And under the surface, the falling water table contributes its effect too.

The mountains are an old eroding land surface that is being degraded by erosion, and by subsidence (crustal collapse) along the faults that dissect Turkey. From a wider perspective the erosional surfaces of the world tell us that this 'dropping' down has been a globally continuous event. Water level drops because the floor it's sitting on drops. Not all at the same time of course (as illustrated in microcosm in the above figure), but having dropped, erosion begins over again, reincising the old land surface on the remaining ('upward') side of the fault and laying more sediment down on top of what was there before on the downward side of the fault. On a global scale, the stratigraphic sequence is created - finally to be preserved on the continental crust in the biggest crustal down-dropping of all, ..that happened when the continents separated to expose the mantle, and the surface waters withdrew from the continents towards the ocean basins leaving their stratigraphic residue of millenia behind.

And just to repeat the point : - It's not the 'upward' side of the fault that moves up (generally speaking), it's the downward side of the fault that really does move down, leaving the other side 'high'. Uplift and erosion? Well, .. erosion for sure, day-to-day, as we speak, .. as we watch, .. it's the uplift is the iffy bit. Gets tricky once you start thinking about it, when the base equilibrium level of the eroding element is the immediate (and real) controlling agent of surficial equilibrium, overriden (but only from time-to-time), by crustal movements.

Funny, when you think about it, .. that Plate Tectonics has no explanation for the preservation of stratigraphic sequence on the continental crust ( = the withdrawal of shallow seas from the continental crust). It sees the stuttering build-up of stratigraphy on the continental crust as due to the ebb and flow of waters that somehow had something to do with "the movement of plates", "crumpling the crust" and "building mountains" which got eroded and dumped their detritus over older detritus, in the same way as the eroding mountains of today are dumping their detritus as the alluvial fan between the two lakes in the picture (Fig.1).

But the mountains are not getting 'built'. They are developing from a once (near-) flat surface that doesn't crumple and crinkle over geological time, but gets eroded immediately there is *any* gravitational instability. The crumpling and crinkling that happens deeper in the crust that eventually is exhumed by erosion, is not acting against gravity (to build mountains), it is the depth-expression of the same gravitational force that at surface is causing everything to fall down. The Earthquake at Dinar, Van, Bingol, and everywhere else in Turkey, .. and everywhere else in the world (including what's happening at the oceanic spreading ridges), is the expression of falling down in the inexorable drive towards flatness imposed by gravitational equilibrium, not the expression of sideways-driving convectional force pushing things up. Sideways-movement is the department that other cosmic denizen - the force responsible for changing the first-order shape of the Earth, namely the planet's spin, which is reflected in the symmetry of dynamical change of global geological structure.

Fig.3 Sideways-moving tectonic flow. A combination of collapse of high ground from the north, and westwards crustal lag as the Earth rotates west to east. Big-arrow 'plate' movement is a furphy. The Mediterranean is a dilation tract of mantle extrusion, and the Arabian / North African 'Plates' are linked sedimentary basins, exhumed by the fall in sea-level as the mantle broke through the crust. As all earthquakes show, movement is from the north, .. not the south (Image courtesy same as Fig.1.)

"Surface cracks of the October 1 earthquake have been observed 10 km continuously along the Dinar-Çivril fault. The cracks have displayed a mode of dip-slip; however, some have also indicated lateral slip. The different modes of slip are generally in agreement with the fault plane solution and are indicators of the complex nature of the rupture process."
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1998PApGe.152...91.

It's illogical to think that colliding plates buckling the crust cause folding and build mountains, when clearly nothing's getting buckled, but on the contrary the land surface is being so rapidly eroded. And if we say that the crumpling is going on at depth then that's hardly "mountains building", is it, ..when not only is it happening at depth, but the mountains we see at surface all around the world in these "collision zones" are manifestly the result of highly aggressive erosion of once-flat, or near-flat surfaces.

Which is not to say that you don't get crumpling by compression ("collision"), .. just that it doesn't build mountains. Blocks of crust that are gravitationally unstable are bound to compress, .. and fold, and slide over each other. They just don't need the help of convecting mantle cells to do it, which have lost all of their energy anyway by the time they get to "collision zones", ..which is why they need to return to the mantle as "subducting slabs". They're cold (in the language of Plate Tectonics), .. no energy left ( in the language of any tectonics). Grandfathered, .. back into the mantle, the draw-cord of the body-bag,.. dust to dust, in the common or garden language we can all understand. But Plate Tectonics would have us believe that in this defunct condition they are about to enter the next life and live the heyday they never had in their former one, .. by knocking up Mother Earth's crust and giving her bulges like there's no tomorrow, and spreading apart continents. (If that's not chauvanistic conceit, I don't know what is.) Tecto-man lives? Hell, .. in that condition he couldn't even lift the hem of her skirt. Who's kidding? Me, you? Or them, us?

So what is it that is lifting the land up? (I mean, causing it to fall down.) Whatever it is, it is related to the extrusion of the mantle and the consequent enlargement of the Earth's surface area. The only logical explanation is that as the Earth's surface area increases to accommodate the massive extrusion of the mantle, everything on it adjusts to take up the newly created areal extent. And does so by subsidence ( 'falling down' ). This is a global phenomenon, commensurate with mantle extrusion, .. It is not a piecemeal result of "colliding plates", sailing about on convection cells, .. crumpling crust.

And it is the sixty-four-thousand dollar question that geologists the world over are doing their level best to avoid. And geophysicists are doing their level best to deny - not that there is an answer, but that there is a question to be addressed in the first place. It's a shameful situation. The pointers to addressing the question are (and have always been) so obvious. We can only hope that the younger cohorts of earth scientists get the message (about the question), because there is no hope that the older ones will, nor will those who have been overfed the diet of Plate Tectonic pap, which they keep gurging and regurging down their mindless, overfed bibs.

And that is the legacy of Plate Tectonics already - half a century of down-the-wrong-road, and another half to pull out of it. Maybe more, when there is no incentive to corrupt careers by doing so, and you can always scrape the half-digested gruel off the bibs and eat that too (rather than wash the bloody thing and try something else).

"A century of misadventure in the Earth Sciences", .. the title of the book that will be written once the change is made, and that can only be written after the fact. You might not know it, but you're living it now in the hundred decibels of silence that refuses to address the question : what is it that makes earthquakes happen and the land everywhere fall down when they do.. And get flat.

Simple question (staring us in the face).

Difficult answer (once you think about it).

But then, thinking is not required inside Big Brother's box (you get voted out if you transgress the rules.) Everybody loves Big Brother, eh? (There's a prize even.)

"Scientists believe" googles 2,410,000
"Scientists think" ... googles 913,000
(with quotations)

Fig.4. Land getting flat. Elevation x3 to emphasise how 'flat' does it : by erosion at surface and crustal collapse at depth (Fig.1). The town of Aydogmus, about 15km SE of Dinar. Mountains by erosion (not by crustal crumpling by colliding plates); rejuvenation as the land and water this side of the fault collapses and the hindward side adjusts by reincision to make hill slopes steeper than they once were; newer re-incision to the left, older (more mature /deeper) reincision to the right. (There might be a fault down that gully between the high bround on the left and the lower ground on the right - or it might just be different lithology.) Smoother slopes sculpted to hold water to prevent erosion.

Earthquake near Van, Eastern Turkey, October 23rd, 2011

2011-10-28T22:34:00.000-07:00

Fig.1. The hinge of dilation of Pangaean hemispheres. Showing the relationship between crustal dilation related to mantle uplift and extrusion (Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas) and earthquakes denoting consequent collapse off the uplifting (once more oblate equatorial) zone as the Earth accommodates a more spherical shape.

The town of Van in Eastern Turkey is located within the Mediterranean hinge zone of Pangaean hemispherical dislocation, 'round the back' so to speak, of the Pacific gape (but to the front as we look at it here).

Earthquakes in mountainous parts of the world denote an attempt to restore gravitational equilibrium : the crust (and everything on it) falls down, relative to where its earlier equilibrium position used to be. It would be silly (when we think about it) to say, as Plate Tectonics does, that these earthquakes reflect mountains in the making due to colliding plates. What? .. colliding plates driven by subduction (only round the Pacific), which is in turn driven by convection which is a cooling response to gravity, push up mountains? And do so after expending enough energy to drive the plate from one side of the Earth to the other?] Surely, there is something Alice-in-Wonderland - ish about this particular geological part of the story that has gravitational disturbance several times removed from the causal convecting agent : the mantle has to move, cool, collapse, drive plates of crust around (over half the extent of the Earth's surface) - before executing its designated purpose of crustal disturbance by way of counteracting gravity to build mountains. A much removed *consequence* of gravity acts against gravity? If that's not a graphic and disrespectful two-finger salute to Mr Gravity's serious world, I don't know what is.

And thus does Plate Tectonics deem Gravity do His earthquake work via Heath Robinson's contraption of colliding plates driven by cooling of convecting mantle cells.

Earth expansion on the other hand says earthquakes are *directly* due to gravitational collapse as the Earth's surface moves out from the centre and collapses; the ground just collapses to take up the increasing surface area. (No Heath Robinson contraption needed.)

What makes the Earth's surface move out from the centre? Don't know, .. But let's find out, .. because all the geological evidence is telling us that it is.

But anyway, .. either way earthquakes are sourced in gravitational disturbance - one way or another.

Kind of quirky, this expansion stuff is it not? ..when inexorable outwards movement of the Earth's surface from the centre is manifest, not in uplift, .. but in inexorable, stuttering collapse of the land, i.e., relative to where it used to be. It gets complicated, .. what we mean by 'up' and 'down' when sea-level is included, which doesn't stutter, but enunciates clearly every phrase, .. every note of this symphony of a crust that moves up and out from the centre, but at the same time inexorably moves down over geological time (to preserve stratigraphic sequence on the continental crust).

Van. The earthquake is one of a cluster, as is usual when there's a big one. And a cluster with no particular orientation. The USGS provides a beachball fault-plane solution from which we can choose the one that suits best, one nearly vertical, and one substantially flatter. But both showing shortening of the crust.

Fig.2 Beach-ball fault plane solution (bottom hemisphere projection). Choice of two faults fits the bill. One striking at 107 degrees is a reverse fault, heaving up from south to north, .. the other at 239 degrees is a lower-angle thrust fault pushing roughly north to south. Take your pick. That is, both depict shortening of the crust in this zone of overall extension. ('P' = crustal compression. Sketch is a 'real space' depiction looking roughly east; the intersection of the planes is slightly down and out of the figure. (There is a slight inclination on the line of intersection of the alternative planes which skews their strike to 107 and 239 degrees.)
See http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqinthenews/2011/usb0006bqc/finite_fault.php )

"How come you get compression in a zone of extension?" is a common question, and is explained above in the collapse of ground that becomes gravitationally unstable. More prosaically it is called 'subsidence'. It occurs everywhere in the two-dimensional frame of reference of the Earth's surface (as distinct from a three-dimensional Earth-centred one), one way or another, .. given time. There is no need for Mr two-dimensional Robinson to invent wholesale sideways movement of pieces of crust- crumpling in his two-dimensional sideways model of the world to explain why, when everything tells us that the crust is anyway deeply rooted in the mantle of a three-dimensional Earth, and not ferried around on its two-dimensional surface.

"Now, Mr Robinson Rabbit, .. put that emulsion down, your measuring tool away, and straighten up. The world is a vertical place if you please, .. not a horizontal one. Once you succumb to the force called gravity and prostrate yourself in such an unseemly and derelict manner, there is nothing to be done with you. So make yourself decent, be upstanding, and come with me."
"B..b..but Alice.. .. .."
"No 'buts'. Your horizontal state is no more than the finality of vertical commotion, so reverse it please and stand up. Do you hear?"
[Extract from Alice through the Plate Tectonic Bottle - Chapter 2, The Principle of Multiple Working Stories, in which Robinson Rabbit preaches the virtues of horizontality to all and sundry, and comes off worst.]

Fig.3 Choice of two faults. Striking 107 and 239 degrees. Cluster of Earthquakes and two possible fault orientations. Yellow line marks the surface trace of the Northern Anatolian Fault to which the cluster of earthquakes is surely related, though exactly how is not clear. The epicentre (large brown dot) is 20km deep and 35km north of the fault trace. Larger figure with a right-click new window. (The red tone is something else I was doing.)

Since the cluster of aftershocks has no preferred orientation in plan, the flatter one (strike 239 degrees) would appear to be the better choice.  It is also the one that fits better with the global tectonics of the region, describing collapse as the crust takes up the increasing surface area of the Earth. The local shortening displacement indicated by thrusting and reverse faulting is interpreted to be due to smaller-scale crustal collapse, related to the breakthrough of the mantle forming the Mediterranean, Black and Caspian Seas.

The topography provides interesting corroboration, in that the ground north of the lake (elevation 1650m) is rising relative to the lake (see heavily incised rejuvenation around Ercis (paste 39.041427, 43.355350   to fly-to window of Google Earth), while the ground south of the lake appears to be falling (heavily scalloped shoreline around hills with no rejuvenation). The partition between the two is marked by the distinct scarp and flanking low ground that extends westwards along the south side of the lake, and marks the line of the northern arm of the Anatolian fault system. The large volcano just west of the lake (about 10km north of Tatvan) is one of a number parallel to its northwestern shore and the '239'-fault, suggesting some possible relationship of this fault to the line of volcanoes which are clearly depth expressions of part of the system.

Actually, having a second look at the depth distribution of earthquakes indicates that on average they appear to be a bit deeper towards the yellow line (fault) in the figure than away from it.  So it's not a simple picture, but more complex than is suggested by any simple association with the Anatolian fault (as would be expected in an area of mantle breakthrough as long-lived, large, and complex as a global hinge of dilation and twist). To Plate Tectonics, the area is being sqeezed together, .. and so it is, but at the larger scale (Earth expansion) it is the last vestige of the hinge of Pangaean hemispherical dislocation being ripped apart. Collapse occurs as the upper levels of the crust meet pull-apart and mantle extrusion in the lower levels - much like the squeezing that happens when something topples. The squeezing says nothing about the reason for the toppling, .. which in this case is writ large in the historical volcanic activity and the extrusion of the mantle, and the way in which this globally tells us - in no uncertain terms - that the Earth is getting bigger.

(Bingol, the earthquake of ..right in line with the western end of the fault.)
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2003/eq_030501/
or just google 'bingol earthquake'.

See also USGS poster
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2011/20111023.php

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

Stephen Hurrell - Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth

2011-10-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

(Third edition, 2011; First printed 1994.)
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

In the fine tradition of cross-disciplinary investigation, Stephen Hurrell has put his finger on an answer to what is surely one of the most perplexing questions in palaeontology - why the dinosaurs were so huge, .. and links it to the most controversial of challenges to Earth science, namely the evidence that the Earth is getting bigger.

His exploration of the topic is a typical example how someone new to a field and with often limited knowledge of it can, with incisive clarity, see fundamental connections that others cannot - or perhaps rather will not, because to do so creates ructions that cut right to the core of held beliefs of the field.

In this case he has brought his engineering experience to bear on the question (obvious perhaps to an engineer but somewhat hidden from the rest of us), how these large land animals managed to live, when, if they were in existence today and equipped with the same compositional bone strength, they could never have supported their own weight but would have been crushed by the force of gravity. Not only does he ask the fundamental question, but answers it with logical simplicity that bears on other aspects of animal physiology : the force of gravity must have been less back then, than it is today, .. otherwise these animals would not, .. could not, .. have survived.

Demonstrating the reduction in size of insects, dinosaurs and land mammals of that time to become the denizens of today, he argues that gravity has had a controlling effect on the limiting size of animal species in general because of the strength of materials involved in their physical construction. With a simple logical jump he posits that the much-reduced size of land animals today is linked to a corresponding increase in gravitational force, as species adjusted to an essential, first-order constraint imposed on their physiology by the Earth itself. As gravitational force is largely determined by the mass of the Earth, material must have been added to the planet in very substantial amounts since that earlier time.

On turning to the Earth sciences for evidence of this increase, he finds corroboration in the findings made on strictly geological grounds by numerous prominent geologists of earlier decades, for an event that had no precedent in geological history, .. an event that continues even to the present day, namely the extrusion of the mantle to create the ocean floors that make up two thirds of the Earth's surface.

Thus he finds himself inadvertently on the front line of the controversy between Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion. On one hand, and unaware of such controversy, he has happened upon a piece of the jigsaw that supports an increasing size of the Earth. On the other hand, that same jigsaw piece carries evidence for increasing gravity : he has linked the creation of the ocean floors to the increasing size (and mass) of the planet.

Others' recognition of the creation of the ocean floors ("sea-floor spreading") as the core element of Plate Tectonics is probably the greatest achievement of the Earth sciences, one that has profound consequences for understanding continental displacement and the evolution of life, .. and Stephen Hurrell has imbued this with an extra quality that virtually defines it as being indisputable evidence for Earth expansion. However, consensus views deny this connection, saying that the Earth cannot have increased in size, because there is no known way it can, and have reconciled the fact of this massive mantle blowout of the planet with an assumption that over decades has morphed into a belief (/'fact') - that the ocean floors thus created must be matched with their destruction, .. for otherwise the Earth would have increased in size, which is "known to be not true". However this 'knowledge' is conceded through its assumptive roots to be sourced squarely in the mire of failed comprehension, and to be no more than the belief of wishful thinking.

Thus Stephen Hurrell not only drives a nail in the coffin of Plate Tectonics, but poses a hard question to the physics community as well; precisely how is mass created? If mass and energy are opposite sides of the same material coin, if theory admits the process is reversible, and if mass can demonstrably be turned into energy by nuclear processes, what then is the dynamical interface, the 'criticallity' that must be crossed whereby nuclear processes can turn energy into mass? In short, how does 'energy' become 'mass'? What is its manifestion? Where are its sources to be found? And by what process is 'energy' transmuted into mass?

These are not questions for the Earth sciences to address, but documenting the geological evidence for possible answers in all possible ways and on all scales, most certainly is. By his book, Stephen Hurrell has drawn together the essential threads that point to this cosmological conundrum. The number one question that confronts physics is the connection between the electromagnetic force and particle-masses of the nucleus on one side of the material divide, and gravity on the other side of it, and Stephen has touched on a connection that should appeal to both adults and students alike in being both quirky and exciting, showing yet again the often fascinating journeys that may be had on the byways that lead to understanding.

While necessarily not to the esoteric detail of academic rigour that befits a subject that overlaps with a number of different fields, it is well researched in the essential arguments. The book is a good read for layman and professional alike. For the layman it brings to life the main elements of the controversy between Earth expansion (which recognises the contribution of sea-floor spreading to the increasing size of the Earth on geological grounds) and Plate Tectonics (which does its level best to deny it). For the professional it is a window to points they would do well to (re)consider in assessing the surety of their belief that Plate Tectonics has copyright on the geological story of the Earth. It does not.

The book is a well presented, well-bound hard copy on high-quality paper, designed to outlive consensus acceptance of its content.

Thank you Stephen Hurrell, for a most thought-provoking insight into one of the most fundamental aspects of palaeontology, for thus is it resurrected from the grave of (for many) its mind-bogglingly boring taxonomic traditions.

(Moby Dick confirms the importance of reduced gravity simulated by flotation in determining limitations to animal size. (Image Courtesy of CGSociety.org.)

[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-

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

Subduction (Plate Tectonic's Trump Card)

2011-10-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

..is oblivious to Earth expansion's joker.
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

No matter how the ocean floors grow, .. crossways or longways to the ridge (or both), oblique, up, down, inside-out or whatever, Plate Tectonics' assumption that the Earth must remain a constant size, means they *must* be destroyed at subduction zones at the same rate as they are being created. Plate Tectonicists believe that hypothesised subduction by a hypothesised model of convection, to get rid of hypothesised ancient ocean floors to allow the emplacement of the current (real) ones, is its trump (scientific) card. However there is no a priori reason for subduction, other than that it *is* an assumption based on that necessity of size, .. and one that is built on another - that convection is the driver for global tectonics : -

"The internal engine of the Earth is driven by radioactively generated heat, and heat left over from the formation of the planet. (John Sclater's first sentence describing his role in the construction of Plate Tectonics (in Oreskes, 2001, Plate Tectonics, an insider's account of the modern theory of the Earth, p.128)

... which is itself shored up by many more assumptions and special pleadings.

However, Sclater's assertion founders on illogic, for the simple reason that if the loss of heat formed the lithospheric shell in the fist place, then the loss of more heat is not going to break it up (*de*form it). The laws of thermodynamics which address questions of work, heat, energy and entropy indicate, surely, that Sclater's statement is unfounded, for if gravity got the Earth together in the first place (and through the loss of heat organised it into its differentiated shells), then nothing that arises as a result of that differentiation (and that includes the heat distribution in the planet) can act to break those shells up." Or to put it another way, .. if gravity is the first-order force holding the planet together then no smaller-scale thing that results from it (this side of the nuclear divide) is going to break it up. Of course, .. release the energy locked up on the other side of that divide and the whole planet would be blasted to Kingdom Come. In some as yet unknown way, something of this sort appears to be what is happening, .. albeit in slow motion.

For convection to work, a crust must never have properly formed, but must still be in the process of forming, .. raising the question in the process of crustal formation, when can a crust be said finally to have formed? 'Effectively' might be a better word than "finally", because a dyke intruding the crust could be said to add to its formation - what about a whole ocean floor?

Sediments deposited on Archaean crystalline granitic basement, or on a basaltic substrate that typically overlies the granitic shell, tells us that the Earth has indeed had a crust since earliest geological time. Likewise does the existence of life in the oceans shortly thereafter. So for all intents and purposes the Earth must be said to have had a crust since earliest geological time, since when it has been manifestly *de*forming, and at no time moreso than the recent past. The geological record shows that spreading ridges have only existed in recent times, and that the external shell of the Earth is being ruptured and forced apart to extrude the mantle layer to form the present-day ocean floors, i.e., the continental crust is being deformed in a massively explosive way. If it were argued that this oceanic (mantle) crust is indeed crust in the making (and has always been thus through geological time), then we are faced with a stratigraphic and structural problem :- if ocean floors always existed (making crust), how did stratigraphic sequence come to lie on continental crust? The Plate Tectonic 'bulldozer' scraping sediments off the ocean floors at subduction zones hardly accounts for the global accummulation (and preservation) of stratigraphic sequence that has built up within continents since the beginning of geological time. In view of what we know about crustal rupture and mantle extrusion it is facile too, to argue (as some might) that continental-floored inland seas and mantle floored oceanic ones were ever spatially or temporally separate. Whilst volcanic edifices and their underlying network of intrusive dykes may also be argued to be 'crust in the making', simply their existence tells us of a pre-existing crust that they broke through, and that their build-up is related to its deformation.

There is no doubt that heat is an important element associated with the deformation of the Earth, but the question is one of origin. Where is this 'extra heat' extra energy sourced that is causing a massive blow-out of the planet and extruding 'new mantle' that not only makes up two thirds of the surface area of the Earth, but a commensurate volume as well? Global geology tells us we cannot simply assume that it is the residue of heat that was always there to begin with, when its (residual) expression is dilating the crust and extruding the mantle on such a massive scale that has no precedent in geological history. As a *residual* expression such behaviour is inadmissable! Neither can we simply assume, with Plate Tectonics, that its expression has always been oceanward of the continent - ocean divide, so that earlier expressions of it are never seen. If recent massive extrusion of the mantle is a *residual* expression, what was its main one?

There is no answer to that one. A "clean sweep" to remove ancient ocean floors so that we never see them could conceivably be argued for the Pacific (see Menard citation below), .. but not for the Atlantic, Indian, or Southern Oceans. Evidence of mantle preservation of commensurate scale would remain somewhere in the geological record. There is none. At this global scale Plate Tectonics is beset by no answers, when the continental crust is included in the picture.

It should further be noted that this assumption about heat, convection and subduction as drivers for crustal deformation followed the rejection of global expansion that was already considered advocacy by a number of prominent geologists of the day, as the only logical reconciliation of massive mantle extrusion with known continental geology. Far from any serendipitous proposal with little foundation, expansion was solidly based in geological fact, by those who knew it best - where its rejection was by those who knew it least! Conversely there was nothing factual that could be levelled against it, only a failure of comprehension to explain it, which led those at the time to substitute convection and subduction as deformation-drivers for it. After half a century of doing its level best to deny what their data was telling them in the first place - that sea-floor spreading meant global expansion, Plate Tectonics is finally heading down its inevitable road to Earth expansion, bearing the banners 'Overriding' and 'Flat subduction' as front-line, caber-tossing heraldry. Properly appraised, both are inadmissable in historical Plate Tectonics, but are definitive of Earth expansion.

Menard appears to document a concerted effort to discredit and reject this conclusion of expansion whilst making some weak concessions in its direction. Part of the reason for this rejection appears to have been personal differences that arose between Maurice Ewing who directed much of the operations of oceanic research, and Bruce Heezen who supported expansion and whom Ewing banned from access to the emergent data (Menard, 1986, The Ocean of Truth). Much of this schism is probably couched in this somewhat telling sentence spoken by Ewing early in his appointment to head up the marine research work : -

(Morris Ewing) "This is by far the most important project with which I have been connected. It is so arranged that I see no possibility of anyone stealing the credit from me." Menard, p.34, continues - Thus he staked his claim with a number [1] that implied that more would follow and that other investigators should steer clear. He followed the same procedure time and again. In 1959, for example, there appeared "The floors of the oceans. 1. The North Atlantic." It was never followed by Part II because of the falling out between Ewing and Heezen.

We are left to wonder how the very public difference that developed between these two senior figures within the closely knit research fraternity coloured the views of other workers, in respect of which side of the research bread had most butter on it, and how that perception might have coloured attitudes to Heezen's "maverick" expansionist views.

Whilst falsification (of expansion) is a laudable objective of scientific enquiry, reasons given for rejecting it were weak. As well, strengths were either ignored, glossed over, or misrepresented. Menard writes:-

"The expansion of the earth had many virtues as a hypothesis. Among others "it permits continental drift of the Americas away from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge without motion toward the East Pacific Rise," but the idea had many flaws. It did not account for the down-bowing of trenches and, as proposed by Carey and Heezen, it involved doubling the diameter of the earth in the last fraction of geological time. The density of the earth before expansion was thus 44gm / cc, "which is impossible in the present state of the universe for a body with the mass of the earth." [His footnote reference for the quotations reads, "I tried to persuade Harold Urey to write something in this vein, assuming that the master of the origin of the planets could end the discussion. He thought, however, that a concept involving such densities was too absurd for discussion." (Menard, 1986, p.210.)

It is not clear what he means about "no motion towards the East Pacific Rise", because maps even then showed the structural discordance of North America with the East Pacific Rise, a discordance that would appear self-evidently to reflect 'overriding' on a semi-global scale. And in any case, only a few lines lower on the same page he explicitly states : -

"Where the flanks of ridges pushed against continents, compression produced trenches, and there were no trenches in the Atlantic because convection cells carried the continental crust aside,"

.. meaning, surely, that the Americas are indeed carried eastwards towards the East Pacific Rise. Perhaps he means to have a foot in both camps - you can have American movement if you want it, but it isn't ncessary because the ridge itself could be moving towards the Americas, carried on a convecting cell underlying that driving the top plate. McKenzie after all had proposed this to general satisfaction that if America was taken to be fixed then earthquake first motions around the Aleutian Arc indicated the whole Pacific plate was moving (in the American reference frame) northwards, and simultaneously (in the Asian reference frame) moving westwards as indicated by transform faults (Fig.6 here). (However this is another assumption which has turned out to be unwarranted according to satellite data, but is left dangling as another in the potpourri of 'multiple working stories'.) So perhaps it was an appeal to the way of doing science according to the Prinicple of Multiple Working Hypotheses (as many as necessary to make assumptions plausible).

Menard's second point about expansion not accounting for the downbowing of the trenches is an assertion that Earth expansion would refute point-blank; "downbowing" is exactly as Earth expansion would have it, and in describing Benioff's own interpretation of these trenches (his Fig.15b, reproduced as Figure 'B' between Figs 3 and 4 here). Menard himself explains how this occurs as continental lithosphere relaxes over the mantle, causing flow and counterflow in the directions illustrated. Such 'flow and counterflow' is exactly the mechanisms of isostatic compensation to explain gravitational equilibration so it is not clear what he means here either, other than that he may be trying to avoid acknowledging any support for expansion whatsoever : if isostatic compensation applied according to Benioff (and Earth expansion) then the operative dynamic was from the continental side (Fig.1, previous link), and convection and subduction could not be used to explain movement of the ocean floors, as Menard believed could be the case:-

"Certainly in my own mind a possible clean sweep of the ocean bottoms every few hundred million years is an alternative to the development I have proposed." (Menard, p.207)

Apparently this, and an objection to an Earth density of 44gm / cc, (the "no mechanism" card) were the principle reasons of the day for rejecting expansion, that Menard was describing. However it seems odd that anyone with a leaing towards physics (Harold Urey) should cite density mass and volume as parameters for rejecting what surely should lie on the quantum mechanics / plasma physics side of the material divide. Relevant considerations of the cause for the addition of mass should surely be sought in the behaviour of particles of mass and the electronic soup that binds them, .. in dark energy and dark matter, .. rather than in principles governing Archimedes' wet leg.

I don't buy this 'density' argument. I think it's specious and that those who propose it are being disingenuous (or dense themselves). I think it's another conveniently invented displacement to avoid facing up to inconvenient facts that highlight the slippery slope on which Plate Tectonics is built, .. namely assumptions and the approval of others coerced by the authority of institutional kudos that has permitted this morphing of assumption into assertion and, further, harder dogma. Scientists often talk about the scientific method and the need for assumptions, ..and theories to test them. But whatever happened to close observation of the facts, .. and taking as much care as possible to keep out of the way with 'theories'? This business of being a ringmaster who orchestrates the natural world and calls it 'science', smacks to me of a circus, .. and as far as convection is concerned reminds me of Menard's comment : - in an earlier post : -

"The discussion was brief, but it offered Vine the occasion to refer to convection cells as "presumed" and "mythical." Certainly , the many problems related to convection that had been troubling the conference members would have been solved by eliminating convection entirely. " (Menard, The Ocean of Truth, p.276.)

The "briefness" referred to concerned exactly the elongation of spreading ridges, which elicited Vine's comment (above) and which is an aspect of spreading ridges that to this day remains without explanation in Plate Tectonics. No doubt the reason for the briefness of the discussion (and Vine's comment) lay in the realisation that the topography defining these structures indicated normal faulting, and as such were not therefore as Wilson claimed "a new class of faults", but were in fact entirely the defining reason for the along-ridge spreading (/extension) that was being discussed. And therefore certainly described expansion. It seems very much a case of "Let's not go there", which applies even to this day. To do so means addressing (and negating) Tuzo Wilson's "ingenious" explanation of the Great Cross Fractures as a "new class of (transform) faults", which delivered for Plate Tectonics the way out of Hess's "philosophical un-satisfaction", and secured the myth of convection as the driver for creation and destruction of the ocean floors. Or as an earlier goal-post shift from the bag of multiple working stories has it, not convection as the driver, but subduction, .. i.e., not driving by the cycling overturn of the mantle *interior*, but by the cycling overturn of the exterior mantle shell.

Goal-post shifts :-"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time."~ George Orwell

'Subduction' or 'overriding', .. the difference can be argued according to whether the approach is from the oceanic or continental side, .. but if from the oceanward side, then first the ocean floors have to get there. And *that* involves revisiting Wilson's "new class of (transform) faults" - which show that real movement on cross faults at the ridges is essentially vertical as the ocean floors move up - not 'sideways' to the subduction zones. 'Sideways' is an illusion, an artifact of expansion. Ocean floors can probably hardly make it down the flanks of the ridges, much less to the subduction zone.

(.. If subduction is Plate Tectonics' trump card,
Then 'transform faults' is the Joker in the pack. )

[See also blog for Earth expansion at :-
http://earthexpansion.blogspot.com/ ]

Japan, .. and that 'Points of Reference' thing again.

2011-10-07T14:23:00.000-07:00

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

Fig.1. Overriding and crustal collapse. (Right-click / New window for a larger figure.) Japan slides out over the mantle (big arrows) due to curvature correction of the land-mass on the left as the Earth gets bigger. Orange circles = Earthquakes of March 11th 2011; orange line = line of oceanward collapse. Small arrow defines crustal movement according to 'subduction' (USGS). Sinchi - Sendai, just left of the blunt end of the arrow.

... So that when we think about it, Earth expansion means there is no real uplift of the land, .. only subsidence as the differential curvatures as the different parts of the crust correct to the increasing surface area. Unless of course it is the surface of the planet that is being added to from above, by 'layer-upon-layer' of cosmic dust, .. which is not an option.

What does 'uplift' mean after all ? It makes no sense to say that the Earth's crust is uplifted with respect to the surface of the Moon, .. or to a passing asteroid, .. or even to the centre of the Earth for that matter. It only has meaning with reference to a universal terrestrial frame on the surface of the Earth itself, such as the surface of the sea. Of course, we could say the land in a certain location has uplifted relative to the Empire State Building, .. or Mount Everest, ..but the sea is better since it's everywhere and both of those are not.

So if we think of a snapshot of the Earth getting bigger and the surface area increasing, then what is already on the surface has to be spread more thinly to take up the increase in area. The most efficient material at doing this is water (and air of course). Water adjusts immediately, and to an observer standing by the sea, the shore line would appear to fall away. Or, which is the same thing in relative terms, the land would appear to rise. Correction of the water surface would literally be immediate. That is, if the Earth is expanding with the crust moving out from the centre, then sea level would fall, or as a relative consequence, the land would appear to rise. And with time the crust would collapse too, to take up the increase in surface area.

So sea level falling, or the land rising. How could we tell which was happening? Well, by common sense and with reference to scale. The sea is a homogeneous body that would fall everywhere by the same amount, but the land at the same scale is far from homogeneous. It's riddled with faults that geological history tells us break the crust up into blocks of all shapes and sizes that move up and down like a yo-yo .. and probably mostly down (which is strange when you think about it because how is there space for it to 'move down' to? ..unless space is being created laterally). It would be inconceivable that all these 'movable parts' would everywhere around the world be moving upwards by the same amount to give the observed uniform drop in sea level ; obviously when the *global* plimsol line changes, it has to be the sea that has fallen, not the land that has risen - because the faults would get in the way, and the uplift would get out of kilter.

Eventually of course the crust will adjust ('fall') too, to take up the increase in surface area, some bits faster than others, making it appear that the more slowly adjusting parts have risen. Eventually the drop in sea level, mirrorred by the consequent effects of erosion, will be trailed by crustal collapse and the plimsol line will be re-established a bit further out from the Earth's centre than it used to be ( but a bit lower down the beach; sea level inexorably falls over the longer time).

Now, that's the first, *superficially conceptual* consideration of expansion. The second one that we have to take into account is the reality of what exactly is it anyway that's making the Earth's surface move outwards from the centre. Material of a sort has to be physically added to the Earth, .. somewhere, .. somehow. But where, .. and (if not by the addition of space dust) .. how?

Well, if there are two things that Earth expansion and Plate Tectonics agree upon, it is firstly that this 'material' is constituted of basalt and the various magmatic gases that accompany it, of which the main ones are water and carbon dioxide, .. and secondly that it is being added at the spreading ridges, .. which is about as far away from the plimsol line on the beach as you can get. It is likewise inconceivable that the effects of millimetre rise of underplating mantle material at the spreading
ridges (Figure 3 here) are going to be felt immediately at this plimsol line, which is thousands of kilometres away from the ridge. What *is* conceivable however, and perfectly logical, is that the amount of juvenile water accompanying mantle adjustment at the spreading ridges will be felt at this plimsol line virtually instantaneously! .. making sea-level there rise. And by the same token of reason outlined above it will be perfectly *illogical* that sea-level will rise in one place and not in another. So if there are any discrepancies from this global rise, then (much) more likely it is the land that is locally subsiding, than that sea-level is locally rising. Sea level in the Seychelles, say, may [ 1 ; 2 ] or may not [ 3 ] be rising, but if it is, it is not due to a global rise in the plimsol line due to global warming.

Thus we have this tandem effect where the global plimsol line of sea-level on the beach rises immediately as water extruded at the spreading ridges is trailed, possibly as much as millenia later, by localised crustal collapse (/subsidence), as the crust's curvature adjusts to upwards rocky mantle growth at the ridges.

= *Double-rise*, .. real rise from the inexorable extrusion of water at the ridges (and the crust at the beach being slow to correct the addition at the ridge), and apparent rise as the crust collapses - but real enough in terms of damage to infrastructure. Of course it is not as simple as that because we don't know (and can never know) the balance of water extruded at the spreading ridges compared to the amount of areal underplating, or the global rates of corollary surface adjustment, but it gives the gist. If it was all water being extruded that was making the Earth bigger, there would be no change in the plimsol line, but it isn't, it is the underplating of the mantle mostly, with some basalt leakage.

So (summary), there we have it - sea-level rise, .. against which we have to balance our original speculation of the plimsol line *falling* as the surface moves out from the Earth's centre. Which returns us to our original consideration, .. what is it that is making our conceptual surface move outwards in the first place so that surface area increases and sea level falls? .. when we must recognise that it is the addition of material at the spreading ridge that makes the Earth get bigger - and the sea surface rise.

So, .. sea level rises (due to the inexorable rise of mantle crust at the spreading ridges - as earthquakes there tell us), .. and sea level falls as the Earth's continental land surface is slow to correct and stays 'high', .. then sea level rises again (on those tardy blocks) as the land does begin to correct and the sea encroaches on the falling land, which we can see *as we speak* in the movements related to the larger earthquakes (e.g., Japan off the Marianas ridge, .. Aceh, off the Indonesian Arc),

..From which we see in this stuttering tandem of 'rising-falling-rising', .. rising-falling-rising, .. rising-falling-rising, .. that on balance sea-level is rising due to *active dynamics* of growth of the Earth, but that it is falling due to *passive resistance* to curvature correction.

Fig.2. Raised beaches Sinchi to Sendai, Japan. Perspective detail of Fig.1. (Right click /New window image for a bigger figure.) Encroachment of the sea following past subsidence results in the build-up of beach deposits. The line of hills on the left appear to mark a fault line, .. possibly an ancient analogue of the orange line in Fig.1. (Solid yellow colour = 0-1m elevation above present sea level; then left as far as the yellow line = 1-6m. For location of central foreground: Google Earth (Tools > decimal degrees) and copy 37.903402, 140.925447 to Search /Fly-to window. (Shift key and left mouse button for perspective view.)

================================

Segue - Global Warming and sea level rising.
================================

So global warming can be measured by the global rise of sea level due to melting icecaps? ... How then is this water flooding the oceans from cold ice-caps above, distinguished from that emmanting from hot volcanoes on the ocean floor below, that we just mentioned, .. with all that colossal amount of volcanic action that has gone towards making up the ocean floors (and oceans) over hundreds of millions of years - and that is still going on?   How much energy (and water) do these earthquakes /volcanoes release compared to my daily consumption. Put it another way, .. how many nuclear reactors and fossil-fuel burning plants would need to be hooked up to make the ocean floor move from one side of the Earth to the other - and then shove it far enough down a subduction zone so that it could do the rest of the job of 'falling' itself?

I think on balance, the Earth, as a gluttonous user of energy, has it. Not me. Or you.

I mean, .. it might be a lot, and might be arithmetically convincing, .. but people must have rocks in their heads if they think that anything we can do in the way of releasing energy is anywhere near a match for what's happening at the spreading ridges and subduction zones, as earthquakes tell us. Some rabbit with a slide-rule could probably compare the two - ice cap melt and spreading ridge emmanation - as practise before tackling the big one - the zone of energy release around the Pacific. And then as a check, just to confirm their hypothesis (about sea level rising due to melting icecaps), .. you know, .. as good science says they should, .. they could maybe calculate what is the delay time between water correction and crustal curvature correction, in order to falsify Earth expansion as an alternative candidate for explaining this sea-level rise. With the intellectual power of the computer that allows recourse to modelling the stiffness factors of tomato sauce, custard, soup, mild steel, tablecloths and the like, it shouldn't be too hard.

And so we wait for the results of the tool-driven, American Way of Doing Science - by theorising and computer modelling on a pot-pourri selection of 'the *(?)* facts'.   Having said which and looking out of my window I see it's going to be a fine day today, so I think I'll do my washing and hope that we don't need another tsunami like the last one to justify going over to green power, sea level rising or not, .. I think it would be really good to clean the place up, beginning with my backyard, which I should be doing instead of molesting Plate Tectonics like this (and global warming) (and science as conducted by the politics of fear) (and the American Way of doing it). But I'll need my breakfast first, .. consume some POWER to get me off my bum.

Sea - level rise. ..   and global warming, .. and /or Earth expansion. The main thing coming out of volcanoes (the ones we can see that is), .. is water. Makes you wonder about the ones we can't see, and don't know about - if anybody's got a way of quantifying them I'd be pleased to hear it. I wonder what assumptions oceanographers would need to make, to work out what water is being added to the oceans from undersea volcanoes compared to that from melting glaciers - and making sea-level rise, and putting the willies of fear up our wobbly pollies, making them make you an' me fork out for a carbon tax.

So, .. sea level rising and is it happening? From a geological perspective I don't see why not. It's happened before and will again, and in between has gone into reverse in a picture of inexorable *falling* of sea-level - to the extent of exposing the full thickness of Archaean, Proterozoic, and Palaeozoic-to-Present thickness of stratigraphic sequence on the continents.

At least all of this rising and falling supports Earth expansion. But not Plate Tectonics. Plate Tectonics has no explanation for this rising and falling of sea level, .. much less the preservation of stratigraphic sequence on the continental crust.

Not that I can see anyway.

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

Suess, Plate Tectonics, Earth expansion, ..

2011-10-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

..and more about reference frames.
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

When we think about it, this question of reference frames really gets quite complicated, .. especially when we get on to the largest scale of all - that of the Earth, and contemplate the difference between movement and growth. We encounter conundrum after conundrum in the ambiguity of relative 'movements'. Moving with respect to what after all?. When we see mountains it is natural to think that part of the crust must have moved up, .. not that the rest of it has somehow moved down. Down to where? There is no room to move down to, .. unless the Earth really *is* hollow and there is standing room down there to accommodate everybody, as well as the crust.

Both Suess's shrinking Earth and Plate Tectonics' convection are predicated on cooling of the Earth's interior, but Suess's shrinking doesn't mean that the Earth's surface is 'moving down', only that the Earth is getting denser (= getting heavier, ..smaller : "shrinking").

If, Like Alice, we were to drink some potion that made us shrink, some onlooker could say that our head moved closer to our feet, .. or just as legitimately that our feet moved closer to our head. But to Alice, using the ruler that is in her pocket that has shrunk with her, she is still (proportionally) the same size: her head and her toes are no closer to each other than before; she only sees herself smaller, .. 'shrunken', .. if she measures herself with the ruler she *used to* have in her pocket, if somehow it hasn't shrunk with her.

This 'Alice-in-Wonderland' phenomenon appears to afflict all geological thinking from that of Suess's 'shrinking Earth' to that of Plate Tectonics 'plate movement' - and even possibly to Earth expansion - the scale difference of dynamical process in regard to points of reference. Suess nearly got it right (to my mind) in that he confronted the conundrum of crossing frames of reference and rationalised differential contraction, in which a brittle crust (one frame of reference) has to adjust to a cooling, shrinking interior (another frame of reference). Chunks of crust would subside along with the cooling (shrinking) mantle substrate to form the ocean floors and leave behind high spots that had to wrinkle somehow to accommodate a smaller surface area thus forming mountains. A bit like Alice shrinking out of her clothes if somehow they didn't shrink with her. He further rationalised that these high spots would then be gravitationally unstable and would collapse to give the (then) perplexing Alpine structures of folding and overthrusting where he lived (such as the Glarus Thrust). A bit like Alice's outsized clothes falling on the floor.

"The Glarus overthrust is a major geological showpiece and it remains at center stage in scientific reasearch. The mechanics of large subhorizontal overthrusts still is an enigma indeed, and Glarus is one place where new theories are tested against observed facts." http://www.geopark.ch/frameset.asp?fChapters_id=150&fHigherChapter_ID=0&fLanguage_ID=1&fSeason_ID=1

The Glarus Thrust (and others like it) is to continental geology by the way, as the Atlantic margins (and others like them) are to oceanic geology - easy once you know, but big problems if you don't.

But where were we, .. .. ..

Mmm, .. Not bad, really, ..when we think about it, in the scope of what was known at the time, .. that idea of a shrinking interior leading to the crust crumpling up like the skin of a shrivelling apple, or subsiding to accommodate a smaller mantle, .. and make mountains where the surface of the original Earth would get left behind in the pre-shrink reference frame and have to adjust by crumpling, while some of it collapsed with the mantle (in the syn-shrink reference frame) to form younger ocean floors. In a kind of sequenced play of gravitational adjustment, shrinking and collapse would lead to the crust keep collapsing out over the ocean floors. We can imagine Suess would have been quite comfortable with the structure of the continental margins of the Pacific as they are known today with the crust creeping out over the mantle.

Now, surely we have to wonder how it can be that exactly the same phenomenon of crustal collapse lends support to exactly opposite ideas. Suess says its the continental crust collapsing over a cooling, shrinking mantle. Earth expansion says its collapsing over an enlarging one, and Plate Tectonics says, yes, it's losing heat, but it's not continental crust that's collapsing at all, but the chilling mantle thats losing heat and collapsing, but unlike Suess, the Earth is staying the same size; the Earth is enlarging at the ridges but shrinking at the trenches (Google [ ocean floors shrinking ]). All of them lose heat, all of them collapse the crust in some way, but one makes the Earth a bit smaller, another hugely bigger, and the third makes it stay the same size...

(Weird.) (Some stuff in that bottle... !)

So we really do have to ask, what is the magic ingredient making these potent behaviours. The answer would appear to be heat in some way. Suess's static Earth has an original heat budget that it is losing, .. Plate Tectonics also has an original heat budget, but is losing it more slowly on account of radio-nucleides that Suess didn't know about (so that the mantle is not static but convecting), .. and Earth expansion is happening by the addition of *extra* heat over and above its original budget - and so is getting massively bigger. The reason for that 'extra heat' is not known, but is manifest in the uncompensated extrusion of the mantle, - uncompensated because the spreading ridges are longer than their original continental breakthrough, and because the structure of the continental margins and the oldest parts of the ocean floors are the same age. Moon capture may be speculated, probably early in the Earth's history, with its most observably dynamic, explosively physical expression culminating in mantle breakthrough in the Mesozoic.

The theory accounting for the extra heat is there for those who are uncomfortable living with the unknown, but from a geological perspective theory is not immediately important. What *is* important is to document the physical expression of the Earth's enlargement. Which means giving special attention to the structures that define it. These are the spreading ridges and their corollary expression as transform faults, and the age and nature of the structures defining continental margins. Transform faults are the most enigmatic structures of all, but all we learn from Plate Tectonics is that they are "a new class of faults" and "the means by which plates move past each other." And (the nonsense) that the offsets exist before the continents begin to separate

Well, .. breathtaking, anti-science BOSH! But by the same boshery an admirable way of avoiding having to look at them and disturb the equilibrium of the so-called best theory since sliced bread. (Which, along with wooden spoons, tea-towels, soup, tablecloths, and other sundry kitchen paraphernalia is the class of theory to which all three rightly belong.)

So much paid for, .. so little result. And so little prospect of further support for research of these cross-cutting fault structures when so much already has led to so little result. At least we can begin by reassessing what we've already got, and look more closely at them. They are every bit as they seem - great cross faults, as they were originally called before Wilson, scribbling in the night, came up with his 'new class of'. (How did they let him get away with it? .. especially Menard, who already had them sussed. Answer? : because he solved a big problem for them by squeezing the genie of Earth expansion into the bottle.)

"..Neither of us believed for a moment in an expanding earth, so we were left with a puzzle." (H.W. Menard, 1986, The Ocean of Truth, a Personal History of Global Tectonics, P.283, Princeton University Press. 353pp.)
http://platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/2011/06/plate-tectonic-theory-texts-and.html

(Well, it's out now. Google-ease, .. before smokoe.) (No probs.)

Let's see who amongst the institutionalised though, will wreck their career on this one. Who will be the clever Johnny-come-lately who stands up and says his colleagues have been pulling themselves all these decades, and try to claim credit for letting them out of the room with all the elephant-dung in it? My guess? Nobody at all, .. They'd get trampled in the rush anyway. Obliviated. Fossilised in gargantuan dollops of dung.

(Wonder if you could bottle the stuff and sell it,... "Guaranteed to make Emperors' clothes fall on the floor.") (http://users.indigo.net.au/don)

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

Sea-floor spreading (Plate Tectonics' glass slipper)

2011-09-15T05:03:00.000-07:00

is Earth expansion's hobnail boot ....
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

It is interesting once you think about it ('fascinating' might be a better word) to consider that the difference between Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion is simply one of frame of reference. Plate Tectonics is merely the two-dimensional 'projection' on to the Earth's surface of what is happening in three. Once you realise that, it is clear that both in their different ways are saying much the same thing .. and fascinating to see the way they dovetail as the 'shadow play' of plate tectonics is revealed in the flesh, so to speak.

The difference is in every way equivalent to describing the rotating, spherical Earth in terms of a flat map projection (only with the rotation omitted). The map is a graphical representation of the facts of the surface of the Earth to be sure, .. but the perspective it presents requires very considerable mental gynmastics to appreciate what it's saying, when compared to the immediate, three-dimensional reality. For example in Fig.2 of this post, It would be almost impossible to appreciate that the mantle rise (/ 'spreading ridge' /'mountain belt') of the Pacific (that's the the big circular structure making up the Pacific oceean floor) and the circumglobal mountain belt of the crust (Alps to the Pacific, then around the American Cordilleras) are the same thing - vertically paired, crust-mantle equivalents.

Of course, it is well acknowledged that "Plate Tectonics is not a description of the facts, but a theory about how those facts may be explained, .. but as a theory it is straight-jacketed by omitting to incorporate the fact that gravity and rotation control the first-order deformation of the Earth (its oblate shape). *And consequently in one way or another, its smaller-scale deformations*. By not recognising the role of gravity and Earth rotation in this hierarchy, Plate Tectonics unavoidably fails to structure the data properly.

The mismatch might be appreciated partly by imagining what it would be like trying to describe the reasons for day and night by using a flat map instead of a spherical globe, .. trying to explain how independently moving 'plates' come to organise themselves to push up the singular elevation which is the mountain belt that goes around the world, .. and trying to explain how how all these plates (which are rigid) manage to grow and move and shrink (all at the same time) without deformation (or earthquakes) and disappear into the Earth, leaving in their wake just, .. well, ..themselves. (Talk about 'rebirthing' in the next life!!)

Which Plate Tectonics has magnificently done - if we ignore all the conundrums and "multiple working stories" it has had to invent. And what's more, regards the glaring contradictions in them, not as incompatible Orwellian doublethink, but as star-spangled, orgasmic opportunities for 'more research'.

.........

The ingenuity that has gone into all this avoidance of 'three-dimensions' is astonishing, .. and simply because of a belief (following from ignoring the significance of the Earth being round and rotating) that there is no way in this two-dimensional, flat-map world that three dimensions can exist. (Not to mention the cost of it.)

It is this projection, and the hubris involved in it, that has seen nicely rounded honest facts become transmogrified into horrible flat ones. The nicest, roundest, most honest fact of all was the everywhere-young age of the ocean floors - a beautiful *DISCOVERY*, which, with the retrofits of the continents, spoke of an Earth getting bigger. What followed however was pure hubristic *INVENTION* to deny it, .. ironically by those very same people who at the same time as being showered in a veritable *river* of beautiful, .. entrancing, .. bewitching facts of their *very own discovery*, brushed their significance aside and sought validation instead in their own inventions, by substituting the ugliness of the hypothetical sisters of convection and subduction in place of the real, existential, captivating beauty of the Earth's rotation coupled with its enlargement by mantle extrusion.

It is this story of Earth expansion, .. of the phoenix rising from the ashes, that will be of future keen interest to the student of the history of science, which thus far is only half told in the so-called "success" of Plate Tectonics in explaining the Earth's geological features. It does not. Its claim to such can only be seen in terms of the string of 'multiple working stories' by which for a time it has been able to claim legitimacy, .. each story virtually independent of the other according to whichever part of the data it cares to address, and each story contradictory of the other; e.g., plate movement *this way* according to spreading ridges and transform faults, or movement *that way* according to earthquakes (Fig.6 here). Or no movement at all according to Earth expansion - but simply fossilised as the trace of upwards growth of the ridges. .. a truly "rigid plate" indeed as both interpretations of Plate Tectonics would have it. But movement? No.

The supreme irony of course is that confirmation of the Earth's expansion lay in those very same physical structures of the ocean floors which must be navigated *before* the ocean floors make it to the hypothetical subduction zone to be subducted - the transform faults and the (fossil) spreading ridges. If a little more time had been spent on thinking about their relationship to each other, instead of trying to shove them down 'subduction zones', Plate Tectonics could never have arisen.

Or perhaps it would, for between the lines of this Cinderella story lies the author of sponsorship - the deep pockets of military spending, .. made even deeper by *not* taking the logical route, and *not* arriving at a logical destination, .. for that destination could have spelt the curtailment of funding.

Science, a thing unto itself, rewards factual *DISCOVERY* and ignores hypothetical *INVENTION*. The legacy of Plate Tectonics that will remain is that of sea-floor spreading. The rest? Is gratuitous hype, but a rich source to the historian, of the way that science works.

" Neither of us believed for a moment in an expanding earth", (Menard, 1986, The Ocean of Truth, p.283)

"While this [expansion] would remove three of my most serious difficulties in dealing with the evolution of ocean basins, I hesitate to accept this easy way out" [cites "philosophically unsatisfying"] (Hess, 1962, History of Ocean Basins p.610)

"The discussion was brief, but it offered Vine the occasion to refer to convection cells as "presumed" and "mythical." Certainly , the many problems related to convection that had been troubling the conference members would have been solved by eliminating convection entirely. " (Menard, The Ocean of Truth, p.276.)

(image courtesy of Disney.)

(If the shoe fits, ... be careful..)

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

Plate Tectonics to Earth expansion - one more time

2011-08-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

Or, .. doing it again for the Platies, .. the Flathead Flat-Earthers of the Earth sciences.
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

Fig.1. Global deformation according to Plate Tectonics. The partition of the Earth into 'plates' according to the distribution of Earthquakes. One of the top ten scientific accomplishments of the second half of the twentieth century, warranting (it is said according to those promoting it) a Nobel Prize. (The map is predicated on the findings of the ocean floor; the geology of the continents is not taken into account.)

"Plate Tectonics is a theory" googles 15,400 entries at the time of writing. Or as *Berkeley.edu more correctly would have it, a framework for understanding many geophysical observations etc..

Based on the distribution of Earthquakes, the Earth's surface can be described as "segmented into a number of plates" (about 8 - 12 depending on who is doing the counting) (and lots of smaller ones to cover exigencies). And the above map is used to illustrate it. Each Plate has a continent on top (or not, as the case may be), and a convection cell underneath, driving the plate (which is basically regarded as the brittle outer shell of the Earth - because of the earthquakes in it), away from the spreading ridge towards a subduction zone where it is returned to the convection cycle. The continent on top, it is said, can collide with another to form mountains, while the ocean floor part of the plate descends to the mantle.

And basically that's about it.

So much for the theory. Let's compare it with the geological reality that shows aspects of global geology whose relationship to the ocean floors is not taken into account in the plate model.

Fig.2 Global deformation according to geology. Structure is dominated by the big circle of the Pacific spreading ridge, and another circle defined by the fold belt of the circum-Pacific (with the bottom half shunted eastwards along the Indonesian Shear - strip of brown from Polynesia to Peru that aligns with the fold belt extending from the Alps to the Himalayas). (Compare with the plate map in Fig.1 which does not take the geology into account. Image courtesy of Unesco.)

Two big circles of global deformation - the Pacific spreading ridge and its circumferential fold belt. The geological map shows the circular elements of Pacific structure, 1. the spreading ridge (much ruptured at 5 and 6 o'clock), and 2. dilation of the pre-Pacific Pangaean equatorial fold belt now configured as the circum-Pacific margin. Note how Pacific spreading merges with that of the Mediterranean where it links with the fold belt extending from the Alps to the circum-Pacific. (Closing the Pacific and the Atlantic returns the fold belt to the Western Mediterranean.)

It is the failure to relate these two aspects of Pacific circularity in Fig.2 that has accounted for the emergence of Plate Tectonics. Instead of going down the geological path and integrating the two, which Harry Hess confessed would solve his "three most pressing problems of the ocean floors", geophysicists chose the sociological route of funding and self-interest, myopically restricting their efforts to the ocean floors and continental margins. Continental exclusion was justified by the military nature of the funding (for 'oceanographic research' read 'submarine warfare'), and theories developed according to this deficiency, with a validation of sorts sought in the supposedly democratic but specious "principle of multiple working hypotheses" which allows one bit of nonsense to exist side-by-side with another, propping each other up like Tweedledum and Tweedledee. (Crossing eyes to see them as one, does nothing to negate the reality of 'doublethink' that passes in some quarters for scientific enterprise.)

Just for the record, Mr Frank B.Taylor deserves a mention here, because he too thought that the Earth's global features were due to Moon capture. His drop-out from formal education described on the wikipedia may be intended to denigrate his ideas, but I think in his case, eschewing formal education just might have been a positive; not all 'education' (rote learning) is edifying in the way it is thought to be. (Something about flat-headery here, .. and stunned mullets.)

"Children have this habit of thinking for themselves, and the point of education is to cure them of this habit." ~ Bertrand Russell

Fig.3. F.B. Taylor's interpretation of the circumglobal mountain belt due to crustal drift from the poles to the equator. (Image from Kearey, Klepeis, and Vine, 2009 (Global Tectonics, Wiley Blackwell - 482 pps) after Taylor, F.B., 1910, "The origin of the Earth's plan"

Certainly Naomi Oreskes in her book 'Theory and Method in American Earth science' seems to regard Taylor (an American) as something of a traitor to the tribal tweedle-dee-dum consensus-think democratic way of doing science according to the principle of multiple working hypotheses, which she makes out has proved its credentials in the development of Plate Tectonics. But Taylor did go to the trouble of writing a book about his ideas, which is no small measure of commitment regardless of right or wrong, and I think just from his illustration (with some modifcation to include the northern arm of the Alpine - Himalayan fold belt as in Fig.2 above, and the opening of the Atlantic which was not known about in his day) he's right on the money. It *was* after all a hundred years ago. Taylor did see the equatorial singulartity of structure that the mountain belt represents, a singularity that is not recognised in Plate Tectonics (and inexplicable if it were), and also perplexing to most advocating Earth expansion today. From the viewpoint of Moon capture the *formation* of the Earth's equatorial bulge advocated by Taylor as well as its *deformation* exemplified in the loopy shapes of known gravitational collapse, would be obvious sequential effects if capture is correct (especially if the Earth was a smaller size). Stepping back a hundred years, it is intriguing to see how Taylor (and later Wegener) nearly got it right, and chastening too, to consider the blind alley that Plate Tectonics, with all its technological and consensus support, has led us down.

Such is the legacy of the politics of fear that funded this diversion. Adapting John F. Kennedy's claim to being a Berliner (something like a Frankfurter, or a Hamburger), and Ronald Reagan's later challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we might say, "Well, Mr Plate Tectonics, .. If you value truth in science, If you value the future of geological research, .. if you value the sophomoric cleanslates you scribble your rubbish on, .. TEAR DOWN THIS WALL ! " (of ignorance and fear). But they can't because to do so exposes the very ignorance and fear that lies behind it, and opens up a very telling window to the way that Plate Tectonics has evolved, and to the operation of consensus science in general, and the sand on which self-serving consensus typically builds .. which we will draw a wet cloth over, noting only the degree to which virtually all educational institutions (secondary, tertiary and post tertiary - and the media) are complicit, .. and hope that the said wet cloth will encourage them to clean up their act.

Figure 2 is of course a flat-map projection, but that in no way detracts from the point, that within a geological framework of scale and time and the workings of stratigraphic and structural superposition, the rough parallellism between the two circularities of structure shows they are related in a spatial and temporal sense.

Fig.4 Related circularities of Pacific structure. The flat-map circularity of the Pacific spreading ridge transposed on to a sphere to show the near-parallellism of the Pacific spreading ridge (half-toned on the reverse side of the image) with the Eurasian sector of the circumglobal mountain belt. Indonesia (not scribed, the better to avoid obscuring detail ) duplicates the arc of the Himalayas and marks the original locus of breakout of Pacific dilation.

Fig.5. Circularity of initial breakout of the proto-Pacific. Correcting for ridge displacements at 5 and 6 o'clock in Fig.2 highlights the initial circularity of the spreading ridge centred on the now collapsed and disrupted Indonesian bubble. The missing half of the roof of the bubble in (b) now constitutes the disrupted Western Pacific margin which has swivelled open to the Russian Peninsula (Fig.6 here), over the scar of which Asia is collapsing (Figs4, 5 here)

Once part of the equatorial bulge in Pangaean times, the Indonesian loop represents the remnant of breakthrough of a mantle bubble, expressed now as the great circle of the Pacific Dilation. Growth from a small circle breakout (Fig.5b) to a great circle (Figs 4, 5a) necessitates an extension along the spreading ridge that can only mean global EXPANSION. There is no alternative. It is as plain as the extents of Pacific Ocean that describe it.

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle" ~ George Orwell

And why was it missed? Well, it wasn't missed. It was (and is) interpreted in terms of lateral movement of the continents away from the spreading ridge, for which ridge-lengthening must be ignored, for acknowledging it would have been admission of expansion, which in turn would have driven oceanic research down a (continental) geological road, and scuppered the funding. The American military (= submarine warfare) were not interested in geological questions of 'plates' or Earth expansion. Before there is research there needs to be funding, and the politics of the time represented an offer of funding of very deep pockets indeed - unasked.. Science, strapped for cash at the best of times, does not look a gift horse in the mouth when one turns up on its doorstep unannounced with saddlebags of gold, frankincense and myrrh (especially when it looks like a donkey), .. well, .. who could blame them? It was like Christmas after all.

Columbus Iselin, Director of Woods Hole, wrote, "The effects of this great outpouring of money on oceanography are by no means all healthy. In the first place nobody knows how long it will last." ( H.W. Menard, 1986, The Ocean of Truth) See comment re funding in this blog.

The geological reconstruction above showing expansion, is self-evident to the point of hardly worth mentioning (I really don't know why I bother), because the continental margins of the oceans are virtually of the same age as the initiation of the Pacific spreading ridge. Allowing for a degree of crust - mantle offset in the Pacific they are spatially the same thing too - just as the Atlantic spreading ridge and the Atlantic margins are the same thin. There is simply no space, (spatial or temporal), for any speculation regarding the existence of a pre-existing Panthalassa (necessary in Plate Tectonics to keep the Earth the same size). Panthalassa (and therefore the Earth maintaining a constant size) is a myth. The Earth has got very substantially bigger since the Mesozoic. The Plate Map (Fig.1) and the arrows showing plate movement that go with it (Fig.3 here) are a furphy.

That's it.

Fig.6. Wonderland. Excused from the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, Sophie More encounters the doublethink of the Principle of Multiple Working Hypotheses in the forest of trees known as Plate Tectonics

[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-

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

Plate Tectonics to Earth Expansion

2011-08-24T15:57:00.000-07:00

.. is the change from subduction to overriding.
( 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/

New study shows the Earth is staying the same size

2011-08-17T17:45:00.000-07:00

Or, .. Earth expansion gets a free kick
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

"..Since Charles Darwin's time, scientists have speculated that the solid Earth might be expanding or contracting. That was the prevailing belief, until scientists developed the theory of plate tectonics, which explained the large-scale motions of Earth's lithosphere, or outermostshell." http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20110816.html

This article, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, is rather interesting, not least for the tacit and calculated admission by Nasa that Earth expansion exists as something warranting speculation (much less that it is alive and well), but also for the opportunity to stress the essential difference between Earth expansion and Plate Tectonics, .. which is that (within the logical principles of structural and stratigraphic superposition on which geology is based) Earth expansion is tantamount to fact, where Plate Tectonics is merely its poor cousin - theory.

The difference between the two is apparent from the different approaches used to develop their respective positions - Plate Tectonics using geo-physics after the experimental / theoretical ways of the laboratory, and Earth expansion from geo-logic.

It would be nice to be able to say that Plate Tectonics is logical too, but it isn't, .. it's full of contradictions due to the way that it has developed according to the "American way" of doing science (Naomi Oreskes, 1999, The rejection of Continental Drift - Theory and Method in American Earth Science, Oxford University Press.). Oreskes' analysis of this, which appears to have been stimulated by her immediate post-graduate experience (quote1 here), is pretty good, but in weighing the various sociological factors underpinning the 'way', seems to me to carry an element of nationalistic apologia, stressing the historical emergence of democracy from the American crucible over the later emergence of naked economic power, .. implying that 'The American Way' is deeply rooted in the psyche of the American pioneering spirit where Jack is every bit as good as his Master, and that what he has to say is legitimised, .. forged even, ..on the anvil of the Principle of Multiple Working Hypotheses. It seems a genuflection, rather than a dog-leg that might better be regarded as a diversion.

This principle says that provided the data are kept in mind all conjecture and speculation is relevant, and one idea (Jack's) is as good as another (his Master's). It doesn't matter if ideas are contradictory, the point is legitimacy, and since both ideas are 'of the data' then by definition they both have equal currency. This Orwellian doublethink, where flights of outlandishly nutty and contradictory ideas can exist happily (and legitimately) side-by-side with ideas that might be judged to have more respectable sobriety is apparently characteristic of the democratic "American Way". Well, .. why not? Anybody can have an idea after all, and the more the better. And who, after all is to say which one is better? The duality here is reinforced by the implication that whilst the data is the anchor, by giving legitimacy to the *plethora* of ideas that may be tied to it, the very connection to the data is effectively severed, or at the very least severely weakened. The ideas come to stand as representative of the data; the ideas *become* the data.

Earth expansion on the other hand stays refreshingly and wholly within the facts themselves. Guided by the proper application of the dual principles of stratigraphic and structural superposition it brooks no contradictions. It merely structures the data according to scale and time, and lets the data speak for itself. It makes no theories, no speculations, no hypotheses. It is axiomatically as tantamount-to-fact as geo-logic dictates it must be. It *is* the data from the beginning. No 'becoming' needed. It is as tantamount-to-factual as is the existence of the oceans, .. as is the difference in length between the spreading ridges and their initial lengths of breakthrough, .. as are mountains carved by erosion from a peneplained surface, ..as is the gravitational collapse of fold belts and their riding out over the ocean floors .. as is the plethora of Earthquakes on the continents (and their paucity on the ocean floors), and as are the many more facts relating to the Earth's continental (and oceanic) surface. It is in need of no theory. It is described simply by the proper layout of the facts in space and time. It *is* the facts.

Why Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion are so much at odds can be substantially understood with reference to their sources of funding. Geology remains essentially a university enterprise, funded by whatever instruments make it their business to be concerned with science education. Geophysics on the other hand grew out of the massive military spending during the last war and later during the cold war and more recently the space race. Its concern with education is no more than a publicity stunt, a "sop to the barking public dog". If it were otherwise, it would explore the obvious option of Earth expansion advanced by the logic of the above-said geo-principles, rather than trying to debunk it and shore up what is obviously a derelict, sinking ship. But it won't (explore). Securing funds for the 'American Way' is the pre-eminent purpose, not addressing the contention between the two, .. and the above-linked article is a PR stunt to that end.

So let's look at this PR stunt :-

Two decades of black-box observations asserting that the Earth is not getting bigger is pitched against two to three hundred million years of geological evidence that says it is. This assertion-against-evidence is based on the unstated assumption that geological process is uniformly continuous when it isn't; history tells us that geological processes are far from linear and continuous. On this ground alone the value of 'measurement' is negated. Why would anyone with a smidgin of geological nouce seriously suggest that two decades of measurements mean anything against two-to-three hundred million years of geological evidence to the contrary? Even if measurements did show the Earth to be getting bigger, how long, say, would anyone suggest we wait to be sure things are not going to go into reverse? One look at erosion profiles is enough to tell us of the long periods of quiescence (and the rapid resumption - and reversals) of land movements. It's what crustal adjusment to geological process is all about.

Also the crust skates on the mantle, evidenced by the commonly discordant structural relations between the two (Plate Tectonics says that the continents are fixed to the mantle but the reality is otherwise.) On this ground too, measurement is invalidated. The pattern of movement in the time - series data is certainly interesting support for changes in orientation of the crust with respect to Earth's rotation, but this is a different thing from growth, and far more detail would be required anyway before such a conclusion could legitimately be drawn. ( The Earth's rotation is simply ignored in Plate Tectonics, despite it being responsible for the first-order deformation of the planet - its oblateness.)

That's as regards 'measurement'. Here are some geological aspects that 'measurement' ignores (which it shouldn't).

1. "Sea-floor spreading" (*is* Earth expansion by another word).
2. "Subduction" (is overriding, which marks the 'curvature correction of the continental crust, seen in the circumglobal fold belt as gravitational collapse all the way from the Alps to the Pacific.)
3. Geology tells us that earthquakes belong to the continental side of the subduction zone, .. the oceanic side is by comparison seismically dead, .. and compared to the continents probably always has been.) In other words, moving sea floors is just bosh. As the plethora of earthquakes tell us, it's the continental crust that's doing the moving, not the ocean floors.
4. "Transform faults" are characterised by very large vertical displacements and commonly graben structures defining the ridge offsets, .. and as well, physically deform the ridges. They are categorically *NOT* structures that existed prior to continental separation as necessitated by Plate Tectonics.
5. "Spreading ridges" are longer than their initial extents of breakthrough, which can only happen as the ridges move up. (a global-scale, two-hundred million year geological measurement so obvious that all black box contradiction can be chucked down the nearest subduction zone, .. and which is, of course, indicative of expansion.)
6. Mountains built by crustal crumpling due to plate collision (a central plank of Plate Tectonics) is simply inadmissible since it ignores the peneplanation that precedes incision.

The Chinese authorship (Xiaoping Wu) is interesting, given that Earth expansion is alive and well on the other side of the Great Wall. It does seem odd that Nasa would go to the bother of refuting Earth expansion this side of the wall, since popular consensus considers it dead anyway, so possibly the article is intended for Chinese consumption, given Google's excursion in that direction. Let's see what happens when China puts up some gravity-measuring ballistics satellites of its own, instead of our
lot, which we're told are so that we know when to hang the washing out (since we're talking about wool-pulling over the eyes of the barking public looking for value for money).

".. So why should we care if Mother Nature is growing? < ... > Scientists care because, to put movements of Earth's crust into proper context, they need a frame of reference to evaluate them against. Any significant change in Earth's radius will alter our understanding of our planet's physical processes and is fundamental to the branch of science called geodesy, which seeks to measure Earth's shape and gravity field, and how they change over time.http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110817120527.htm

But if Nasa is considering some sort of resurrection of Earth expansion to justify Plate Tectonics, then refutation by two decades of arithmetic is no way to dispute the geological facts of more than twenty or thirty million of them, especially in the face of the geological deficits cited above.

Sorry guys. Won't wash. Far from putting to rest any speculation of Earth expansion, by mentioning it, you have simply given it legitimacy. Thanks.

Big Hand for NASA please (capital enterprise). But seriously. Earth exapansion speaks for a potential forward leap in physics that's probably the biggest yet, and most are afraid to face. But the geological support is there. In its understanding of energy conversion physics has already gone half-way. But only half way. Let's see it go the other half.

The evidence? (You're standing on it, and washing with it, building your houses with it, and eating your weeties with it.) What's hard about it?

Come on, .. get a move on!

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

Japan Earthquake March 11th, 2011 - Update

2011-07-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

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

What chance the big one in Tokyo?http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12792943

Fig.1 Section showing the location of Tokyo on the crest of the Marianas Ridge. Big arrow shows the direction of slumping here. Small arrow underneath with red flag shows direction of 'subduction' according to the USGS. Click image for a bigger one. Red arrow shows the ridge crest. (Earthquakes are for the last seven days; compare with year-to-date, Fig.2)

The concern for a large earthquake in Tokyo is well justified given its location on the crest of the Marianas Ridge and the continuing seismicity reflecting the slip off it (last seven days shown). Convention relates the large earthquake of March 11th 2011 to the westwards movement of the Pacific 'plate' and its subduction beneath Japan, but the reality shows the epicentres of the Earthquakes, particularly the shallow ones (brown in the figure) to be on the continental side. Sure, it's a zone of Earthquakes, but a wide one, and one whose active dynamics is the continental side. The only relativism here is that the oceanic lithosphere is seismically dead relative to the continental lithosphere, and is *not* moving. The small arrows showing 'subduction' (movement of the ocean floors) according to the USGS are misleading. Those earthquakes on the oceanic side are just due to the load on the continental side bearing down on the ocean floor as Japan continues to collapse off the Marianas ridge. The subduction mantra is just trotted out for public benefit, to show solidarity with what everybody else says, but I hope readers of this blog are sufficiently aware of its general theme to be, at the very least, sceptical of the consensus story. Consensus science has a homocentric agenda, not a scientific one.

The pattern of earthquakes for the year thus far (supported also by those of previous years), and current movements beginning with the big one in March, could be interpreted as having taken the load off the Marianas overhang, or it could be interpreted as a harbinger of more to come. It's very difficult if not impossible to say, but most emphatically, in view of the stakes involved, attention should be given to the *Supermoon factor*, popular myth or not. Two substantial quakes, a month apart coincident with 'the factor' is just too much of a coincidence to make for a comfortable night's sleep.

Well, ..I don't really know about supermoons. I'm not tracking them, but whenever consensus-science pooh-poohs something, you want to be very cautious when the evidence (or reason) says it's maybe not pooh at all. Just look too at the other current crop of Earthquakes that won't go away, down on the Uyeda Ridge.

Fig.2. Analogous slumping. The small cluster of shallow earthquakes appears to reflect a similar obstruction presented by the Uyeda Ridge to the eastwards slump of the Mariana Ridge itself.

... which also appear to be a consequence of sticking on an obstruction. Could supermoon-pull be a trigger to unstick overriding, lifting the upper plate in each case over the lower one, .. aided by water flux? Just how *does* groundwater move with the tides, in a zone riddled with earthquakes (fractures) that have been happening just about every day for hundreds of millions of years? It's not exactly an area that's typical of the rest of the world. Sure, .. the deep zone of earthquakes outcrops *east* of the Ridge, and would appear to cut underneath it as it dips west, .. but it's not the deep Earthquakes that are the problem, .. it's the shallow ones, and the tectonics of the crust-mantle interface globally (if earthquakes are anything to go by) are crust-driven, .. not mantle driven (above link - "seismically dead"), .. meaning that the zone of immediate concern (where algorithmic processing of seismic data is being done) should be down along the Japan Islands (thin red line), not down along the Marianas (= Pacific plate). The structure of the Marianas Ridge ( 'The Big Leaner' (Fig 2) related to the breakthrough of the Indonesian 'Bubble; Figs.5, 6 same link) is different from the structure of crustal overriding with the shallower earthquakes. It's these creeping shallower ones down the length of Japan through the Phillipines (= the crust) that should be the concern.

Shallow earthquakes concentrate on the seamounts where eastwards creep ("overriding) gets hung up, .. and the Marianas Ridge is a real stopper! By and large it seems to be the shallow breaks that have given the string of the Japan Islands as a whole, and the crest of the Marianas Ridge goes right under Tokyo (Fig.1).

So what about those earthquakes? Are they propagating south, .. or what? And might it not matter which way they propagate anyway? There's a strong east-west topographic fabric in Japan and an east-westerly factor appears to have been implicated in the trigger of March 11th. (supermoon link above, Fig.2). And the whole of the Marianas Ridge is riddled with east-westerly structure, defined by the ancient (?defunct?) cross-faults on the ridge (reflected in the topography of the island).

The force of water lifted boats in the harbour on to dry land. Could the same force of water (by moon-pull) in bedrock help to lift Japan off the Marianas ridge, unsticking it and making it collapse into the trench? Rocks are easily taken to be dry and hard, but some tens of metres into the ground they're full of water in many places, and nowhere moreso, surely, than round the Pacific where earthquakes have been shattering the crust every day for hundreds of millions of years. This is not a pore fluid issue, .. but serious hydraulics within highly pervasive fracture networks. To make a point by overstatement, the ground is probably more fractures than coherent rock-body ("gravel"). Could tidal pull 'disaggregate' it and make it unstable to the extent of triggering that disturbance in Fig.2?

It's not just tsunamis that happen when earthquakes go off, .. groundwater levels in bores on the other side of the world fluctuate significantly in response to Earthquakes. What about the lunar (supermoon) tidal response?

Just a thought..

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

Plate Tectonics to Earth expansion - Facts Rule

2011-07-23T06:40:00.000-07:00

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

In the beginning was the Word,
and the word was ('plain', .. or is it 'plane'? - or plate maybe... Or..?)

A peneplain is a low-relief plain representing the final stage of fluvial erosion during times of extended tectonic stability. The existence of peneplains, and peneplanation as a geomorphological process, is not without controversy, due to a lack of contemporary examples and uncertainty in identifying relic examples. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peneplain

Perusing the personal accounts of the history of development of Plate Tectonic theory (Oreskes), I find it very interesting how the originators of the concept made no attempt along the way to address the geological *problems that arose in relation to the continents, .. in particular the development of mountains, and the peneplanation that precedes them, still one of the biggest conundrums of geology. However, I guess as remarked in earlier posts the brief was oceanic in nature). It seems to have been all about trying to shoehorn the data into a certain concept of sea-floor *spreading*, to support convection, to avoid getting embroiled in questions of Earth expansion. Those who came later had a go, and are largely responsible for the Plate Tectonics in the form it is today as regards continental geology ("plate collisions = mountain building), where before it was essentially all about (and just about) "sea-floor spreading", an achievement indeed and Plate Tectonics' true legacy in the history of science (except that it's not spreading /2D, ..it's growing /3D). It is its companion correlative, *subduction*, that will be forgotten, and indeed this is already happening in the transitional terminology to "overriding" and "Flat Subduction", increasingly being recognised by consensus around the Pacific margin at the expense of the 'ordinary' sort of subduction with its implication of return to the deep lower mantle. Sea-floor spreading coupled with overriding on the asthenosphere and large-scale extensional detachments ('skating') at the crust-mantle interface will be eventually recognised, when will follow consensus acceptance of Earth expansion as the dynamic of global deformation. It will not, however, satisfy the rabbits, engrossed as they are in the deductive, instrument-driven, 'American Way' of doing science. Hence we can look out for controversy here in the future, for in the background will be geophysics' big brother, the physics establishment, who will be casting a cold and beady eye over developments in this field because it will illuminate their own house regarding ignore-ance of the terrestrial evidence for the manner in which the Earth has doubled in size in the recent geological past by the extrusion of newly created mantle..

However, .... to the geology..

To address the question of the formation of mountains it must be understood that fold belts and mountain belts are not quite the same thing. Compression generates folding, but neither folding nor compression would appear to form the high tracts of land that are eroded to form mountains, for two reasons :-

Mountains are carved either from an originally peneplaned surface, or a stratigraphic bedding-plane surface, i.e., there is a 'punctuation mark' of erosion between crustal crumpling and the beginning of making mountains.
If today is anything to go by, mountain belts (elevations) are one of the most extensive and continuous features on Earth. The one of the present day is circumglobal, extending from the Alps through the Middle East and the Himalayas to China, and, with the Pacific and Atlantic closed, .. back again to the Alps, and has evolved over the last 250-300my (probably longer)

Fig.1. Tibet. Peneplaned surface forming the Roof of the World. Flat as a tack.

With regard to the first point, peneplaned surfaces and extensive bedding surfaces form at the lowest level of elevation and if caused to rise (or if sea level falls) are immediately incised. With regard to the second point, randomly moving plates causing such an organised circumglobal elevation is a contradiction in terms. Both militate against Plate Tectonics' simplistic view of mountain formation.

So how did this simplistic, crustal crumpling (up) view of mountain building ('orogenesis') arise? And why does it survive?

It arose from an inappropriate and inadvertent 'bottom-up', jigsaw-type extrapolation, when the question should really be addressed from the top down by a consideration of the whole. And survives for many reasons, ..principally because of the different cognitive faculites that people have ('lumpers and splitters'; 'wood for the trees' syndrome; pattern recognition), and because science tends to be anatomical and reductive, rather than wholistic and integrative, and because science favours the reductive cognitive machinery of the mind. The anatomical - reductive sort of science ('splitters') works down from a given datum, reducing it to its elemental parts in an attempt to understand how the whole is put together, then reassembling it in a 'jigsaw-fit' sort of way (deductive method). The other sort ('lumpers', inductive) see things the other way, looking upwards and outwards from the datum of the thing itself, discovering context in the surrounding environment. And once thus placed, the thing becomes self-evident, needing of no explanation. It is as it is. Its importance, its validity, .. its raison d'etre, lies in its connection to the larger picture. In the jigsaw analogy this is 'seeing the picture on the front of the box'. With the picture revealed, the pieces are irrelevant. Why bother with them? Move on, or if necessary, *then* pull it apart, once the contextual setting is in place.

The first may be termed 'problem solving' (deductive), the second, 'discovery' (inductive). Critical to both is an awareness of scale of approach. Overlay the whole lot with personal predilection of a belief system and the difficulty (or impossibility) in changing it ('world view') and you have the explanation why the simplistic, crustal crumpling view of mountain building survives. And probably always will survive, because it is railroaded by *The Word* ('orogenesis'). The word comes not only with a ready-packaged meaning, but with a belief system as well, .. with no requirement (and no encouragement) to look further.

All of which (in addressing this business of mountain building) may be summed up as 'scale-of-approach'. At all scales. Get the scale right and you're ok. Get it wrong, and there are problems. Science of course needs the balance of both, and for it to work best have the 'discovery' sort embedded within the problem-solving sort. In science problems are fine, but tend to be overly encouraged as a working method because of a natural human tendency to corruption ("more research needed" = funding). However the best science is discovery (working above 'the line') but suffers the opposite way. It is seen as haphazard and undefined, .. 'serendipity', .. and attracts no funding and therefore no umbrella of institutional kudos. Discovery knows not the path to take. It sees the world differently, and takes the view that, if properly and successfully executed, .. "If there are problems, then there's a problem"). Plate Tectonics is full of needy 'problems', needing "more research". (Well, .. I won't say none exist, but those that do, need to be looked at differently : 'above the line' so to speak. (You don't answer the problem why the cup is on the table by examining either the cup (or the table), so to speak.)

Bottoms up. From outcrops, local mapping and regional studies, geologists are used to thinking that crumpling of the layered sequences of the Earth's crust is a consequence of compression at one scale or another. It follows naturally that high stands of the Earth's surface that exhibit folds, are lifted by compressional force. A folding event, defined by a set of folds and their related impressed metamorphic fabrics, is therefore regarded as one of mountain building, and related to a stress-field accordingly. Another set of folds with their elemental fabrics (axial planes, fold plunges, sets of mineral growths, fractures and so on) oriented differently, is seen as a different folding event - another 'mountain-building' episode. And so on. It may happen that two sets of folds and their related fabrics may be distinguished in a single region, leading to a conclusion that there are two fold events represented, and therefore two mountain building episodes. This interpolation is particularly so in the deeply eroded and now-exposed older and more highly metamorphosed terranes of Archaean and Proterozoic age. Hence arises the notion of overprinting of one 'orogenic' (mountain-building) episode on another.

And of course, if there is 'mountain building', there must be mountain erosion. Erosion gives sediments, sediments get buckled (by 'Earth forces' /crustal compression), buckling gives mountains, ..which are eroded to form sediments.. which get buckled to form mountains etc. etc. This cycle, with various adaptations, and which is roughly known as the 'geologic cycle', arises out of the underlying principles of stratigraphic and structural superposition mentioned in the last paragraph and gave rise to the concept (deriving directly from field observation) of the 'geosyncline' - a belt of subsidence of the Earth's crust that filled with sediments that would subsequently be compressed (folded) to form a zone of elevation. In other words, 'mountain belts' (zones of folding) were not just formed of crumpled stratigraphy, they developed where pre-existing stratigraphy was thickest and most deeply depressed into the crust. Thus the question, how did a deep, elongate zone filled with sediments and formed by extension become inverted (by compression) to stand as a mountain belt? And most importantly, do it as a continuing sequence of events, .. in the same location.

This was the spatial and temporal problem that confronted geology before Plate Tectonics came along. How could 'Earth forces' change seemlessly from a system of extension to one of compression in the same spot? Plate Tectonics purported to solve it with the 'Wilson Cycle', but only explains the spatial aspect, for in order for a 'trough' to invert and become a mountain belt, a Panthalassa-sized ocean floor (for which there is no evidence) has to close between them - and do it in the (non-existent) blink of geological time. As well as which, a companion extensional trough somewhere else (and for which there is also no evidence) has to open in order to compensate for the compression causing the inversion. As a solution, the Wilson Cycle creates more problems than it solves.; it doesn't work.

Tops down (the naked truth).   There is, and quite possibly only ever has been, one mountain belt - the belt of elevation that, with the axial split in it, and the Atlantic closed, encircled the Earth in the Pangaean equatorial position, which is the one we see today. Unesco's enterprise to produce a world geological map, coupled with satellite view from the Star Wars program (another funded by the politics of fear) has provided us with a stunning, at-a-glance view of the Earth that in the basic information it provides transcends earlier speculation regarding orogenesis, for it shows the architecture of elevation we call mountain belts not only to be global, but unequivocally to be incised from a surface that was once a peneplain, i.e.,, a surface that was once formed essentially at sea-level, but now occupies a position some thousands of metres above it.   Moreover, not only is this belt of elevation carved from a flat surface (and not just one, there are several representing periodic peneplanation), much of the strata underlying that surface is also flat, or nearly so. Modern technology has telescoped a hundred years of boots-in-the-field confirmation of this erosional architecture (ignored in "the new global tectonics") into a few hours of Google Earth view, Yet it is all there in the literature of more than half a century ago, consigned to dusty library stacks. But it's a gold mine of field observations and will need resurrected.

****************
So here's the question:   How do flat strata encircling the Earth in a Pangaean equatorial position come to be elevated to thousands of meteres above sea level? And how does folding of the crust in general relate to it when this belt is also (but not always) a zone of folding?   Answers relating to isostatic uplift, such as are invoked for uplift of the land in Scandinavian regions as postulated icecaps melted, are simply inadmissible on grounds of scale, equatorial location, and globally related geological structure, and can be summarily dismissed. To answer it, we must consider the following facts.

****************

Fact :- The Earth today is not spherical; it is slightly oblate. (Plate Tectonics agrees with its oblateness in relation to spin, but sees no relevance as regards global deformation.) (Shame!)
Fact :- The Earth's crust is most recently split from the north pole to nearly the south pole, exposing the mantle as the Atlantic, .. i.e., a longitudinal split symmetrical with the Earth's rotation pivoted at the north pole. (Plate tectonic sees no relevance in this polar-symmetric rupture. It calls such a pole of pivot an 'Euler pole', and regards them potentially located anywhere on the Earth's surface, according to the vagaries of needy 'plate movement.')
Fact :- An earlier extensional split encirled the Earth's equator in Pangaean times. (Plate Tectonics - ditto). Such meridional splits compel a heuristic association of sorts between dilation, gravity and Earth's rotation.
Fact :- This equatorial split bisects the belt of elevation encircling the Pangaean equator (the 'Circumglobal Mountain Belt), dilating it along its axis and thus partitioning the Earth into northern and southern hemispheres (Fig.4 here.) (Plate Tectonics cannot accommodate this circumglobal continuity of elevation as a product of "independent plate movement" and does not recognise the equatorial split. It also needs to invoke compression here, not extension, and consequently two opposite 'plate-events', compression and extension, in the same location (derisively called by others - not me, .. NooOoo.. "accordion" or "squeezebox" tectonics).
Fact :- This dilational equatorial split included a spherically-shaped mantle breakthrough in the Indonesian region, which was the focus of synchronous dilation that created the Pacific, and which scissored open to form the Western Pacific. (Plate Tectonics recognises only its dismembered anatomy as the Western Pacific margin, not its original circularity) and has trouble explaining the arcuate shapes of dismemberment.)
Fact :- The Indonesian breakthrough is antipodal to the Mediterranean region, which with the Caspian and Black Seas is a zone of incipient mantle breakthrough and the hinge of global hemispherical dilation. (Plate Tectonics sees the Mediterranean as a zone of continental collision and compression causing the crumpling up of the Alps).
Fact :- Decades of fieldwork have confirmed the Alps to be a zone of gravitational collapse folding, not crumpling compression. A similar view extends to folding eastwards to the Himalyas. (Plate Tectonics just simply ignores this work, while crying "more research needed" to substantiate its view of the (extensional) Mediterranean as a compressional zone (because there's a mountain belt there).
Fact :- The Pangaean equatorial belt of elevation has a peneplaned surface, which was once formed near sea-level, is presently elevated, and is being eroded to form mountains. (Plate Tectonics does not recognise the formation of mountains from a peneplaned surface here ; geomorphology is simply not part of its 'world view'.)
Fact :- The belt of equatorial (circumglobal) Pangaean elevation is also substantially a belt of folding, with fold trends parallel to the belt, .. meaning the folding is equatorial and circumglobal too. (Plate Tectonics cannot accommodate this fact in its model of "independent plate movement.)
Fact :- Not all the belt of elevation is folded, which means 'elevation' and folding are not directly causally related. (Plate Tectonics does not recognise this disconnect, .. says elevation is due to 'crumpling' or to "isostatic" adjustment.)
Fact :- Tibet, the "Roof of the World" is constituted of the Mesozoic sea floor, and much of it shows virtually no folding. (Plate Tectonics attributes this elevation to "plate collision", i.e., both 'head-to-head' compression and the simultaneous sliding of India under Asia (depending who you read) ; both are mutually contradictory.)
Fact :- The mantle extrudes the crust, constituting the ocean floors, which are everywhere younger than the continents ("sea-floor spreading"). (This is the singular, creditable and heroic achievement of oceanic research, that was aborted by the "necessary adjunct concept" of subduction (Atwater in Oreskes)).   Concerted attempts to substantiate it as a zone of destruction to partner sea-floor spreading (and to avoid its interpretation as overriding) led to the concept of Plate Tectonics.
Fact :- The so-called 'subduction zone' is a zone of Earthquakes at the contact between continental and oceanic lithospheres, which are respectively seismically active and inactive, indicating that the zone is dynamically related to processes active in the *continental* crust, not the ocean floors (mantle). (Plate Tectonics attempts to explain this by the 'Titanic Factor': when the ship up-ends, the water sloshes over the hull as it plunges to the bottom. In other words, when the slab of oceanic lithosphere sinks it pulls chunks off the continental buttress in front of it (but also claims that if there was a continent on top of the sinking slab, that continent would batter the buggery out of the buttress and form mountains like the Himalayas.) (Raises questions re. the 'energetics' of the system.)
Fact :- The 'spreading' ridges are longer today than the length of continental margins they originally broke through; means the ocean floors have grown in the direction of the ridges, rather than as Plate Tectonics has it, that the continents have moved away from the ridges, i.e., that the ridges have moved up and that apparent 'sideways movement' of the ocean floors is merely a consequence of upward growth. And that the Earth has thereby got bigger. (Plate Tectonics ignores this length difference.)
Fact :- The great cross-faults that transect the spreading ridges are synchronous-to-later than the ridges and show characteristics of normal faulting, transcurrent faulting, dilation and growth consistent with outwards movement of the Earth's crust from the centre. (In order to maintain convection as a mechanism for ocean floor displacement, Plate Tectonics proposes that these faults existed *before* the ocean floors began to open, and considers it confirmed in a study of earthquake first motions carried out by L Sykes (1967), specifically to test the hypothesis. However since the ocean floors ("oceanic lithosphere") didn't exist then, there is a question what these faults existed in before (/when) the ocean floors began to open, and how they later came to be in the oceanic lithosphere where they are now., .. given that oceanic lithosphere is only created as the continents move apart.

.........

Virtually all the above facts are either not recognised or are ignored in Plate Tectonics as inconvenient, but are (axiomatically) consistent with an Earth that is getting bigger. Earth expansion therefore provides a better explanation of global geology than Plate Tectonics because it explains the facts in a more integrated way, accommodates facts that Plate Tectonics ignores, and others that Plate Tectonics fails to recognise or cannot accommodate Numerous other facts can be added, all of which are consistent with an Earth getting bigger, and refute a plate model.

The 'Word' after all seems to have shifted a bit away from 'plane' or 'plate' towards 'orogenesis', which comes with the idea that mountains are formed by 'Earth forces'. Which they are. But the force causing them is not the thrust of colliding plates (consequent on convection) but one *directly* expressing gravitational force, .. in the guise of erosion and collapse - that continually and inexorably drives the Earth towards the 'flatness' of equilibrium.

So, .. let's have a go at (inductively) answering the question, .. considering that the natural first-order shape of the Earth is spherical, that rotation makes it oblate, that there used to be a sea-bottom around the Mesozoic equator that is now a topographic high being reduced by gravity, both as erosion and gravitational collapse-folding, and which therefore came to have its earlier (Pangaean) equatorial equilibrium (as a sea floor) disturbed. Disturbance was accompanied by an equatorial split and mantle breakthrough to form the Pacific, near-doubling the size of the Earth, and a subsequent longitudinal split forming the Atlantic, which *as we speak* is allowing the Americas to lag westwards over the Pacific.

So (Answer). From a geological perspective we would have to say that something disturbed the Earth's equilibrium during the Mesozoic that made it rapidly get bigger, and that enlargement by now (in the development of the Atlantic) seems to be trailing off. That 'something' appears to be related to a change in oblateness of the Earth and to a massive extrusion of the mantle in what was the Pangaean equatorial region of the Earth and what is now the Pacific. (Moon Capture?)

So, ..with that global picture in place, let's see what ingenious deductive quantitative methods might be employed to confirm this, ..along The American Way, bearing in mind the caution of the garden path they have already led us up, .. (smushy chicks and all, .. touting for prizes)...   I don't mean for the Moon Capture. That's pure speculation, but the other two, massive mantle extrusion and change in equatorial equilibrium (oblatness), would appear to be geologically supported.

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

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

2011-07-13T07:08:00.000-07:00

( 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.]

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.

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/ ]

Spreading Ridges, Dyke Intrusion and Abyssal Hills.

2011-07-10T22:33:00.000-07:00

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

Fig.1. Dyke intrusion at the spreading ridges according to the Wikipedia and the consensus Plate Tectonic view. Albeit diagrammatic, it captures the essence of Plate Tectonic thinking of "intruding dykes".

"Mid-ocean ridges are geologically active, with new magma constantly emerging onto the ocean floor and into the crust at and near rifts along the ridge axes. The crystallized magma forms new crust of basalt (known as MORB for Mid-Ocean Ridge Basalt) and gabbro. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-ocean_ridge

"At the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (and other places), material from the upper mantle rises through the faults between oceanic plates to form new crust as the plates move away from each other, a phenomenon first observed as continental drift. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafloor_spreading

However a moment's thought will show the accretion of mantle material at the spreading ridges by dyke intrusion and extrusive magmatism to be simply, and logically untenable, .. and geologically silly for a number of reasons. Firstly, because, .. well, ..what are they intruding? There has to exist something already there for them to intrude into. And if we say an earlier dyke (that has chilled) then that doesn't work either for the following reasons. Dykes are not something that can be posited as exposed on the ocean floor as they are on the continents. Dykes are feeders to lava flows, and we see them on continents only because erosion has stripped away their overlying edifices. There *is* no such erosion of the ocean floors. Also, lava extrudes and sits on its surface. So far as the volcanism we see on the ocean floors, exrtrusion contributes nothing to spreading; only the width of the feeder dyke below the edifice (volcano usually) can be construed to contribute to spreading. Moreover as lava tubes show, very little channel (/dyke) width is needed to feed a large surface expanse of lava. So given the amount of necessary extrusion to make ocean floors, the accent of magmatism would have to be on *upwards* movement i.e., surface accummulation of ocean floors - upwards - (which would cause Earth expansion as described below by 'underplating'). Besides, whatever is extruded would cover up the structure of the ocean floor altogether, so none of the structure would be seen. Even worse (for Plate Tectonics), these 'dykes' would have to dog-leg round all the offsets of transform faults, which (according to Tuzo Wilson) exist before the sea-floors begin to open, .. and (even more) intrude not just now and then, but all at once, to give the whispering 10 cm/year of "Sea-floor spreading" worldwide. And what's even worse, .. do it with no noise whatsoever: the ocean floors are seismically silent. And what's even worse still, do it without even cutting through any of the transform faults, which (if they did - as dykes do - cut through everything) would upset the topographic and striped magnetic symmetry of the ocean floors that 'proved' spreading in the first place, so there would be none to observe (no symmetry) (no spreading) (no 'Plate Tectonics').

So, .. dyke intrusion as a mechanism for creation of the ocean floors is just silly. However, if we surf the web we will find a lot of professional people advertising it, which means they haven't even given it the few moments' thought that you have, dear reader, in getting this far down the page.

Fig.2. Clipperton Fracture zone displacing the East Pacific spreading ridge. See coordinates, bottom centre of image for location. Bigger image here.

Looking at the question from the perspective of scale (Fig.2) we can easily see the relative extents of volcanism. The 'pimples' are volcanoes, which sit *ON* the ocean floor, and therefore contribute nothing to spreading. The volcanoes, and the dykes feeding them, must therefore be later than the rodded material. In other words the rodded-textured material predates any dyke intrusion and is the stuff the dykes are intruded into. What's more, spreading (by dyke intrusion) is supposed to occur at the ridges, but the volcanoes always occur *off* the ridges. And no, they weren't once on the ridges and have moved away. If that were so then (since the ridge would then be a site of volcanism) (and since extrusion dominates), all the structure of the ocean floors would be covered up as the ocean floors grow through that big feeder, which goes all around the world. All the sructure we see would be covered up. There would be areas where there are still clusters of volcanoes on the ridges. But there aren't. Prove me wrong, ..but right round the whole world, I can't find one unambiguous example of a single volcano on a ridge. They are all *off* the ridge and associated with the big crossfaults. Those in the above figure even show a variation by being off the cross-faults, with an oblique orientation to both the ridges and the crossfaults. And just by the way, ..to get an idea of scale, any group of volcanoes there is about 30km long, which is about as far as a clear view to the horizon in a flat land. Compare that with the roadside stop to examine a typical dyke, when a big one is about 10-20m.

But as regards the controversy between Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion the most important thing to note is the difference in clarity between the detailed sonar coverage and the fuzziness of the rest of it; if you load up Google Earth you can see that there is actually very, very little detailed sonar world-coverage of the ocean floors at all. Fair enough, .. because the data costs a lot to acquire (and it's only science after all.. not a vote winner for governments). In that regard the Cold War was a golden era. It is unlikely there will ever again be anywhere near the amount of money given to Earth science research as there was then. By far most of the ocean floor data (which the originators of Plate Tectonics had to work with) is fuzzy, .. and what they came up with was correspondingly fuzzy, grounded not so much in the detail of the fact, as in the broad-brush of hypotheses evolved to make sense of the fuzz, with no regard given to discrepancies. However, in the detail almost everything we see from the sonar negates the various premises of Plate Tectonics - in particular the notion about ocean floor growth by dyke intrusion. It doesn't. Googlezoom the detail to see that ridge growth happens unambiguously by underplating - expressed in the formation of Abyssal Hills.

Fig.3 Abyssal Hills (dip and scarp slopes (left) formed by underplating. Transition from melt (red) through mush (orange) to crust (green) as the crust sloughs away from the ridge as the Earth gets bigger. Real growth of the ocean floors is towards the ridge (big arrows) as the Earth's crust moves outwards from the centre. Sketch shows conjugate and extensional fracture sets developed at the ridge crest, forming the scarp slopes

But of course the ocean floors are riddled with volcanism. They would be. It's just not the dyke-intruded volcano-sort of volcanism we see, that is constructing the body of the ocean floor (although dykes must intrude them), it's the mantle mush coming up from below and underplates the crust as it thins to take up the larger surface area of the Earth, that does it.

Telling the story is all about arranging the data in its right and proper place according to scale and basic geological principles of structural and stratigraphic superposition, not about inventing explanations to accommodate the results of measurements. Invention (/'theorising') invariably involves setting the stage of 'possibilities' in an "if this-and-if that" sort of way to validate those explanations. Sound geological principles let the data speak for itself. Without them, measurements mean nothing. We might hope of course that such principles would underpin "explanations", but Plate Tectonics is not a geological construction, but a geophysical one, and geophysicists for the most part don't have much of a geological clue.

The originators did ok with their geological principles to some extent as regards the growth of the ocean floors, but tripped up on the most important point of all - ignoring the extension along the spreading ridges, which caused them to populate the literature with constructions that only told the part of the story involving spreading ridges and 'subduction' (overriding) zones, and omitted virtually everything to do with continents, and (let's face it) screwed up all about continental margins.

Conned by their conviction that convection is the driver for continental separation, and by the apparent role in this of "transform faults", they ignored completely the difference in length between the spreading ridge today and its original length when it broke through the continents, which (once you think about it) can only mean that the Earth is getting bigger. In other words, they made the cardinal error in science of hubristic conceit: "Because we can't explain it, it isn't happening" - the key 'it' being that the spreading ridges move *away* from the continents).

Dykes and mush, mush and dykes, .. and what difference does it make? As when the butterfly waves its wings and China sneezes, ..the difference is very important. Continued underplating of mantle mush gives the dip-and-scarp regularity of abyssal hills, growth in the direction of the ridges, and testifies to expansion. Volcanoes and sundry extrusives contribute nothing to spreading, .. only mask the structure of abyssal hills. And any dyke intrusion into the fundamental underplated substrate, though it must be locally important in giving volcanoes, is globally little more than incidental. Mantle underplating (giving abyssal hills) testifies to upwards ridge-growth and Earth expansion. There can *be* no movement of the ocean floors to the subduction zones. As the distribution of earthquakes graphically tells us, the zone of Earthquakes belongs to the continental side, not the oceanic side, .. It is overriding that is happening, .. not subduction. 'Apparent overriding' of the mantle by the crust such as occurs along the Eastern Pacific by the Americas, is just that - "overriding".

No subduction. 'Movement' (a.k.a.'growth') is the other way. (And of course, the volcanism of ocean floors is naturally accommodated.)

Plate Tectonics cannot accommodate abyssal hills as underplating, .. because to do so would axiomatically recognise growth in the direction of the ridges, which combined with the length difference between the spreading ridges as they are now, with when they broke through the crust, would axiomatically recognise expansion too.

"The topographic features known as abyssal hills characterize >30% of the ocean floor, and yet their origin has been the subject of vigorous debate for over 40 years.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v380/n6570/abs/380125a0.html

Vigorous debate? ..Only because Plate Tectonics is barking up the wrong tree in the first place. Abyssal hills are a self-evident result of underplating, .. which follows from the crust getting thinner and spreading ridges getting longer (fact), i.e., moving up / Earth getting bigger (tantamount to fact).

In the controversy between Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion, spreading *along* the ridges trumps that *across* the ridges, because it shows that real movement of the ocean floors is not *away* from the ridges, but *towards* it. Earth expansion accommodates both, where Plate Tectonics only accommodates one.

(Earth expansion, 2, .. Plate Tectonics 1.)
(And that's on Plate Tectonics home turf too!)

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

Atlantic transform faults as growth (normal) faults

2011-06-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

... Or How Tuzo got it wrong ..
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

Fig.1. 'Transform' faults dissect the ocean floors in a series of terraces that step down to the right. Meaning that we're looking at normal faults that *postdate* the formation of the spreading ridges, not "a new class of faults" that predate them, ..as proposed by Tuzo Wilson. They preserve the record of gravitational correction as a corollary to upwards growth of the ridges. Displacement is down-to-the-right, with each 'step' tilted north (left) along the line of the faults. The reduction in elevation is from left to right across the figure with the summation of dip and scarp slopes giving an aggregate 'flatness' to the ocean floor which is nevertheless locally of considerable relief. The spreading ridge is the scar near-parallel to, and just beyond, the further white marker. (Atlantic Ocean, latitude, 25N-26N.)

Imagine the Earth's surface dilating as the Earth gets bigger. A crack opens up as the ground in front of you subsides and spreads to take up the increase in surface area. Then one behind, and another, and another to each side. Progressively more and more dilation leaves you standing on the last piece of original ground, which is left high as all else collapses around you, .. before the ground under you too, collapses.

Therein is the conundrum of Earth expansion. It does not mean uplift of the Earth's surface, .. it means everywhere subsidence. Fundamentally there is no uplift of the Earth's surface. Only collapse. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the ocean floors, which are riddled with the evidence of growth and collapse in the relationship between the spreading ridges and transform faults. Transform faults are the legacy of cross-ridge collapse as the curvature of the ridge itself relaxes to take up the new, more open curvature of an enlarging Earth whose crustal curvature is no longer gravitationally stable.

Growth and collapse parallel to the ridge is recorded in the extensional fault blocks of the abyssal hills, which are the most prominent features of all on the surface of the Earth. First motions on earthquakes combine the effects of collapse in three directions, 1. parallel to the axis of the ridge, 2. across it, and 3. the horizontal, and are almost certainly much more complex than synoptically and cleanly figured on the USGS website, which for some reason I don't understand shows all earthquakes at the spreading ridges (growth ridges) to be at a consistent depth of ten kilometres. I suspect there is some 'convenient default' factor expressing that ubiquitous ten kilometre depth, and further suspect something similarly conveniently fudged is going towards the illustrations of first motions showing supposed 'transform' faulting, that obscures the normal component of movement, given that the topography clearly illustrates normal (vertical) faulting, not transform (horizontal) movement - in by far the greatest extents of the ocean floors.

The image is from the Atlantic Ocean, but the same is true for all oceans: transform faults are normal growth faults, preserving the record of growth of an expanding Earth.

Fig.2. Extension according to continental separation. Arrows and yellow lines show continental separation to accommodate growth of the ocean floors. Ocean floor structure reflects gravitational collapse. Horizontal translation is only apparent in displacement of the continents and is an artifact of upwards growth of the ridges. (Red line is the spreading ridge, and is the present-day equivalent of the sum of the yellow lines joining Africa to Antarctica and India to Australia.) See post at

http://earthexpansion.blogspot.com/2011/04/plate-tectonics-and-along-ridge.html

How did Tuzo get it wrong (top link, P.246-247)? By being too quick off the mark to appropriate the ideas of others. It's the risk all 'news' faces by being too quick to be first - only getting part of the story. (An expanding Earth isn't news of course, .. it is old hat - which is why, along with suchlike first-order evidence in the two images above, and all other geological evidence, it survives.)

Of course, as far as Plate Tectonics is concerned it doesn't matter what the structure of the ocean floors is. Plate Tectonics could argue it can dilate or spread as much as it likes and in as many different directions and ways as it sees fit, with any amount of structural variation as well - the theory (*THEORY*) says whatever growth there is all gets swallowed down subduction zones anyway. But of course the theory is predicated on the ocean floors getting to the subduction zones in the first place, and if the structure is saying that the spreading ridges are moving up (and the ocean floors with them, .. instead of along, as those two figures and more detailed structure show), then the oceanic lithosphere never makes it to the zone to be subducted.

So the structure of the ocean floors *does* count. And it tells us, in no uncertain (geological) terms, that the Earth is getting bigger. We don't need - at enormous expense - to shove instruments into it to measure it, and cleverly deduce anything. It's staring us in the face, .. courtesy of Google, Russia, Adolph Hitler, and the politics of fear (that made Tuzo stay up too late and hurry too much and get it wrong, when he should have been in bed, instead of trying to bignote himself over other people by making 'right moves'.) That's quite a cabal of support, is it not?

(See? Not his fault at all. We can't blame him for staying up late at night, .. scribbling, .. about a new class of faults. Him a geophysicist too, .. making up stories like that ... That's exactly like geologists pontificating about a new atomic particle, .. from fingering their willie... )

Checkmate, .. mate.

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

Sinosteel Oakagee (/Oakajee) and Weld Range

2011-06-24T18:19:00.000-07:00

Fig.1. An "endangered species" A typical example. This scrawny little bugger and its ilk is the ammunition that the Environmental Protection Authority is hanging its hat on to scupper the Mining Industry in the name of sustainability of the environment (*NOT* of your jobs). See end of post for detail.

-------------------------
"Endangered species?"
"Too right cobber, if it wuz in my back yard, it would be *straight* in the bin. An' good riddance!"
"But it's life is in danger, not just it's life, .. the whole species."
"Is that a fact?"
"Yeah, .. we've studied it, and that's the last unit. The last remaining specimen.."
"Is it?? Thank *FUCK* for that!!" (Rips it out of the ground..)
---------------------------

So, Sinosteel pulled out of the Oakagee Development citing cost blow-outs, and shut down its operations on its Weld Range Project, .. pending those doing the blowing pulling the finger out and their heads in.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/wa/5809494/chinese-step-up-pressure-on-barnett-over-oakajee/

http://www.smh.com.au/business/oakajee-port-in-doubt-as-sinosteel-mothballs-mine-20110623-1ghk4.html

If the cost blowout on that development is in any way similar to the cost blowouts on Weld Range in past years, then I'm not in the least surprised that they pulled out. China's been iffy for quite a while about the environmental bar in Australia being set too high, and I, who consider myself of reasonable enough green persuasion, don't blame them one little bit. They're probably wondering why (amongst other things) they should have to pay for protecting Australia's 'endangered' species of spiders and weeds in the remote bush, when their own people have to bear the brunt of pollution all nations must when pulling themselves up by their industrial bootstraps.

Whether redneck or greenie, either way a certain degree of reason and proportion towards this "environmental sustainability" is required.. When I worked on that Weld Range project the drill rigs were once stood down for nearly three months pending a decision by the minister (on 'holiday') whether drilling could proceed where there was a certain common spider (curtainweb) close by, which was (then) a 'listed species'. (Shield-backs, another, enjoyed a flat twenty five metre clearance.)

Whatever the merits or otherwise of the argument, that stand-down cost a lot of money. That was on top of the more regular cost blowouts just anyway, occasioned by regular delays and duplications required to reconfigure drilling programs to accommodate similar 'environmental' considerations of a particular spider or weed that just happened to be in the way of a planned drill hole - and was in abundance anyway just beyond the proposed pad. As well as which, if the project came to fruition as buyer and seller alike hoped (and on the back of which, with other similar projects in the state, the economy of the country much depended), the whole lot would be dug out, .. spiders, weeds, other plants and all.

In terms of objectives and the stakes involved, and costs, this pussyfooting around spiders and weeds was bureaucratic insanity beyond belief. Costs doubled and trebled (and more) at every turn, on account of a spider here and a plant there - plants that would be the first to be eradicated if they happened to turn up in a suburban area - and the Chinese were being asked to pay as everybody made Australian Hay while the Chinese sun shone, all the while mouthing mealy blandishments about "protecting the environment". Such doublespeak is right up there along with the devastation and unconscionable destruction that is supposed to pass for 'rehabilitation' of drill accesses, especially since it often includes the habitats of spiders and weeds that have aggressively claimed residence on accessways being rehabilitated, and that beaurocratically speaking have no right to be there. Evidently they have no right to protection when at the mercy of bureaucratic 'rehabilitation'. Destruction of accesses of any sort in an environment that needs all it can get is wanton vandalism anyway.

Spiders of all sorts are not uncommon in the bush, and my guess is, like nasty viruses and the human species at large, they could be struck off the face of the Earth with absolutely *noOoo* adverse consequences to the environment whatsoever. And weeds that can't grow elsewhere, *do* grow on iron-rich soils too, where they are of the scrubbiest, scrawniest sort - as anyone who has ever seen the plants that grace the poisonous wastelands of smelter dumps and the more derelict parts of some industrial cites, well knows. They often grow nowhere else, and by that same measure of thankful rarity, would also be classed as 'endangered'.

Youngsters entering the industry are coming to see this accommodation of 'environmentalism', and its sister 'health and safety', as central planks to the enterprise, even to an extent of claiming success for initiative that results in environmental delays, .. and worse, are encouraged in that perception by a management made personally liable by legislation for all that happens in the workplace, deserved or not. Often selected for proven safety and environmental consciousness, and casting an eye to their own personal expediency and justifying superprudence over the immediate technical requirements of the job, these guys are doing much to cement this perception.

As a result the mining industry, and I suspect industry at large because it seems to be systemic, is becoming dangerously close to being operationally dysfunctional (/ functionally inoperable) (if this is not already the case),. With everyone commending each other for tip-toeing safely and healthily through 'the environment' (which ironically for most is an office one) and awarding themselves pay rises for their nimbleness in meeting such "Key Performance Indicators" as can be devised to help them do so, the central plank of mining enterprise - finding ore deposits for the resources future in the remote bush, is *severely* at risk.

I am not, of course, advocating an unsafe or an environmentally insensitive workplace, ..just a sense of proportion and responsibility, and an awarness of possible backfire that all the baggage can result in, ..like Sinosteel withdrawing from its investment in exasperation. Australia with its currently strong economy on the back of Chinese demand for raw materials should give very careful consideration to mutualism as it appears from the perspective of a country with a lot of people who are by no means well-off. The Chinese pulling out of mining investment on account of spiralling costs reminds me of the big price rises in iron ore a few years back, before and shortly following this 'spiderplant' experience. Some time later, probably as payback for something similar, maybe another over-the-top price rise, China delayed the offloading of some twenty-six boatloads of iron ore. To underscore the point of dissatisfaction at the time, a number of Rio's negotiating team were detained or jailed for "economic 'espionage' ".

Just a little wag of the finger maybe, .. an indication that there are aspects of mutuality that should be paid attention to. But they do want that steel, .. and I would surmise it is not for anything to do with the supermarket clobber they can sell back to us. Or set-top boxes. If we are to regard military strategists who have an eye to China's economic growth, it may well return to us in a much less tasteful form than we would like - with interest.

Government citing concern over Carbon and mining taxes as an economic issue? I don't think so. Those are on top of what's gone before, and costs always get handed down the line to Jo Public anyway. It's more likely a case of the Australian straw that breaks the Chinese camel's back. Chinese memory surely goes back further than the relatively recent debate on both. More likely the cited "cost blowout" is a euphemism for objecting to being taken for a mug over the excessive feeding offered to "Environmental sustainability" by the trough of infrastructure development of the Oakagee rail and port development. Having already experienced the Weld Range cost blowouts in the name of a so-called 'sustainable environment' (and probably others similar), the Chinese are making their displeasure more widely known.

Pay attention, everybody.

Fig.2 Detail of Fig.1. Holding jobs (and the State's economy) hostage. That's what's called luxury, being able to ask your children to pay for the survival of this little monster - in the name of "Environmental sustainability".

P.S. In a typical example of underreporting, virtually no media outlets at the time of writing mention the role of the Environmental Protection Authority in China's frustration. They just mention "delays" and costs. They seem to be all national outlets, .. only the local West Australian (first link at the top of the blog) mentions the Chinese view.

"There will be 43 redundancies, while the prospect of 1000 construction jobs has vanished."
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/oakajee-port-in-doubt-as-sinosteel-mothballs-mine-20110623-1ghk4.html#ixzz1QFqGUt8I
(Read the paragraph before the bit about redundancies, in conjunction with West Australian link at top of the blog, and consider why so many media outlets do not directly mention Chinese concerns over the EPA.)

(The issue is never the issue : look for the subtext.)

The Japan Earthquake March 11th, 2011, follow-up

2011-06-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

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

Animation

Fig.1 slip rate on the earthquake of March 11th, 2011. (Still image. Click it for the animation; loads to 160 secs).

In an earlier post, Anonymous drew attention to an animation by Greg Beroza, Geophysics of Stanford University, showing the slip rate on the fault that generated the Tsunami of 11th March, 2011, which highlights the difference in approach between Plate Tectonics and an expanding Earth. The difference concerns the way that transform faults are interpreted, and goes to the heart of the difference between the two models, as they may materially affect the life and times of the circum-Pacific region.

Transform faults are the structures cross-cutting the spreading ridges. In Plate Tectonics they are the surface brittle expression of the 'tramrails' of ductile mantle flow-lines along which the continents separated from the ridges. On an Earth that is getting bigger however they represent the surficial brittle expression of along-ridge extension as the spreading ridges grow upwards and away from the continents, as the sea floors accommodate the underplating mantle growth and correction in curvature as the Earth's surface moves outwards from the centre. With directional dynamics being at right angles to each other, and with implications (or not) for an Earth that has increased in size enormously since Mesozoic times, the two are as different as can possibly be.

Plate Tectonics hangs its hat on seismology, but hides behind the ambiguities of relative motion of fault plane solutions necessitated by that geophysical approach. When interpreting geological dynamics of the Earth's crust however, actual motion is important; relative motion is a poor substitute (but does allow the cognitively impaired a degree of intellectual latitude). What it does *not* do however, is allow them to insist in the face of evidence to the contrary, and against all reasonable logic, to insist that the difference does not matter, and, in the case in point, that subduction of the ocean floors and overriding of it by the crust are tantamount to the same thing. They are not. There is a big difference for example between an avalanche that buries the village, and a village that somehow upstilts and rushes under the mountain, although the motion of one relative to the other in each case is the same. Or, if we are to remain with credible geology, between granitic bodies that intrude the crust, and a crust that somehow collapses over granites. Similarly there is a big difference between the crust collapsing over the mantle because it is gravitationally unstable (as in Earth expansion), and the mantle collapsing under the crust because the mantle somehow gets cold by sinking into the hotter regions of the Earth (as in Plate Tectonics).

In both cases the functionally operative dynamic is gravitational collapse. The question is which, based on the geological evidence, is (to the best assessment of a reasonable man) the operating mechanism. What is the geological evidence that on the one hand (Earth expansion) indicates crustal gravitational collapse, and on the other hand (Plate Tectonics) indicates mantle cooling, and what are the parameters by which reason would make a judgement?

Globally there are many, but the ocean floors are under consideration as the case in point, particularly in relation to brittle failure as expressed in spreading ridges and transform faults. These are so intimately related as to be reasonably accepted as different expression of the same thing, namely extension - or in Plate Tectonics' parlance, "sea-floor spreading". However continental separations show conclusively that there has not only been spreading in a direction *across* the ridge, but *along* the ridge as well .. and both sets of faults (along the ridge and across it) are direct expressions of this.

This simple and self-evident point has been, and continues to be, completely ignored by Plate Tectonics in its hypothetical need for 'tramrails' of ductile flow of mantle convection to support subduction, and the gadarene rush of geophysicists to cobble together a model that in its various criticalities is geologically nonsensical.

So, .. "sea floor spreading" is expressed by extension both across the ridge and along it. And with spreading occurring *along* the ridge (as the ridge moves upwards, .. and keeps getting longer) then these cross-ridge faults ('transform faults") keep developing and growing to accommodate gravitational collapse (due to curvature correction) as the radius of the Earth increases.

So, ..back to the Japan earthquake of March 11th and the article by Stanford University.
When incorporated into the geological picture the following appears to be notable : -

1. The east-westerly alignment of the first two Earthquakes (this post, Fig.2)
2. The strong parallel east-westerly alignment of structural fabric of the Island of Honshu. (See the structure just left of the purple rectangle of the Stanford animation (Fig.1 above).
3. The similarly orientated cross-fabric shown by the now defunct Marianas spreading Ridge to the south of Honshu (Fig.2, just below ; ...however, ..once a fault, .. always a fault).
4. Honshu slipping off the Marianas Ridge.

Fig.2. Japan slides off the Marianas Ridge. Red and white lines are the interpreted historical expression of the toe and heel respectively of the slump. Orange bar is the extent of the current sector of the slump. Orange circle is the M9 of March 11th, 2011. Arrow with red flag = USGS; Arrow without = here.

The Stanford article implicates a strong correlation between the initiation of the slump that caused the tsunami, and the (now largely defunct) cross-structures of the Marianas Ridge underlying Japan and off which Japan is slipping, and which appear to have residual expression in the east-westerly structural fabric of Honshu. First movement therefore would appear to have been slip on such a cross-structure, probably in a southerly direction (towards '8 o'clock' in Stanford's animation). As collapse propagated and rotated the dislocation to 9 o'clock, ie., opposite and parallel to the potential slump, 'stickieness' was overcome causing the main mass to give way, and the tsunami to occur. As movement initiated on transform faults, this Earthquake shows similarity to many others in the world (Cite San Francisco).

The rest is unfortunate history, and underscores the fortitude with which the people of Japan must since time immemorial after such disasters, have turned to face the imperative of life in the promise of the Rising Sun. In terms of a geological assessment of earthquake-generating structure they deserve better than the hype of Plate Tectonics and the moribund mantra of "no mechanism" aimed at the geological evidence for expansion by geophysicists intent on shoring up a sterile, going nowhere, hypothetical, soup-in-a-pot convection model that needs red flags (Fig.2) to tell people which way to think in the face of death and destruction to the contrary, and which for more than half a century has not progressed one iota, but rather has been intent on creating more knobs, bells and whistles to make it work than pre-copernican astronomy created epicycles to make that work.

From the Atlantic to the Pacific, and around the Americas as well, the crust is gravitationally sliding out over the mantle. The mantle is *not* gravitationally collapsing under the crust.

The Earth is getting bigger. We don't know *why*, but it is, .. and geologically Earth expansion can most certainly describe *how* much more comprehensively than Plate Tectonics can geologically support *its* model. In the language of Ocam, Earth expansion trumps Plate Tectonics (hands down).

Any day.

Folds as gravitational collapse structures

2011-05-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

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

Image courtesy of
http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/topogeo/photogallery/images/eplerfold.jpg

Folds occur at every level in the crust, and may be described according to the way they are thought to form (i.e., genetically), e.g., (sag folds, drape folds, diapiric folds, shear folds, flow folds, thrust folds, etc.) or morphologically - according to how they exactly appear, e.g., cylindirical folds, similar folds, chevron folds, recumbent folds sheath folds, even pseudo-folds (which are not folds at all , but convolutions that have the appearance of folds due to weathering of indurated solution-precipitation effects), underscoring the point that although it is preferrable that folds are best named descriptively, genesis is an important consideration, and in a final analysis are formed by physical disturbances of the gravitationally organised layers of the Earth's crust.

Folds however are composite structures formed of layers of different stiffness, and develop in rocks that are variably consolidated and subsequently modified by temperature and pressure due to crustal movements. Distinctions that are assessed for any field location typically break down at larger scales. Folds that develop early tend to be small-scale disturbances formed during compaction which transition to later, larger-scale structures as the sequence becomes increasingly consolidated and 'stiffer'. The commonly cited maxim that the small-scale structures are the key to understanding the larger scale ones is of limited use when it comes to folding because of the different rates at which different parts of the sequence go through their consolidation cycle in different crustal environments. Although the local stresses determining local folding may be clear (whether the folds are due to compression, extension, shear and so on) the larger-scale dynamics are very far from clear - as instanced by the controversy between Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion.

Generally when 'folding' is referred to in a context of global deformation, is meant folds that exist in linear belts such as occur in the cratonic basements of the world that are of Archaean and Proterozoic age (northern Europe and Canada in the northern hemisphere, and South America, Africa, India, Australia in the southern hemisphere) or those of the Alps, the Appalachians, or the Atlas or Himalayas etc. Assigning names like that to a belt unfortunately emphasises its segregate-element status at the expense of its larger, along-strike continuity from one region to another. In reality the major fold belts of the world are part of a single belt that is globally continuous and dwarfs anything present in pre-Cambrian sequences; with the notable exception of the Urals, nowhere in the basement terrains that underlie the Phanerozoic stratigraphy is there anything in scale to compare with this circumglobal fold belt. Whether or not it is unique in the history of the planet is difficult to say, but it is certainly a fold belt of uniquely global proportions today, and must be interpreted accordingly.

But how?

A single fold belt of global extent that is also a zone of elevation is not compatible with Plate Tectonics' notion of collision due to the vagaries of "independent plate movement", for there is nothing independent about either such global continuity, or the elevation that it defines, a relationship that contributes (erroneously) to the commonly held view that the two are causally related in the sense that folding gives elevation. This once-popular view was debunked decades ago through intensive work in the Alps, which showed the folding there to be universally of collapse origin. However since the advent of Plate Tectonics with its necessity for crumplecrust mountain building (and in denial of this Alpine work), the Alps have been resurrected as an example of Euro-African crustal collision. This is simply wrong, not only because it is in denial of decades of work that *after much controversy re. the collision model* show the dynamics of Alpine structure to be due to collapse and not collision, but also because the Mediteranean basin is floored in the mantle and is the continuation of the Red Sea Rift: it is extensional.

The Alps (and their along-strike continuity to Iran and the Himalyas - and further) are not building up; they are falling down. Gravitational collapse and erosion are two different responses to being "too high", one being physical, ..of the body of the rock itself, .. and the other involving its chemical interaction with the hydro- and atmospheres, but both working to make the Earth a flatter place than it currently is. The inexorable drive towards flatness is the goal of terrestrial equilibrium, and it is in this that folding (somewhat paradoxically as gravitational collapse on a global scale) is largely involved - as are all deviations from flatness that may develop in the Earth's crust. On an expanding Earth the surface of the planet is *always* flat - or trying to be within the limitations of rate of adjustment. Gravity - a serious force - rules, .. and cannot be disturbed by forces of second order that are dependent on that primary force. And that includes convection.

Loopy shapes. Much of the deformation of the circumglobal fold belt from the Atlantic to the Pacific is characterised by loopy shapes that extend from the French Alps and the Carpathians through the 'istan' fold complexes of Iran, Afghanistan Turkmenistan Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan before crossing the Owen Fracture Zone and manifesting as the two biggest loops of all - the Tibetan- Himalayan loop and the dismembered Indonesian loop that extends from the Java Trench to the Russian Peninsula, before 'un-looping' across the Pacific as the scissored-open arms of the American Cordilleras.

The largest expression of loops lies not in the collapse of the Himalayan front, but in the dislocated circularity of structure of the Western Pacific, of which the Indonesian arc is a preserved remnant, .. extending from the Java Trench to the Russian Peninsula (check back later for image link), and still further west to the Urals This dismembered loop is where Pacific breakthrough began, and represents the collapsed roof of the Pacific mantle bubble. Its dismembered anticlockwise 'swivel-symmetry' is an expression of crustal disturbances related to an inherited Pangaean northern hemispherical rotation, following adjustment to equatorial severance.

Symmetrically configured east and west of this 'Indonesian Circularity' but differing in their degree of dilation across the Owen Fracture Zone and related parallel zones through China lie the arms of the Pangaean circumglobal mountain belt, scissored partly open about the basin of the Takla Makan to the west,and dilated hugely eastwards as the American Cordilleras. Equatorial severance, focussed on the Indonesian Circularity and pivoted in the antipodal Mediterranean region, describe the elements of breakout that led to mantle extrusion we see today. Dilation and swivelling are hand-in-glove, corollary expressions of the same thing - crustal adjustment to mantle extrusion, focussed initially in the Indonesian region and progressing to configure the planet as we see it today through the transition from equatorial rupture and dilation (Indian-Southern, Pacific Oceans) to longitudinal rupture (Atlantic Ocean).

The above description of Earth expansion therefore incorporates folding as an expression of the axial dilation and gravitational collapse of a belt of equatorial circumglobal elevation that became unstable. The reasons why it became unstable to lead to collapse (where the Atlantic and other margins didn't) must be sought in parameters that can affect gravitational equilibrium at the scale of the whole Earth. Considerations are :-

1. The early (Pangaean) equatorial location of the fold belt,
2. Fold orientations are parallel to its extent,
3. Its elevation and subsequent gravitational collapse described by 'loopy' shape modifications of the belt, the largest of which (Indonesia) is antipodal to the hinge of hemispherical dilation in the Mediterranean.
4. The essentially synchronous relationship of folding to the rupture and swivelling dilation of the belt.
5. A progression from latitudinal to longitudinal mantle extrusion as an expression of celestial dynamics

These considerations support *speculation* that global deformation since the Mezozoic, expressed in the collapse and reconfiguration of an equatorial, circumglobal belt of elevation, is related to Moon capture. A shift in the gravitational centre of the Earth and related massive mantle extrusion generated in some way by combining the kinetic energy of capture with the existing core-material of the Earth to manufacture the stuff we have come to know as 'mantle', together with wholesale structural reconfiguration of the surface of the planet, has been the geological expression of this event. The difference in propensity for collapse of the equatorial belt compared with the absence of collapse of the longitudinal one (Atlantic) can only be interpreted in terms of *rate* of adjustment - in other words the oblateness of the Pangaean Earth compared to that of later and of the present.

Where Moon capture may be speculative and regardless of such speculation which draws no temporal conclusions regarding the onset of Moon capture, nor what its peak expression has been or will be - whether the Earth will continue to 'explode' resulting in a second asteroid belt, or whether which seems more likely it will suffer terminal demise as the Moon continues to recede - the empirical facts stand: the geological evidence for Earth enlargement since the Mesozoic is solid: it is tantamount to fact..

However the question remains, .. how much folding may have developed due to lunar 'draw' prior to wholesale collapse, and which may be written in the basement sequences of the Precambrian. The answer to this one lies along a path away from geophysical theory and a resurrection of geological research of which much literature, like that of the work on the Alps, has been set aside and buried since the onset of geophysical speculation on Plate Tectonics due to "unsatisfaction" as to the nature of theoretical "mechanism" (not we may note, the geological facts that supported expansion - although those presented on the above-linked website are different from those of Carey).

Geophysics as it became formulated as Plate Tectonics has led the Earth sciences down a patently wrong road, and it is to the shame of geologists everywhere in their rush to get on the bandwagon of "the new global tectonics" and to be part of the club that they have allowed themselves to be led by *theory*, rather than empirical geological reality.

If geophysics fancies its chances of maintaining any credibility in geology after the Plate Tectonic hash it's made of its geo for the last half century, then it needs to turn its attention to its 'physics', and come up with an answer to how a massive addition of 'free energy' to the supposed soup of mass particles and electrical matrix that bind the core of the planet could have led to the formation of mantle material (instead of going the extra yard and vaporising it altogether). Having got off to a flying start with proving the mass-energy conversion they could begin with some models demonstrating the reverse proposition - how energy might be transmuted into mass in the first place - and (in a geological context) what sort of mass might be formed in the second.

Now *there's* a finagle of some worth. What does the speed of the Moon need to be? How is kinetic energy actually transferred to the Earth? How much energy does the Earth's interior already have? And in what form did it likely exist? And how can this be assessed from *real rocks* etc., etc.

Come on Big Boys, get your pencil out, make sure there's lead in it, ..and *SHAKE* it. See who gets the highest mark this time. ("Philosophical unsatisfaction" - indeed - while half a century of geology goes by the bored..(stiff) ) Soup-in-a-pot Tectonics! *^*&%$# I ask you!! Once in an altercation on usenet with some rough people from Nasa's space agency (who shall remain nameless) one un-notable opined that the geology he learned as a child at his father's knee was all he needed to know. And *THAT* (and its ilk) is the legacy geology wears today, courtesy of the geophysical appropriation of the science that used to be known as Earth.

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

Why the Himalayas are not uplifting

2011-05-10T20:46:00.000-07:00

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

Fig.1. Telling it like it is - Tibet collapsing over India from the north. Plate Tectonics' little arrow (with the red flag for seduction of the proletariat, .. the afficionados of the Plate Tectonic revolution) shows a relative collisional rate from the south of 48mm a year, - "relative" .. meaning 'collision' is actually from the north (big arrow)

Why are the Himalayas not uplifiting? Because, .. just like the Japan arc, ..they are collapsing. The big arrow tells the story according to Earth expansion; the tighter curvature (smaller radius) of the Pangaean crust is relaxing out over the larger (more open) curvature of the newly extruded mantle, and the crust wherever there happens to be any on it. It's a simple story of an Earth that was once smaller getting a lot bigger - very quickly, and the crust relaxing to take up the new curvature. It begins with recognising the breakthrough of the ocean floors dilating the continental crust and the curvature of the crust therefore necessarily having to adjust to the increasing size of the Earth, which it does by gravitational collapse, a major residual expression of which is the arcuate ('loopy') shapes of the Alpine, Middle Eastern, Himalayan, and Indonesian fold belts.

That is virtually all there is to say on the matter. However, if you get hold of the wrong end of the stick then, like a lie, there is no end to the convolutions needed to make the story credible. And from beginning to end, convolutions and confabulations are virtually all we have in Plate tectonics. The wrong end of the stick is the axiom exactly as it is stated by the USGS. :-

"..The size of the Earth has not changed significantly during the past 600 million years, and very likely not since shortly after its formation 4.6 billion years ago. The Earth's unchanging size implies that the crust must be destroyed at about the same rate as it is being created, as Harry Hess surmised." http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/understanding.html (then scroll to "convergent boundaries")

That 'surmise', or what Hess himself termed "philosophical un-satisfaction", led to the underpinning of the whole edifice of Plate Tectonics with its plethora of inventions to shore it up (ridge push - slab-pull, frictional drag, rollback, trench suction, mantle wind, folding by continental collision, etc etc., .. an invention for every special need under the sun. The facts are, and as the USGS and Nasa themselves recognise, that the so-called "subduction zone" is in fact not one of "carrying down", but one of overriding from the landward side. The little arrow shown by the USGS all around plate margins is a furphy.

However if the truth is told there is no need for manipulative convolutions - everything in its right and proper place bespeaks a reply of silence, for all know the weight it carries and that contradiction is hollow.

Fig.2. Telling it like it is again - Tibet collapsing over India from the north.

It's all there is. Tibetan collapse. Trace it west through the Mediterranean, and east through the Indonesian circle, to the Americas. Indian collision on the other hand, makes for so much guff. Apparently its ok in Plate Tectonics for the mantle to collapse at the spreading ridges because it young and hot, but not for the crust to collapse (because it's old and not). (Which way round do you think it should really be?)

So, .. which is it? Is India, .. head down and ducking and weaving like a ram-bam thank-you-m'am pugnacious hooligan barrelling northwards to collide with Asia and crumple it all the way to the Russian Peninsula, in concert with the general perambulations of plates across the world, zigging first this way then zagging that, .. as is the usual story from every institution under the sun peddling Plate Tectonics? Or is it Asia that's doing the moving as is staring us in the face from right under our collective schnozzle?

Here's what the Earthquakes say:-

Fig.3. Tibet doing the moving, .. collapsing over India, because it's too high, because it still retains its Pangaean curvature which is still trying to accommodate the new curvature of the Earth caused by rapid Pacific mantle extrusion.

And why (according to Plate Tectonics) are the Himalayas uplifting? Because 5cm /year of dyke is being intruded at the spreading ridge, pushing India northwards. If we divide the height of the mountains by the time it takes for the expanse of ocean floors to grow, we get 48mm a year.

Or something clever like that.

Or we might be asked to believe the .. "These days we can accurately measure etc etc." But how? There are no receiving stations on top of Mount Everest - or the tops of any other mountains for that matter. And if any upwards movement *may* be detected anywhere, how is that to be discriminated from the surface of the Earth moving outwards from the centre according to Earth expansion?

Actually Plate Tectonics has three views on the matter of Himalayan uplift. The first is that India is colliding with Asia "crumpling it and throwing up the himalayas", the second is that India is sliding under Asia to lift Tibet bodily upward, and the third one, which is the view 'in transition' as it were (to Earth expansion - and which Plate Tectonics doesn't advertise very much for that very reason) is that Tibet (being lifted bodily up as India is shunted under) (and being therefore high), is collapsing over India - which is exactly the same as Earth expansion, except that in expansion 'uplift' forming the 'Roof of the World', .. is due to it always having been 'up', by virtue of Pacific breakthrough and the tighter curvature getting out of kilter with the newer more open one, and the collapse is due to curvature correction, not to the fact that it's been (or is being) uplifted.

All examples citing India as 'doing the moving' (in the first two examples at least) is because a mantle cell rising under the spreading ridge of the Indian Ocean lifts it up.

Then what?

Well, .. it used to be a number of things. It used to be that the uplift got fractured in the middle and a dyke was intruded, that was pushing the ocean floors, then it was gravitational collapse of the uplited ocean floor itself that was pushing everything in front of it ("ridge-push"), then it was frictional drag of the mantle on the overlying cold crust, then it was the subducting slab of India that was actually pulling everything down with it ("slab-pull") (except in reality there is no subducting slab) (but don't spoil a good story with unpleasant facts).

And then (notwithstanding there being no slab) it was all three, with a great deal of professorial head-scratching going into the relative (theoretical) importance of each, with "teams of researchers" working on it it (on your money) trying to come up with a (theoretical) answer. All to avoid the straightforward, simpler truth staring us in the face that really, it is Asia in its own right (and not as a result of Plate Tectonic uplift) that is collapsing over India, because it's too high - a result of being a bit slow to adapt to the changing curvature of the Earth.

And why all the head scratching? Because that little red flag on the little white arrow inside the big one is a warning to all, that whoever might contradict the Plate Tectonic story will be summarily dealt with. It has to stand, otherwise a lot of people are in a lot of not-so-theoretical trouble. Click on it (in Google Earth) and see it says 48mm a year ("relative movement"), which you are supposed to believe is the size of the Indian Ocean's contribution to plate movement world-wide, all to avoid the razor-sharp implication of continental retrofits that indicate spreading is along the ridge as well as across it, which shows (and *can* only show that the Earth is getting bigger.

Even in the Himalayas, the type area for mountain building by continental collision, Earth expansion rules.

[Addendum 25/07/2011

Fig.4 Detail of Fig.1 showing the 48mm a year estimated by the USGS for the small arrow just visible beneath the first 'm' of 'mm'.

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

Earth expansion is a fact

2011-05-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

( ... Plate Tectonics is a theory..)
(Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

Road Map for Earth expansion

1. Existence of the ocean floors. (Or we might say creation /extrusion /emplacement of the ocean floors.) The continents are dilated by oceanic mantle material that is everywhere of young age.

This is the starting point of the argument for Earth expansion. It is also, fittingly, its first-order expression, just as the Atlantic fit was the beginning of continental drift, .. and its first-order expression. When detractors say, "Show us the evidence" (for expansion), no more is geo-logically necessary than to point to the existence of the ocean floors, and their imprinted structure.

It would seem that detractors of expansion are unaware that their own counter argument, subduction, "the mechanism by which oceanic lithosphere is returned to the mantle" (in order to keep the Earth a constant size), is not a fact, but a theory based on Harry Hess's "philosophical un-satisfaction" with the geological evidence (mostly Carey, 1958, 1959) that the Earth had indeed got bigger to the extent apparent, doubling its size in the geologically short time from the Mesozoic to Present.

In the argument for Plate Tectonics it would also seem that most of its proponents are unaware that the balance of reason between the (factual) creation of the ocean floors and their (theoretical) destruction down subduction zones, is vastly weighted towards the theoretical side with its corresponding deficit of exclusive geological fact for subduction, because that 'subduction' can be just as well represented as overriding supporting expansion. They also appear not to recognise that the described 'overwhelming acceptance' of the model was based on the emergent data relating to the *creation* of the ocean floors, which defines expansion; it was not based on emergent data related to destruction. All such emergent data, i.e., that relating to back-arc spreading of the Western Pacific and westwards drift of the Americas over the Eastern Pacific, turned out to be in fact 'overriding', which is not subduction, but a position which Plate Tectonics is today being forced to adopt, either directly as overriding, or indirectly as flat subduction. It would rather not of course, because overriding (and not subduction) actually supports expansion.

So, according to the geological facts Plate Tectonics in effect represents a defacto description of expansion, but simultaneously denies it by playing the "no mechanism" flashcard - a classic case of doublethink!

Beginning with the axiom that the Earth cannot increase in size and followed by the hypothesis that the trenches were the site of ocean floor destruction, a great deal of further speculation went into rationalising mechanisms whereby this 'destruction' could occur, out of which were born such confabulations as "transform faults as a new class of faults" (that were everywhere present prior to the separation of the continents), Wilson cycles of continents yo-yoing backwards and forwards across the face of the Earth driven by capricious changes in convection patterns for which reasons that, to the best of my knowledge, no supporter of Plate Tectonics has ever even tried to explain (and few have even remarked); slab-pull, ridge-push, roll-back, trench suction, and so on likewise, .. each a Galilean 'epicycle' to account for what was a false axiom in the first place - an axiom moreover that was built on theory rather than fact. Instead of being seen as such, each epicycle invention is hailed as evidence of flexibility of 'the theory', without it ever being clear what the theory actually is - or more exactly, what is its foundation. (ink to PT as a theory)

2. Length of spreading ridges. The spreading ridges are longer than their equivalent-length continental margins when breakthrough first occurred. In other words as the continents are displaced, the ridges increase along their length as well as across. This can only occur if the spreading ridges move up. Plate Tectonics does not recognise extension along the length of the ridges

Along-ridge extension simply does not exist in the lexicon of Plate Tectonics, and yet it is clearly apparent in the retrofitting of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, (though to a lesser extent in the Atlantic because it is younger). If it did notice, Plate Tectonics could not exist. Hence it has been studiously ignoring this very apparent fact!

Ocean floors have been keep moving up ever since mantle breakthrough, with the Earth getting bigger accordingly. How do we know? Because the summed 'extra length' of ridges roughly equals the initial-breakthrough length of the continental margins. Ridge-lengthening means upward movement of the ridge, which means outward growth from the centre, and precludes real 'sideways' movement; sideways *movement* is only apparent, .. for there is none, it is only an artifact of outwards growth of the mantle (and precludes any return of the ocean floors to the deep mantle - which means no convection).

This length difference of spreading ridges compared to their equivalent-length continental margins is (next to the ocean floors themselves) the single most obvious expression of Earth expansion. Again, it is not recognised in Plate Tectonics.

3. Transform faults as brittle failure defining along-ridge extension. As the Earth increases in size the curvature of the outside shell relaxes to accommodate the new curvature of the Earth. Just as spreading ridges provide the record of impression of the new curvature in sideways spreading, transform faults provide the record of change from old to new curvature in a direction along the ridge. Faults at the spreading ridges are imprinted 'top - down', with opening pivoted from depth, transform faults are 'bottom - up' dilations and pivoted at the surface. Earthquakes at the spreading ridges are an indication where mantle correction is most focussed, being dissipated elsewere. The huge energy imbalance between earthquakes at the spreading ridges (much related to transforms) and those at zones of overriding around the Pacific, emphasise the continuing importance of *continental* curvature correction due to overriding, and the schism of any direct causal relationship between the two (as Plate Tectonics says exists).

4. Offsets of the start points of transform faults. Or transform insertion, might be a better way to think of it. Start-point offsets mark the periodic, sequential initiation of new transform faults.

Start points of transform faults are definitive of upwards gowth of the ocean floors and are not recognised in Plate Tectonics. Where the segment of crust between two older transform faults becomes 'overlength' and cannot sustain the stresses of the Earth's curvature, it 'snaps' in the middle and forms a new fault. This location is the start point, the record of which is preserved symmetrically across the ridge.

5. Curvature correction. Most manifest at the spreading ridges and around the Pacific, these are related through a common expression of adjustment to changing Earth curvature, not directly to each other in a cycling convection model according to Plate Tectonics.

Ocean floors grow upwards by underplating (not by dyke intrusion according to Plate Tectonics), focussed at the spreading ridges. Correction elsewhere over the ocean floors is dissipated. The continents move apart (and extend along their length) to accommodate growth. Older curvature, both continental and oceanic, collapses by flexure. Continental margins override the mantle (= 'subduction' zones) around their perimeters. Broadly, there is no equivalent in oceanic terrains because oceans are new; only the continents which predate mantle extrusion show peripheral collapse. Overriding is focussed in the Pacific where initial breakthrough was most and fastest. American override of the Pacific includes crustal lag due to dilational effect of the Atlantic and crustal lag related to Earth spin. Surface accommodation of oceanic crust to growth is by brittle failure of the crust (spreading ridges and transform faults).

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

The above elements highlighted in blue represent the basic factual road map supporting Earth expansion (although all surface geology is included). The highlight is to emphasise that they *are* facts. Readers might care to judge for themselves precisely what, by comparison, are the *facts* that support Plate Tectonics. Exclusive of those that also support Earth expansion I can think of none. Take away the doublethink of Plate Tectonics, .. it's morasse of contradictions, and Plate Tectonics *is* expansion.

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

Ever noticed ... #1?

2011-04-26T19:19:00.000-07:00

South American - African fit
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

"Doesn't the east coast of South America fit exactly against the west coast of Africa, as if they had once been joined?" wrote Wegener to his future wife in December 1910. "This is an idea I'll have to pursue."
-----------------
What they said:-
-----------------

"...Utter, damned rot!" said the president of the prestigious American Philosophical Society." ... "If we are to believe [this] hypothesis, we must forget everything we have learned in the last 70 years and start all over again," said another American scientist." .... "Anyone who "valued his reputation for scientific sanity" would never dare support such a theory", said a British geologist. "
http://www.pangaea.org/wegener.htm

Fig.1. Andean - African Fit. An earlier juxtaposition? (better than a coastal fit.) The white outlines of the continents are to the same scale, but South America is shown about 10% bigger on the right. In other words, if the situation on the right predated that of today, then by the time of severance Africa would have to have increased by about 10%, while the Andes remained the same size. (Continental margin overlay on gravity.)

Wegener, as we now know, was right about the fit of the continental margins across the Atlantic. Carey, one of the few on record to support Wegener's theory of continental drift, later showed that the fit was better if the continental shelves were used, a fit that since the advent of computers has become known as the 'Bullard fit'. The image above takes it one step further by showing a possible earlier juxtaposition.

Recognising the continental shelves as fits highlights them as essentially edge-to-edge structure, and the perception of them therefore as (near vertical) normal faults. However normal faults that are of global scale (simply because they *are* of global scale) pose questions that generally do not arise in the case of their smaller-scale counterparts. How do they begin? How do they propagate? How do opposite walls retain parallelism over such enormous distances, such as we see, say, in the Atlantic? And (in the case of the Atlantic) why does the Atlantic distension terminate on a pole of Earth rotation? And what then of other major rifts in relation to Earth's rotation, .. how are these to be perceived in the context of Earth rotation?

Questions that are difficult to answer untill we realise that the edge-to-edge fit is only the surface manifestation of structure that is far more profound than the style of faults normally observed at the Earth's surface - that of the shelled structure of the Earth itself, formed due to the gravitational differentiation of the Earth, and exploited by crustal movements that (if they are any way similar to the Atlantic and terminate on a rotational pole) are related to the Earth's spin. By their very flatness such structures are virtually impossible to recognise until extension causes them to break through the crust (as in the Atlantic) when initially at any rate they are covered by water and still hidden, then covered by sediment and hidden even more.

How, then, would we ever see them in the making? The answer is we wouldn't. We would only ever see them in retrospect, .. in their astounding enormity that hits us in the eye once they have made a breakthrough so distinctive they are impossible to ignore.

Like the Atlantic.

So, what then of extension prior to breakthrough? Surely extension must be happening within the crust, as well as at the continent- mantle interface. By definition of flatness and cover-by-water (and then by sediments), this will be difficult (but not impossible) to identify.

Scale is the key: the bigger the fault, the more likely the connection to dislocations of truly global extent, namely those representing the shelled structure of the Earth - in other words, the bigger the fault the more they are likely to be related to FLAT dislocations, NO MATTER THEIR ORIENTATION AT SURFACE; their local expression (and orientation) is 'the noise to see through'.
we have to
The above illustration is offered as a possible case in point, for even better than the coastal shelf fit of South America to Africa is the fit of Africa against the Andean margin - except that for this to be the case, the African coastline would have to have got longer by about 10% by the time crustal parting actually occurred.

However despite the attraction of similar curves Africa is too big to fit directly with the Andes, unless we somehow theoretically enlarge the Andes by about 10%. In other words, by the time severance actually happened, Africa extended its length while South America stayed the same length.

Now let's be very clear here. The above is a crude way of putting it. We're not exactly saying that the African coast hugged the Andes as portrayed in the figure, .. Well, ..it's possible it might have, but the intent is to show a possible FAMILY OF DISLOCATIONS that were instrumental in separating the Americas from Euro-Africa, not just the one that defined final severance, .. and that by dislocation on 'flats', parting might have been much more complex than that indicated by final coastal severance,.. and that such pre-parting would be written in the stratigraphic sequences of the two continents that developed on flat dislocations that are today virtually hidden.

Fig.2. Hypothetical section through Andean - African dislocation showing the suite of detachments relating to African severance, initiated against the Andes, fanning out through Brazil and Argentina, and culminating in African severance down at the beach we see today.

Speculative? Sure, .. but let's progress it with reference to differential enlargement.

Some answer to the question, how did Africa get longer when South America didn't, could be offered by the observation that South America appears to have got wider in the subsidence of crust that led to the formation of the Gran Chaco (east-west extension on a flat structure = the initial break that extends from the Caribbean to the Falklands), where Africa appears to have got longer by north-south extension across basins of the northern deserts and in the distension of the Mediterranean. As well, South American override of the Pacific, and discordance with the mantle prominent also along the northeastern coast of Brazil as well as the western Americas, suggests a degree of (flat) crustal detachment which would offer South America immunity from further crustal extension (where Africa is very deeply rooted). In relation to what's happening in the mantle, the continental crust tends to become 'fossilised' as far as deformation goes (except for curvature correction = subsidence + overriding)..

South America on the whole appears to have younger sediments covering older rocks, reflecting gradual exhumation of South America. Or, to put it simply, South America 'slid out' from 'underneath' Africa (within the limits of Fig.2 , but with more of a 'staggered' dislocation).

Flat-lying crustal dislocations of global extent and their role in forming continental sedimentary basins on flat-lying dislocations is not only unobserved, but conceptually *denied* in Plate Tectonics, which maintains the myth of rigid plates that can transmit stress over long distances without internal deformation. Only recently has Plate Tectonics noted such structures in the lithosphere where they have been termed '*flat* subduction', and has misrepresented their so-naming since movement is the other way - as overriding).

Expansion happens in the mantle. The crust adjusts. All geological studies, field, experimental and computer simulations show that extensional deformation happens firstly by pull-aparts on normal faults that progress to listric faults that in turn will flatten off to form the floors of sedimentary basins.

Once the crust is thinned to the extent of mantle breakthrough, further extension is taken up in the mantle with deformation in the crust being effectively terminated, continuing only as correction by subsidence within the continental interiors and overriding at their margins, as the active dynamics shift to 'sea-floor spreading' (and crustal enlargement), as is apparent in the distribution of Earthquakes.

Which returns us to the image above. Speculative? Highly. Call it predictive of the route that confirming expansion will take. There's a lifetime's work for a whole lot of deskies to rummage through the literature on South America and Africa and work it out, but I'll kick it off by that image, and the above considerations that follow from it.

Wait and see? Sure, .. but it will be far longer than my lifetime. Or yours.

(Psst..., .. nothing to do with the science, .. all about staying within the comfortable security of consensus. That's the way careers are made, .. courtesy of the nobbles of the Court awarding themselves Wooden Spoons. When you think about it, it's all that consensus can ever offer.)

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

Ever wondered ... ?

2011-04-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

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

Fig.1 The Atlantic Split. The biggie that started it all. (Image courtesy of Google Earth)

Ever wondered? .. how a split that goes from nearly the north pole to the south pole can actually happen? I mean, .. It's Really Big, is it not? And it *is* a fault, isn't it? - Africa / Europe, South America / Africa .. separated, .. on a fault, .. that goes from the North Pole to the South Pole almost. Kind of puts your local SanFran., or your Iapetus Suture thingie in the shade, .. Dunnit? Crikey, .. you can hardly even see Britain, much less the Iapetus Suture. (I think that's funny.)

How did it start? How did it propagate?

I mean, geologists map faults all the time, but usually have a hard job actually defining them at surface, much less speculating on their extent much beyond what they can actually map, which is usually no more than a few kilometres, and mostly a lot less. Yet here's one (the Atlantic) that is in-you-face, no-messing-about, almost right up our collective nose, .. going from one end of the Earth to the other. A pretty big fault by any measure. You'd think something like that, maybe not exactly that one, but one like it if you were in crustal-mapping mode so to speak .. should be an obvious thing to map. What if you mapped a fault somewhere and somebody came along and said, "How far do you think it goes?" You'd be hard put to suggest with any confidence, even if you were excited over the size, that it might go the whole way round the world.

And yet there there it is (on maps) (and Google Earth, ..sticking out like the proverbial - a fault of global scale going half-way round. More if you count the turn round the corner of Africa to the Indian Ocean. And apart from that bit in the Caribbean a singleton too, not a mish-mash of a whole lot of.

Some size, eh? It's ok for us with the benefit of hindsight and satellite-view, but spare a thought for the likes of Wegener trying to persuade people, .. or people being persuaded, ..that in continental margins they were looking at faults that were so mindbogglingly huge there was no precedent, nothing like it known, and nothing to compare.

It's an interesting point actually, because in all the stuff I've read at least, the point focussed on is solely the "no mechanism" thing about continents (not) ploughing through basalts. But the question of big faults that sort of scale must have been uppermost in people's minds, because they would have contemplated nothing like it before. In Wegener's day even the continental shelves were poorly known. It was Carey, much later, who did the Atlantic fits manually plotting continental margins on his big globe, and then Bullard with his computer, since when it became known as the 'Bullard fit'. So forget all about 'ploughing', .. just the very fact of continental margins as possible faults would have been speculation so wildly otherworldly, as to be summarily dismissed just on that score alone. That's the problem I guess, .. reading, .. unless you're reading it straight from the horse's mouth, you're mostly only reading what other people say about what other people have said - a bit like Chinese Whispers. Somebody said "no mechanism", and that's become shorthand for everything else that was said. But that 'big fault' thing must have been a real judderer of a thought to assimilate before even worrying about mechanism. But the fault turned out to be a fact, and the mechanism is still speculation. (Funny how people focus on speculation, rather than supporting facts.)

But the fault. How would you ever see it? There you are, down at the seaside with your map board doing the shore, and you've managed to mark on a little fault between spilites and conglomerates say, and you're musing over something you've read about Iapetus and mechanism. I mean how would you ever twig the big one lurking just off-shore - the one you could never see anyway because of all the water? If somebody came along and told you about it going all the way round the world you'd think they were nuts. And gradually, .. accepting the possibility of it, .. well, .. maybe you'd begin to get an idea how mindboggling stunning this sea-floor spreading stuff was all about. Hell, .. absolute creamery! You might even start wondering if that little beach fault you just mapped could be, .. just could be part of it all! Maybe even (Jeez!) a subduction zone!

I mean, .. it seems obvious in hindsight and satellite view, but back then it was something else. Sure, an Atlantic fit was suspected, but it must have been something to confirm it.

And all that water, .. aaall the way to America, .. and all that north-south length of fault. And how come the faults *under* the water were so much bigger than the ones you get on land? Well, they are, aren't they? Load up Google Earth. Where on land do you see faults as big as spreading ridges or transform faults - or subduction zones for that matter? Nowhere. The Red piddling Sea is the closest you get, and even there without satellite view linking it to the Indian Ocean you'd be hard put to twig it as a fault, rather than just a depression filled with water. Well, .. Africa too, I guess, which is the link to the biggie in Fig.1

But otherwise, ..what is it about water, that makes faults under it so big?

Well, it's obvious, isn't it? When we go down to the seaside, as we now know (but then didn't) it's not really water we're looking at, at all ..it's mantle. And that 'scale-of-fault' thing has something to do with the mantle. And since it *does* affect the crust as well, it must have something to do with the crust AND the mantle TOGETHER. Or to put it GEO-LOGICALLY, what we're look at, essentially, with a bit of an allowance for the final parting, is the contact between the crust and the upper mantle. Crust / mantle interface - exhumed.

And *that's* why it's so big. It's not a fault that propagates such as we see on the crust. It doesn't begin and it doesn't end, .. it's of infinite extent because it defines the outer shelled structure of the Earth, and therefore was always there - as a flat structure, just waiting to be exhumed when the crust got stretched - by the Earth getting bigger. By its scale it must be flat. Being flat, such things are never seen on land because they are either below the surface or covered up with sediments (or water).

Continental separation and spreading ridges have *nothing* to do with a crustal fracture the way Plate Tectonics represents it, with hundreds of pre-formed dog-legs and a dyke intruding them by jooking around right-left / left-right all the way round the Earth, spreading it sideways at the rate of ten centimetres every year. That's a bit less than a centimetre a month if you do the arithmetic - or millimetre a day - if it's ridge-push that is. Or if it is slab-pull, then the same amount of slab-sinking that has to do it - on faults that were already there before the continents began to separate, .. faults that stop on a dime on the ridge crests.

I mean, .. have you ever come across anything so nonsensical? ("A new class of faults", indeed.) Too silly for words, .. but not nearly so silly as the idiotry that has made it into fifty years of textbooks and 'scientific' journals courtesy of those writing them. If anything highlights the difference between the geophysical and the geological approach to global structure, it is that (and Wilson cycles) (Jeez, .. PT-ers, .. and they think that dug them *out* of shit? !)

The structure is flat and has to be flat. Flat structure of crustal dislocation is born out in the now available World Magnetic Map, which shows for continental fits across the Atlantic and elsewhere (as predicted by the flat pull-aparts of Earth expansion), that the continental shelf margins are NOT the significant fit, or at least not the ONLY significant fit, .. but the very distinctive difference in magnetic signature that begins some one-and-a-half to two thousand km offshore., is.

Fig.2. World magnetic map. Showing (amongst much else in support of expansion and in contradiction to Plate Tectonics) that the *significant* break in the Atlantic is NOT the continental margin as has been popularly believed, but some two thousand kilometres offshore, interpreted here as the breakthrough of the lower mantle. (Image courtesy of World Magnetic Map project.)

Those colour domains associated with the separation of The Americas from Africa, .. particularly that between the green and the grey-blue of the ocean floor - not the easiest thing to account for in Plate Tectonics, but excellent confirmation of crustal extension on flat structures as advocated by Earth expansion. One could almost say predictive, given that the site in the header has been up on the web for the last ten years.

So, ..more grist for the Earth Expansion mill, .. and the death of a thousand cuts by which Plate Tectonics is ensuring its own demise, even before the fraying cord of the damoclean sword hanging over it's head parts. The info is all there, and geologically always was, but is stacking up ever higher...

And so we wait, to see who among these bold convectioneers will grasp the nettle and risk their career by speaking up for the science, .. and *how* they do it, .. for what we are looking at in no uncertain terms is paradigm change in action - which is always more interesting as it happens. Needless to say, with a consensus so monolithic within the Earth sciences it will be no-one from the Plate Tectonics side of the fence, and certainly no senior figure with clout. They have too much to lose - their future security and past credibility.

( Which must make us wonder what sort of 'clout' - as scientists - they have. )

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

Coincidence or Supermoon reality?

2011-04-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

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

Image courtesy of Nasa

NEWS item for today, Monday 11th April, 2011
Japan Earthquake Today and Tsunami Warning Strike on Anniversary
LALATE - ?1 hour ago?
CORAL GABLES (LALATE) – A Japan earthquake today and a tsunami warning, later cancelled, struck on the one-month anniversary of the March catastrophe. Today's Japan earthquake was being reported by local news as a 7.1 magnitude while US officials are ... (etc)

Video: Japan Rattled by Aftershocks Month After Tsunami
The Associated Press Japan earthquake: Fukushima nuclear plant evacuated following aftershock - Telegraph.co.uk
New Japan earthquake aftershock felt in Tokyo Metro Seattle Post Intelligencer - USA Today
===============================

Google a word string for the item then check out the *SUPERMOON* addendum from the Economist, on this post, by scrolling down to:-
Addendum, Saturday 19th March
the Economist, Mar 17th 2011, LOS ANGELES , from the print edition
"The myth and reality of the Japanese earthquake"

Coincidence? ..or...?   I guess there will be a few people wondering, but let's see who will say something 'official'. For the record, here's the Googlepage as it occurs at the time of writing , which only refers to the supermoon factor at the time of March 11th.

Get it?    See also David Freedman's Book "Wrong", the import of which is that scientists almost always 'get it', .. (wrong, that is). It has to be said, in the face of the simplest facts, scientists often do (get it wrong.)

I find this (and the Earthquake of March 11th, 2011 ) of particular interest in view of the speculation on the above website, that the massive addition of energy occasioned by Moon capture could be the reason for the extrusion of the massive bubble we know as the ocean floors and the cause of 'Earth expansion', .. the most palpable expression of which are the Earthquakes defining the Fiery Ring of the Pacific, and making the most heartbreaking misery for people at the present time, and for all life since the time the Pacific began to open duringt the Mesozoic.

Or if you're a dinosaur, .. a *Ptero* of sorts, .. think how the dinosaurs felt, way back when, ... When they died out. The question is, ..is 'explosion' abating? Or accelerating.?

Earth expansion (/explosion) due to the massive increase in energy occasioned by Moon Capture? Who knows. Certainly the 'architecture of explosion' is symmetrical with celestial dynamics, if latitude and longitude are anything to go by.

Earth expansion, ..the daddy of all 'Supermoons'?   Well, .. it's certainly a connection to look out for. But how could you ever possibly prove it, if the biggest ever Earthquake for Japan and a follow up a month later are pooh-poohed by 'scientists'.
===============
"And scientists go, .."Pooh, di-pooh, di-pooh, di-pooh, .."
"di-poo, di-pooh..
di-pooh
di- ..
===============

But then, scientists as we know mostly get it wrong, - particularly those claiming relevance on account of PlateTectonics who are always touting for dough for "more research". If they got it right, there wouldn't be any need for (that much) more research. Would there?

Check out info on the Supermoon Factor
http://www.astropro.com/features/articles/supermoon/

Possible supermoon control? :- It's really quite an interesting point, because from a global geological perspective, to say that there is no connection between the Moon, particularly a 'supermoon' alignment, and the Earth is being a bit myopic. You can't just say, "There's the alignment, so something should happen", and when nothing happens say, "See? There's no connection." Doesn't work like that. It's like a wind-up chain reaction with many connections leading to a tipping point of final failure, with the pivotal source not necessarily at the point of final failure. Wind-up and tipping refers to time as well as location ('catchup', then pushed over the edge.) On the scale of geological time the whole lot is going faster than a laser-flicker in a disco, with different orders of interactive cause and effect (both in space and time). And it is not rock as we know it at the surface - more like unconsolidated sediments. That is, 'soft rock' - or rock with a lot of water in it, and we know very well what effect the Moon has on water. And I've read somewhere that the variation in the effect on the crust itself can be up to half a metre a day. And that they use changing water level in mines to (try to) predict earthquakes.  So I would say from a geological perspective we would have to look *very seriously* at the supermoon factor, including of course sun-alignment as well, because it's the combined pull - not just the pull of the Moon / Supermoon that has to be taken into account. Also the Moon orbits closer to the ecliptic than it does to the equator, which would tilt its effect towards the northern hemisphere at certain times of the year. (Sure, it's Taiwan, that's on the tropic. But then it is not Taiwan that is perched on the Marianas Ridge.)

Fig.2. Japan. All earthquakes greater than M4 prior to 11th March, 2011. (There doesn't appear to have been any smaller prior to the 11th) (1= first; 2 = second; then the cluster, then the big one 10km below 2.) The distance from the epicentre of the big one to the toe of the slide is 150km.

The action seems to have begun two days before, on the 9th (1 in the figure) ..leading to the cluster, then the big one on the 11th, epicentred 10km below number 2. The difference in depth between M9 = 32km and M6, 22km was 10km, but the spatial coincidence is surely significant. Like a little hole in the dam, then the trickle, then the gradual frittering, then the main burst, then the whole lot gave way (sliding from the Western side; nothing to do with the Pacific Plate moving. Because (note) all the earthquakes except for the one in the bottom right, which occurred after many in the cluster, are on the slide-side.

Repeat: Nothing to do with "plate movement" This is gravitational collapse, pure and simple - from the global scale, to the scale of the continental lithosphere sliding out over the mantle, to that of the crust slumping off the Marianas Ridge, to the catastrophic surface collapse that led to the tsunami.

(Footnote, 17th April, 2011 :- Check also this post for a possible supermoon connection?)

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

Plate Tectonics and along-ridge spreading

2011-04-07T23:29:00.000-07:00

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

How Plate Tectonics lets us down - Bigtime

Fig.1. Fig.1. Highlighting along-ridge spreading. In your mind's eye, retrofit the continents India to Australia, Africa to Antarctica to see the extent of the separation, which is at least as great as that across the ridge. (Doubles the surface area of that bit of the planet, doesn't it? ) (Funny that, ..Huh?) (Why is the spreading at the ridge not compensated by subduction at the continental margins there too? Neither is it in the Atlantic. Only (according to Plate Tectonics) the whole lot is accommodated in the Pacific, because Plate Tectonicists, can't - or won't - see how the Pacific closes.)

See? No moving plates, .. just continents that have separated with ocean floors filling the gaps between them. Separation is both across the ridge and along it.

It is in the 'along' component where Plate Tectonics lets us down, simply by not taking it into account: spreading along the ridge is simply not included in the lexicon of Plate Tectonics although it is every bit as important as across-ridge spreading. It is masked in the jargon of "moving plates" as if it does not exist.

The central plank of Plate Tectonics is the axiom that "the Earth's crust is divided into a number of plates (that move independently, .. etc., etc.)". With plates annotated according to their continental name (African, Indian, Australian plate etc) it is very easy to overlook the point that in fact the plates do *not* move, and that it is simply the continent that might happen to be sitting on top that is doing the moving. Like when you lift a bicycle wheel off the ground and crank it, so it goes round and round, but it doesn't go anywhere. Likewise an escalator at the airport carries people carries people and their baggage from A to B, but it doesn't move around the airport, or out on to the tarmac. So the continents (mud on the wheel /people on the escalator) are piggiebacked on the back of convection cells (the wheel /escalator), but the plate (the wheel / escalator themselves) are not going anwhere. Same with plate maps. The plates are like a whole lot of bicycle wheels going round, or escalators in traction 'moving', but going nowhere. They're moving, but not moving. There is - and can never be - any "collision" No colliding plates, no moving, grinding, crashing, bashing plates either. The plates don't move. Only the continents on them can be conceived as "moving". Nor does the notion of 'independence' have any currency either, because all the 'wheels' on each side of the spreading ridge are pointing in the same direction. As do escalators in the transit section of an airport.

Despite the many entries on the web at the time of writing (156,000) alluding to "plate movement" simple logic and reference to any plate map will confirm that there is no such thing - only the continent on it and the mantle insertions at the ridges move. And they only move 'sideways', *away* from the ridge. The *along-ridge* component is glossed over as if it didn't exist.

Yet as the above image graphically shows, it *does* exist, and the above illustration gives an indication of the extent of its existence. Measure it up. Compare the length of the spreading ridge (red) to its once-equivalent length shown by the continental margins (yellow lines). India + Australia; Antarctica + South Africa. And across the ridge of course, India fitted via Madagascar to Africa, and Australia fitted to Antarctica. These continental margin equivalences are not in dispute. They are accepted. So sum them up. It is not necessary to get picky; the difference is obvious, and at least double.

This along-ridge component can only be accommodated if the spreading ridges move up! And KEEP moving up. Or to put it another way, if the ocean floors grow *towards* the spreading ridges, not away from them. In other words, if the surface area of the Earth is increased in the direction of the ridge. In other words, there is no subduction, and the Earth is getting bigger.

Now, ..look at the faults that make this 'along-ridge gowth' happen, .. the so-called "transform faults", which in Plate Tectonics are supposedly the facilitators of continental separation. Virtual "tramrails of ductile flow" (in a direction across the ridge), says Plate Tectonics. "A new class of faults" (says 7,140 Google-entries citing Tuzo Wilson) to account for the contradiction between the obvious ridge offsetting and the 'plate movement' to make it happen.

Hogwash! They are simply no such thing. These are just listric growth faults whereby the ridge grows along its length. The ridge displacements REALLY *ARE* HAPPENING as the Earth's surface moves out from the centre - and there is an abundance of earthquakes on them to prove it. On the contrary, Plate Tectonics maintains that the offsets existed en masse *before* the continents began to separate.

Now, sure, some did - the big ones, like the Owen Fracture Zone marking the East coast of Africa (and the near-parallel Great African Rift), and the matching pairs of the south coast of West Africa and the northeastern coast of Brazil. Just like the continents have to fracture before they separate, some transform faults must also have their expression in the continental crust before separation. Which ones? The ones of a scale commensurate with across-ridge continental separation. But the plethora of transform faults offsetting the spreading ridge of the Oceans as they are at the present day, are forming *at this point in time*. They were not there to begin with - because they are not represented in the continental crust, whilst the big ones are. The earthquakes that we see at the spreading ridge, are mostly on the spreading ridges (first impression; need to do a count) all somehow at a default depth of ten kilometres, which puts them at the bottom of the lithosphere which (according to Plate Tectonics) is in the regime virtually, of ductile flow! What? the mush bordering ductile flow gives earthquakes? According to Plate Tectonics that at least is the implication. And is nonsense.

This length difference is where both Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion begin. Plate Tectonics ignores it because to acknowledge it would falsify Plate Tectonics. Earth expansion accommodates it axiomatically. Those yellow and red lines are a fact.

So is the Earth expanding? The surface area is certainly increasing - in the direction of the spreading ridges as they move up, which means no subduction. But "No mechanism", is the chant from Plate Tectonics seeking to shore up its position. No mechanism? Why, is it any different from the mechanism that Plate Tectonics invokes for the spreading ridges to move up? Why should it not be precisely the same? And in any case, since when was 'mechanism' necessary to validate the existence of facts? - which here is the fact of along-ridge separation manifest in the white arrows in the above figure. (Which Plate Tectonics ignores.)

And that image above is half (almost) of the great circle dilation of the Pacific in the previous post, which further trumps subduction. There is none. The Pacific closed on that great circle, just as the yellow lines in the image do (close on a great circle of dilation). The Earth has got bigger by the extents of the ocean floors. And the difference in length of the spreading ridges compared to their original extents of the continental margins, which indicates spreading along the length of the ridges, proves it.

Case closed.

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

Expanding Earth 'theory'

2011-04-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

"Plate Tectonics is a theory,
.. Earth expansion is a fact" (~ me)
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

There is nothing 'theory' about Earth expansion. It is a fact, .. as is shown quite simply by the great circle dilations of the two great oceans - the Atlantic and the Pacific, which belie Plate Tectonics' contention that the Earth is divided into a number of plates. It isn't. It has been divided sequentially by two great circles of mantle opening, first equatorially by the Pacific, followed by longitudinal dilation of the Atlantic; considerations of symmetry in respect of the Earth's rotation would suggest the transition is linked in some way to celestial mechanics. The Atlantic is figured first because it is where continental separation is the lesser (most recent)and therefore easiest to see. This is also the reason why recognition of continental drift began here

Fig.1. Great circle dilation of the continental crust to extrude the Atlantic. Pivoted at the north pole, the Atlantic needs no clarification as an example of the global scale continental displacement. From today's perspective it seems obvious - as does the aspect of symmetry of the Earth's rotation; ..and difficult to believe the controversy that Wegener provoked. (Image courtesy of Google Earth.)

The second is the Pacific, which is not so easy to see because dilation is greater - and which is why (because of a general failure to see its relation to crustal separation), we have Plate Tectonics - for Pacific closure combined with that of the other oceans (with their readily observable retrofitted margins) means that the Pangaean crust covered the WHOLE Earth, which has therefore been dilated by the extents of the ocean floors that we see today. Excepting overriding of the eastern Pacific by the Americas, all ocean crust (mantle) that was ever extruded is still in existence. Which means that Plate Tectonics is false.

Fig.2 Great circle dilation of the Pacific. Earth transparency seen from the Tethyan (Indian Ocean) side through to the Pacific, showing corresponding shapes of loops of gravitational collapse of the circumglobal mountain belt (yellow) and the spreading ridge (red); numbers show equivalences (Note:- '3' includes the Indonesian loop). The great circle of the spreading ridge (red) terminates against the Americas (round the back), but with Atlantic closure retrofitted, would extend to the Mediterranean to complete hemispherical partitioning.

These two great dilations split the earth sequentially in a way that allowed the mantle to extrude to form two thirds of the Earth's surface. The fallacy of Plate Tectonics' contention that the Earth is "divided into a number of plates" can easily be seen by comparison with its flat-map / plate-map construction, and the way geophysicists rationalise global geological sequence in so-called "Wilson Cycles".

To begin this farce, Harry Hess philosophised the "Great Catastrophe", (pdf) in which he conceived of the continental landmass being assembled like a pancake on one side of the planet, and taking up one third of the surface area, and a hypothetical ancient ocean ('Panthalassa') (borrowed from Wegener) taking up the remaining two thirds. But getting this pancake of continents to the configuration of the present day posed problems. Wilson tried to correct this by proposing "a new class of faults" as well as cycles of opening and closing (as many as necessary) which returns the Earth to its original pancake configuration at the closure of each cycle.

.. All, by the way, to refute the obvious, that the continental crust has been distended by the ocean floors, which were everywhere young, and implied the astounding fact that the Earth had doubled in size since the Mesozoic! And why did they want to refute it? Ostensibly according to Hess because it was "philosophically unsatisfying", but more likely it was to preclude Carey from appropriating the significance of the work that Hess had done and the conclusion he was coming to, and appropriating therefore the mantle as the originator of the idea that would become known as Plate Tectonics' (click the link then scroll or search the citation of Moores and then Armstrong). To no avail, however, since Carey had been effectively teaching that model for many years before discarding it as unworkable.
Well, that's it, is it not? Life is full of surprises and sometimes nature confronts us with something especially challenging. And if you happen to believe that everything you think you know precludes NEW STUFF just because it is "philosophically unsatisfying", then as a scientist, you have a problem. If you perpetrate that philosophical dissatisfaction on others by virtue of your perceived respectability (helped by spruikers of the media), then everybody else has a problem. If into the bargain you ask them to pay for it (to the extent of billions of dollars) then you should be locked up in jail.

Plate Tectonics recognises the great circle opening of the Atlantic (as did Wegener for continental drift) but not that of the Pacific. And will not recognise it either, for to do so cuts the thread of the damoclean sword that hangs over it. Pangaean equatorial great circle dilation in the Pacific is the torpedo that commits the Big Ship Plate Tectonics to Davy Jones locker - lock, stock and barrel. Plate Tectonics should have been circumspect enough to recognise that the 'plates' of the Indian, Southern and Pacific Oceans are linked by their common spreading ridge, and therefore could not exemplify "independent plate movement ". But it didn't, and fell in the trap of convection. A convectional mechanism that operates in the way Plate Tectonics says to give the "Wilson Cycle" (as above), requires first the death of the cycle, then second its rebirth in the in-situ reversal of the 'down' part of the cycle to an 'up' part. In an Earth which is supposedly making heat to drive convection, for no reason other than philopophical supposition, this is irrational, anti-science fruitcakery, .. for which reason great circle segmentation of the assembled continental 'pancake' is inadmissible. The global great circle segmentation of continental crust has no logical explanation in Plate Tectonics, yet it is a FACT, and (philosophically) axiomatic in Earth expansion.

And that's it. Earth expansion is a fact. And as facts need no theory for their validation expansion stands by the sequential great circle dilations of the planet. (As well of course as all the other stuff that supports it, on the site link in the header.)

Plate Tectonics is simply wrong, and is be shown to be wrong by every leg that it tries to stand on.

Earth expansion rules.

Case closed.

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

Earthquakes and Africa - Europe collision

2011-03-30T00:30:00.000-07:00

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

Africa is *not* colliding with Europe
Boom - Boom!

Google results for : ' collision + Africa + Europe + mountains + tectonics ' = about 408,000 results. Meaning, there's an awful lot of opinion thinks (wrongly, .. because of Plate Tectonics) that continental collision builds mountains, .. in this case the Alps. We could do the same thing with India colliding with Asia to build the Himalayas to show that this is nonsense too. The concept of 'fold mountains' is simply wrong. There is no African collision, only Mediterranean dilation and northern hemispherical collapse indicating gravitational instability of the northern hemisphere around the northern Pangaean rim.

Fig.1. The hinge of Pangaean hemispherical dilation. The Mediterranean is a fossilised remnant of the architecture of the Mesozoic Earth prior to burgeoning dilation of the Pacific. Note this condition continues across the later dilation of the Atlantic as the Caribbean - Mexican Gulf Region. (No oil-spills here, please.. Ta very much.)

Fig2. Burgeoning Pacific extrusion. The present day continents (solid colours) are reassembled on an Earth of the current size to give an indication of the apparent size increase of the Earth since the Mesozoic. Note the northerly shift of the Pangaean equator indicated by hemispherical partitioning, and the asymmetrical angular relationships of the respective equators relative to the ecliptic (north pole shown up the page is actually tilted twenty-three and a half degrees to the ecliptic)

Plate Tectonics portrays Africa as colliding with Europe to form the Alpine mountain belt (check Google link above), yet it is obvious from the distribution of earthquakes that it is the northern side of the 'collision' that is doing the moving. Contrary to Plate Tectonics' view of African collision, it is Europe that is collapsing over the Mediterranean, not Africa that is colliding with Europe. The dynamics are definitive of rapid crustal extension in which surficial stretching and mantle uplift (and following collapse) are vertically paired as opposite sides of the same lithospheric extension. The contact zone (the Alpine fold belt) of Europe is a tract of substantial elevation compared to North Africa (Libya and Egypt), which lies barely above sea level, and is recognised since before the advent of Plate Tectonics as a zone of gravitational collapse.

In other words, the Euro-African zone of the Mediterranean is not a zone of collision, but one of north - south extension, formed about the Pangaean equator as the Earth partitioned into northern and southern hemispheres (the Laurasia and Gondwanaland of Du Toit) about the burgeoning mantle extrusion of the Pacific, its lateral mantle extents of the Southern and Indian Oceans, and on-land equivalents of the split elevations of Tibet and Mongolia. It is the hinge of Pangaean hemispherical dilation, and as such is a remnant of the global, pre-Pacific condition of the Earth.

If Pangaea were in gravitational rotational equilibrium prior to crustal rupture then Fig.2 shows the extent of destabilisation, .. which is the degree to which the Earth has been kicked off-axis so to speak, implying disturbance of celestial dynamics. The equatorial zone has changed. Not only has it shifted north, it has apparently tilted dramatically too. That of Pangaea is presently situated some 40 degrees north of the present equator (consistent with Wegener's 'Polflucht'), where its oblateness is unstable - and so it (the oblateness) collapses. The emphasis on southerly collapse (illustrated by the loops along the belt) is interpreted as a direct expression of compensating southerly creep as the equatorial zone migrated northwards. That is, "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction", meaning that the ellipsoidal profile of the Pangaean equatorial zone is attempting (sort of) to stabilise by reaching back to where it came from, helped by curvature correction of the Pangaean Earth.

"No, no, .. I don't want to go! (Them's injuns out thaar..)

Take me ba-a-ack .. where I beE-lo-n-ng
West Virginia-a-a, .. Mountain Momma-a-ah

Take me back, ..country ro-o-ad."

(Grabs lamp post)

(America, ..Living its dream in music, song, .. Hollywood - .. and Plate Tectonics.) (Well, .. you have to laugh.. Nearly as bad as Scotland-in-kilts.. all that whisky and shortbread .. and haggis) (Heuch Aye!) (Imagine what the place would be like, full of kilts wi' big thick hairy spurrans. .. as well as Plate Tectonics - with all that sucking and pulling down subduction zones. Crumbs of shortbread and black puddings everywhere. )

Anyway, ...(where were we?) ... This is precisely what the superabundance of Earthquakes in the northern hemisphere continental crust (= remnant Pangaea) compared to the southern hemisphere is telling us (when we discount the fiery ring) (after all that haggis, .. and whiskey, .. and shortbread): it is the northern hemisphere that is most unstable. It is the northern hemisphere that has moved, .. shifted, ..relative to the core and the mantle since Mesozoic times. It's the northern hemisphere that's trying to get back to where it used to be. There has been some massive disturbance of the crust relative to the centre of gravity of the Earth.

Hence is implied the role of some other celestial body in the expansion of the Earth, .. either Moon capture or the collision (or near-collision) with some Mars-sized object. Moon probably.

The Earth's increasing size is itself evidence of some cataclysmic event which is tantamount to explosion, to which we are witness daily.

The mantle is extruding.
The Earth is exploding.
And Plate Tectonics fizzles, while Rome Burns.
An' Oor Wullie gets aff his hash-charge if he warbles the judge's favourite song.

Ah, it's a wonderful world. Live it up while it's still around, so that when we're up in that promised land and all these newcomers turn up telling a story, we can nonchalantly say, .."Yeah, yeah, .. but we knew all about that all along ages ago.. " Then, in a fit of excruciating curiosity, .."What was it really like though? Was there any global warning? "

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

The Japan Earthquake, March 11th 2011

2011-03-27T22:50:00.000-07:00

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

Japan continues to slide...

Fig.1. Earthquakes for the last week. The orange line (top right) marks the suite of earthquakes in the last 24 hours as Japan continues to slide eastwards into the trench. ( PSP = "predicted spatial periodicity" - see Fig.1, previous post.) (See also footnote* below - this post.)

Given the propensity noted in the previous post for earthquakes to occur with a certain spatial periodicity, the question arises of the possibility of one occurring in the next few days to a week or so in the proximity of the white circle (which is close to the earthquakes of Nankai (1944) and Kobe (1995). Hopefully not, since the stress will have been released by the slide of the northern block, and the periodicity suggests a deeper connection than the surficial slumping indicated in the northern sector.

*Footnote - April 17th, 2011. The earthquake above (M4.8, depth 29.8km), occurred on April 10th (00:08UTC) virtually exactly one month after the big one, and was the only one for the seven-day period ending April 17th (today's posting). More grist for the Supermoon mill? I think it could well be.) Check the supermoon post, Monday 11th April.

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

Don Findlay's expanding Earth Blog

Summary of Global Tectonics (Earth expansion)

Sausages, ley lines, necking and Earth expansion.

Folding, Plate Tectonics and the impossible dream.

Christchurch's December Earthquakes, 2011

Growth along the spreading ridges

Sea-level rise and climate change

Along-Ridge Spreading and Extension.

The Geological Cycle

Earthquakes, crustal subsidence, and Earth expansion

Dinar Earthquake, Turkey, .. October 1st, 1995

Earthquake near Van, Eastern Turkey, October 23rd, 2011

Stephen Hurrell - Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth

Subduction (Plate Tectonic's Trump Card)

Japan, .. and that 'Points of Reference' thing again.

Suess, Plate Tectonics, Earth expansion, ..

Sea-floor spreading (Plate Tectonics' glass slipper)

Plate Tectonics to Earth expansion - one more time

Plate Tectonics to Earth Expansion

New study shows the Earth is staying the same size

Japan Earthquake March 11th, 2011 - Update

Plate Tectonics to Earth expansion - Facts Rule

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

Spreading Ridges, Dyke Intrusion and Abyssal Hills.

Atlantic transform faults as growth (normal) faults

Sinosteel Oakagee (/Oakajee) and Weld Range

The Japan Earthquake March 11th, 2011, follow-up

Folds as gravitational collapse structures

Why the Himalayas are *not* uplifting

Earth expansion is a fact

Ever noticed ... #1?

Ever wondered ... ?

Coincidence or Supermoon reality?

Plate Tectonics and along-ridge spreading

Expanding Earth 'theory'

Earthquakes and Africa - Europe collision

The Japan Earthquake, March 11th 2011

Why the Himalayas are not uplifting