( .. Plate Tectonics - the official version for kiddies .. )
Fig.1. Pangaea - in the Panthalassic- Tethyan seas
(that never existed) [original here]
(that never existed) [original here]
The picture is from the Kidipede. It shows the continents assembled on one side of the Earth surrounded by the mythical Panthalassa. Mythical? Sure, ..
So children do so like stories. Like this one:-
"Once upon a time, in a big flat land far, far away, .. there lived a beautiful princess. Every morning when she got up she would sit in front of the mirror and say to herself, "I am so beautiful." One morning after many years had passed and she had become Queen of the Realm she thought, "Indeed, I am more beautiful than ever." And it was true. She was very, very beautiful indeed. People throughout the kingdom whispered to each other of her beauty, saying, "There never was such a beautiful princess, and now she is our queen she is more beautiful than ever. We are so lucky to have such a beautiful princess become queen."See? Stories. Children fall for them every time. If you got this far you'll know exactly what I mean, because the child is deep in all of us, in the trust we put in our dealings with the world around us. The abuse of that trust ranges from a harmless and instructive silvery translucence, to a dark forbidding blue, bordering on panthalassic black.
One day, having heard of this beautiful princess who had become queen, there came to the castle a famous painter who asked if he could paint her portrait. The queen, who was as usual studying her beauty in the mirror thought, "What an excellent thing it would be if I could hang such a picture on the wall behind me so I could see its reflection in the mirror, and see how beautiful I am twice over, ..and so she said to her councillors, after a suitable delay so she could attire herself, to bring the painter to her chambers.
Now, the queen knew that in a far-off kingdom there lived a king who had procured for himself a bride by mail-order, on no more encouragement than the picture painted of her by this same painter. The queen had also heard rumours that the reason this painter was so famous was that he used a trick, which was to mix eggs with his paint to give a lustrous quality to the image, and so she thought to herself, "Perhaps if I mix egg with these lotions that have helped to make me so beautiful all these years people will surely think I am even still more beautiful." And so she called her favourite maid and said, "Maid, fetch me some eggs." The maid duly returned with the eggs and when she had departed the queen thought to herself, "In fact, if eggs are such a magical ingredient then instead of lotion perhaps I should just use egg so the painter will see I am most beautiful of all, and do a bloody good job." And so she cracked six eggs into a bowl and proceeded to paint herself with egg, believing that it would make her more beautiful than anyone in the whole wide, wide world .. .. .. (etc. etc...)"
Panthalassa? Who are they kidding? Not my kids. How about yours?
I mean, ..kids, ..they really have to put up with a lot of rubbish from adults (or read, 'lies and harmless stories') (?) Is this why we call them kiddies? ..because we are always kidding them? ... First, there's Santa Claus, .. then the Easter Bunny ..then the tooth fairy (I'm sure there are more), and now, from institutions of learning, the "Panthalassa", the mythical big ocean that never was, but that nevertheless we tell our children the continents used to sail around on, "the way bath toys move around in the bathtub". [Note the subliminal shots of the child in the accompanying advert on the page, too which seem a bit inappropriate too (i.m.o., .. kids being invited to drop bombs on other kids) (video1 of four). "Get them when they're young and Bob's your Uncle."]
Parents, ..telling their children lies with a straight face. Reminds me of the story of the dad who stood his little boy on the table, then with outstretched arms told his son to jump - and promptly moved out of the way so the child fell on the floor, then said, "Just kidding. Don't trust anyone, son ..not even your own father."
But there's a big difference between the Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy kind of kidding given evidential reality by the presents under the tree and money under the pillow, and the fictional princess that lives between the pages of a book decorating herself with egg to look nice. Fairy stories allow the child to be eased gently into the realms of permitted fantasy, to help to discriminate the internal world from the real one. The trust in a child's face when he/she comes to you with a question is a precious jewel not to be abused, but it is exactly that abuse of trust that we are witnessing in the above picture of the Panthalassa, designed for consumption by very young children in the name of science.
"Hey, ..we couldn't get them with the Santa Clause, the Funny-Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, ..let's get them with this one... "
Why do we abuse children so? Why couldn't Nasa, the USGS, and all the other institutions complicit in educating our children, give them (and the child in us) the alternative story - the one WITHOUT the mythical 'theoretical' Panthalassa? This one:-
Version for children - (with instructive silvery tranlucence)
No mythical Panthlassa - just today's oceans
No mythical Panthlassa - just today's oceans
Fig.2. Pangaea from opposite sides of the Pacific Mantle Bubble.
(Like an open locket .... Snap it shut to see Pangaea.)
See? No jolly fat men dressed in red scooting aboot the sky on a sledge pulled by reindeers, no rabbits, no fairies, no myths, no stories, no deep-blue-bordering-on-panthalassic-black, and no_"moving_plates", ..just the straightforward geological fact as it exists - the continents reassembled as they once were before the break-up. Goodness knows they're spending enough on space exploration, you'd think (in the name of fair representation of science) they could rise to showing an alternative figure like the one just above, instead of leaving it to fringe-artists like me, to do on a pension.
So why does the Panthalassic invention survive? Why? Because the current crop of Plate Tectonicists have grown up on stories that they believe to be true, because those stories have been told to them by adults with a straight face, and because they've paid for them, and because of the popular belief that 'paying for' means commensurate value. They don't realise they've had their trust abused. They seem to think that because they learnt it in school, and see it still being taught in schools, and indeed because it is the consensus view of all educational institutions, that they must be on pretty strong ground. Well, not so. Much of consensus is a fraud to beware of. The construction of Plate Tectonics is built, as Harry Hess pointed out in his "Essay in Geopoetry", not on the facts but on the fiction of his own "philosophical dissatisfaction", with the implication of the facts of that dilation - that the 'locket' in the above picture does indeed snap shut.
Despite the 'locket' being known to close by the extents of the Atlantic, Indian and Southern Oceans (this much is not controversial), and despite the simple construction here for the closure of the Pacific, Hess could not "philosophically" accept it for the Pacific, because to do so would snap the locket shut completely, which would mean that the Pangaean crust covered the entire globe, which would mean in turn (to put it in context of the present day), that the Earth has virtually doubled in size.
It was EXACTLY this implied philosophically unsatisfying size-doubling that was the crux of refusal. Hess acknowledged the geological support for it, and conceded it would solve his three most important problems in understanding the ocean floors, but he couldn't accept it because to do so would mean, .. (well, ..no need to repeat it here). But it is why Plate Tectonics exists today as an overblown, bloviating, blustering consensus model for the Earth sciences that doesn't work, (link) noting as we go that there is NOTHING about the geological facts of crustal architecture that is not better explained by Earth expansion.
How many BILLIONS of dollars are being spent on space exploration (e.g., looking for Plate Tectonics on other planets) when they can't even see the much more accessible variety here on Earth?
Rather, not can't - won't. Instead they're telling you that all that dark blue stuff in the top image is reality. And fervently asking you to believe them. Why? Do they believe it themselves? I don't know how many do, but there's a whole lot of careers involved in supporting that dark-blue never-never, and the necessity to maintain those careers (and for educators not to transgress the curriculum) is a powerful encouragement to belief, even if it is tongue in cheek. Even if the story is one of twisted logic: at least it is straight-faced, which as dissemblers know is so beguiling to the winning of trust.
But that deep blue-black Panthalassa is based on no evidence whatsoever, ..only the failure of logic to accept what is staring us in the face, ..that the locket does indeed close, .. and a disingenous attempt to conceal this by not presenting the obvious alternative case for what happens if subduction is interpreted as 'overriding'. And by not-doing-it where it counts most of all - in the kidipede, ...abusing our children (and us mums and dads helping with homework) (since we do like stories too) with the biggest lie of all - the lie of omission.
"... 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: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield." ~ George Orwell)
[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/
2 comments:
It is interesting how strongly most people believe in a Constant Diameter Earth. Have you ever examined the evidence for this belief? There is remarkably little and most of that evaporates away on closer examination. The strongest evidence often cited is the Heavy Bombardment Period that formed the Earth from cosmic material over 4,000 million years ago. This is supposed to have stopped completely so the Earth has been a constant unchanging diameter since then. But the evidence for a period of heavy cosmic bombardment is poor and seems more hypothesis than fact.
We can look into space and see regions where stars (and presumably planets like the Earth) are forming now in Stellar Nurseries. Since the Sun is revolving around our galaxy it must have entered some of these Stellar Nurseries within the last 4,000 million years. We know there are Cosmic Showers today but in the past 4,000 million years there must have been many Cosmic Storms that would increase the size of the Earth gradually. An Expanding Earth, not a Constant Diameter Earth.
Certainly we haven't been getting the bombardment we must once have had, if the Moon is anything to go by. I think bombardment is OK, principally because of what we see of the Moon and Mars (the two most 'dead' (fossilised) planets closest to us), but I don't know if that's what caused the planet to come into exsistence, and I don't think that's causing the enlargement since the Mesozoic. I had a page up on that once, on the *nonsense/ index. Forget why I took it down, ..maybe because I thought after all it shouldn't be in the nonsense category, and wanted to have it in a folder dealing with the symmetry of celestial mechanics (the transition from latitudinal (equatorial) to longitudinal dilation, and the tilting due to the approach of (or collision with) the Moon, is compelling in that regard.) Link below:
http://users.indigo.nt.au/don/cpr/spacedust.html
All things astronomical are a mystery to me. Most of all how matter organises itself into such huge lumps when its constituent parts are of the quantum scale. That interface between the quantum and the existential, the role of electrical charge and gravitational attraction, ..all of that is a complete mystery (to me). And how we get there too, ...playing with magnets and ionised gasses; then with so much dependent on mathematical analysis I'm suspicious of conclusions that are so dependent on the "Let this be that and that be this" 'deeming' at the top of the page. Smacks to much of "..And God said, "Let there be, .. and there was.." That's just because I don't know how, I suppose. But suspicious still. "I am a wooden babe." Which is why I leave all that speculation to others. I have a funny feeling we have to begin differently somehow.
I think we are just not looking at things the right way. Right back into the Archaean there is evidence that the Earth was not so much different from what we have today (right back to the banded iron formations - the earliest sediments.. as far as the physical elements are concerned - the plimsol line of water, .. erosion, sedimentary build-up. But that's in deep time. To begin with, to consolidate expansion, we need to focus on the best evidence that we have for it, which is since the creation of the ocean floors (mantle breakthrough), i.e., since the Mesozoic. Mantle breakthrough on the scale we are looking at means too that the mantle as figured today in cross-section of the Earth didn't exist. Which means the original
Pangaean sialic crust was much closer to the iron core (whatever form -and size - that was supposed to exist in) (if it did) (metallic solid or gas plasma?)
I don't quite follow his argument, but Carey speculates that iron, not hydrogen, could be the first element to appear, and gives numerous reasons why he thinks so (iron > silicates > gas giants). Intriguing idea, and in line with every other topsy turvey mirror aspect of the relationship between Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion. I speculate that meteorite impact through the crust (with virtually no mantle) could release iron (as a plasma / dust ?) that accummulated as the banded irons, ..but there is a long time gap to the Mesozoic for incubation, if such an event was going to lead to 'explosion' of the planet, of the sort we're witnessing since the Mesozoic. ..If you 'energise' / excite iron (as a plasma) (somehow) does it get heavier? Don't have a clue.
Geologists have to concentrate on the geology, ..not this kind of speculation. Otherwise their incompetence in that area will be used to discredit whatever sensible geology they manage to put together. It's all too deep. They're in over their wellies.
(Goodness!! Isn't this little edit box a real pain!!!)
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