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                 (Plate tectonics and the Earth's rotation - an alternative view  )

A Figure bases courtesy of the USGS and NASA     "Look,  no torsion"

B Image base courtesy of NASA "Look,  no plates!"

Fig.1   First-order global structure   according to (a)  consensus Plate Tectonics, (b)  Earth expansion. The key difference lies in the way that the transform faults are depicted, as active sectors at the present day,  i.e., small jagged offsets on ridges (plate tectonics) or as their summed movement recording the full growth of the ocean floors (red and white lines in b).

This alternative view of plate tectonics is far from complete. However I believe the gist is clear and points unequivocally in the direction of an Earth which is getting bigger.

People usually try to publish things like this, but I've been down that road with something else interesting I thought might be useful - the role of boudinage structure as an organising principle for locating ore deposits.   That one took more than twenty years (1971 - 1998) for peer review to shift from contemptuous rejection to conceding that it was (/could be) "highly stimulating".  And for such a simple, self-evident thing like boudinage structure and ore deposits?!    Well! ...if it was so difficult with that one, what chance for the heavyweight of Earth Expansion?   No, ...right now the consensus of plate tectonics is so deeply entrenched there's nothing to be gained by going down the highly political route of peer review.

 
But if you have what you think is a good idea you still want to share it, and it's disingenuous of peer review to say, "If you think you've got one, then check it out with us".  Its sole purpose (in my experience) is to tramp anything that doesn't align with the consensus view.  Peer review is fine if what you have to say supports extends or consolidates the consensus position, but if what you have to say is in any way original, or controversial, ...'creative' let's say outside agreed limits, then forget it.   The original, controversial stuff is for fringe artists, not the institutionalised. You might as well print leaflets and hand them out in the mall (which is what this is in a way).  Those with original views who have managed to weasel their way down the publication route invariably find their effort shelved for some later, then-consensus generation to dust off and claim as their own.  With fanfare.  Well, forget it.   If there's no fortune in it, ..or fame, ...there might as well be a bit of fun.  So here we are, yours truly, warts and all, ...on the web, ...with the poison chalice of the Expanding Earth.

...Well, someone must do it  (mustn't they?).  So, this is a bit of an addition to the few others that are around,  part of the bottom-up groundswell that will help consensus in another goodness-knows-how-many-decades, to change.  But for the meantime (and most of all)  I hope you regard it as a point of interest on a topic that has the widest ramifications.  It won't be the first time the evidence of the geological record has changed the face of science, and it probably won't be the last either.  Observation of the planets and their moons in our solar system are changing our view of geodynamic processes in ways we couldn't have imagined a few decades ago, yet for the Earth itself in Plate Tectonics we are stubbornly rooted in the distant past of almost a century ago.  .And destined to stay that way if the Church of Plate Tectonics has its way.
 

Simply knowing that a competent view of Earth expansion exists  (Carey)  has been highly seminal in raising my own awareness. However the picture here is independent of, and substantially different I believe from that of Carey to warrant consideration in its own right, particularly in relation to two points, .1.  Recognising the circum-Pacific Mountain Belt  as part of the dilated, originally continuous Alpine - Himalayan - Cordilleran mountain belt, which probably encircled the ambitus of the Earth in Mesozoic times, and 2. Recognising the pre-Mesozoic dilation of the Americas by scissoring of the American Cordilleras about the Caribbean Pivot, ...and similar pivotal dilations on the Western Pacific side comprising the back-arc basins.

In a kinetic sense both of these really amount to pretty much the same thing - global dilation.  But it is useful to make the distinction between the dilational component of the crust and its torsional component consequent on Earth rotation.  Following these two points are others, which boil down to a model for Earth deformation in which there has been a simple differential  twist of the northern and southern hemispheres  (sinistral; southern half eastwards) to accommodate the Earth's growth.  The geological evidence is that this happened not on an Earth of the current size, but on one close to half, with 'twist' happening, not as torque in itself, but as an expression of incremental offets of outwards growth from the Earth's centre.

A model far from complete?  It most certainly is.  There is a lifetime's work in it for a worldful of scientists.  You have to wonder what's holding them up.  Possibly the conviction that if things remain as they are, then career paths and grant submissions, and the requirement to publish safely will likewise remain simple.  Only a fool kills the goose that lays the golden egg, ..so to speak.  So why am I doing it?  Because the golden egg does not exist for me.   Contary to popular thought, new concepts, new models that point the way forward are not always welcome, they wreak havoc with the status quo, and highlight the difference between science', which is a 'science-of-itself' and the cozy comfort of milk-cow consensus that ensures career stability, which is popularly regarded as 'science'.

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

I've tried to remain as immune as possible from others' views until I'd worked out my own picture according to how I see extensional deformation expressing expansion.  ...It's not hard, remaining ignorant in the face of overwhelming consensus, particularly when a lot of what's said doesn't make much sense.

It might not seem a very commendable way of doing 'science' (preferring ignorance), but it worked (for me) in this instance.   Now I've worked it out (and I don't think I've re-invented any wheel) I can go back and see how all the exciting stuff fits in - take a break from the mental gymnastics, - get up to speed, - do some 'real science'.  Inevitably this will mean making readjustments as we go, but thus far they're in the direction of improved simplicity - which is good.   And I think you'll find it substantially different from others' efforts.  Many roads lead to Rome.

A certain symmetry of reason is also taken into account.  Plate tectonics is built pretty much on the architecture of the ocean floors - spreading ridges, transform faults and the subduction zones of continental margins lumped together to produce a  model that by any standards is clumsy, ... of disparate random sideways and downwards movement of crustal slabs, where continents are like wagons in a shunting yard, or ships at sea eternally docking or leaving port, destined forever to be locked in kaleidoscopic replay backwards and forwards from one end of the planet to the other, ferried by convection until the whole thing grinds to a halt.  Surface continental interiors are virtually ignored.    The torsions described here on the other hand integrate ocean floor geology with much of that of the continents to describe a simple, elegant, directional singularity of  torsional motion related to the changing picture of the Earth's rotation, both of which might jointly be likened to an opening flower.    In my view, the simplicity of symmetrical motion speaks highly in favour of its likely validity compared to plate tectonics, when both are derived from the same data.   The difference is in the inclusion of the third dimension (though of course, one has to be aware that a third dimension exists, before the deficiencies of two are apparent) - 'plate' tectonics, underscores the flatness of thinking, as against torsional tectonics of a rotating Earth with its allusion to a sphere.  If Plate Tectonics, predicated as it is on the traditional approach of regarding stresses in the plane of the Earth's crust, was for a moment to remember that at this large scale of enquiry the Earth is not a plane with stresses arising from sideways movement of 'component parts' (whatever these may be) but is in fact a round, rotating sphere, with body stresses arising from gravitational (i.e. vertical) instabilities, then plate tectonics would probably not exist.

Finally, Plate Tectonics and Earth Expansion are arrived at differently. Plate tectonics is arrived at in a classic, consensus, 'bottom-up' way, by piecing together all the relevant data, ..and of course, all data "is relevant" (if you believe that), and trying to make a best-fit according to best 'scientific' practice.  This is a joint huddle, with everyone swapping data, agreeing on how many arms and legs must be fitted, and then fronting up 'en-phalanx' to present a 'serious consensus view', with  everyone (by definition) agreeing what this is (or getting sent off the field).   The trouble with this (to me) is that it ends up with more legs than the Isle of Man, and more arms than a swami, ....and yet "complicated solutions for complicated problems" seem to be regarded not simply as unavoidable, but laudable.  The possibility that things can be simpler, seems inadmissable.  ("There is beauty in complexity - and rewards in celebrity for the most hubristic depictions of it", seems to be the dictum.)

Earth expansion (as it is told here)  is arrived at in a 'top-down' way.   Only two first-order empirical data-elements are used -  the pattern of spreading ridges and transform faults, coupled with an earlier conceived model of my own of  vertical tectonism relating crustal stretching and mountain building as opposite sides of the same deformational coin of crustal-scale boudinage.  Modified now, this derived originally from my own field observations (mostly in the sixties and seventies) but consolidated later, of the importance of large-scale boudinage in deformation in general, and in locating ore deposits in particular.    This is certainly  a more sketchy approach, and not without some uncertainty deriving from what spreading ridges and transforms actually represent, but the flexibility it affords in fitting different scales of data is (I believe) to be preferred.    It allows 'doing the jigsaw' - so to speak -  with the picture (albeit one a bit fuzzy) on the front of the box in hand.  Finessing and fitting the arms and legs of different-scale data is the next stage, though others will probably want to do that of their own volition to confirm or deny the model.

Note that torsion related  to differential spin of the planet is entirely absent from the building blocks just mentioned.  Torsion only appears from the way that the blocks naturally fall into place when seen in animated sequential motion.   I mention this to pre-empt the criticism that somehow this rotational configuration of structure must be a pre-conceived destination, a figment, ..a 'model', ... fished conceptually somehow from the air.  It isn't.   It derives from the way that the elements fit best.   Simply substitute 'rotation' (that can be observed - but has been ignored in plate tectonics) for 'subduction', (that can't be observed, but began as a pre-conceived assumption of plate tectonics) and see where that leads.   The simple basic element of rotation is in the 'no-plates'  illustration above.  The main components that describe it are what this site is about.  I think you'll find they're pretty obvious.  In fact,  I think you'll find you already know them, you perhaps just haven't looked at them this way, because something else has been getting in the way - the legless crutch of plate tectonics - subduction.  Time to see it for what it is (a bit of academic power dressing -...underarm geological padding beefing out consensus shoulders), ...and throw it a-*way*.

One last word about 'about'.  The site is about a different way of interpreting the data.  Most aspects are already substantiated in the consensus (e.g. transform faults as the trace of ridge spreading), however many points may strike you as not supported.  Regard these as predictions of the model yet to be recognised by the footsoldiers of science  - the main prediction being that it is only a matter of time till the Earth's rotation is recognised as important in the Earth's structural evolution (*footnote 1), and when that happens, Earth expansion follows - axiomatically.  It is,  in effect,  'checkmate' - a 'lay-down-misere' in favour of an expanding Earth.  The whys of it all? -  are for the physics community to address.  The empirical fact stands: the Earth is getting bigger, and, geologically speaking, at a remarkable rate.
 

(*Footnote1.  This abstract,

"Cracks of the World, Crustal Oxidation State, Giant and Unconventional Petroleum Accumulations, and a New Global Plate Tectonic Paradigm"

promulgating a paradigm shift in plate tectonics, based on the recognition of a "necklace of latidudinal transforms"  appeared about a year after these pages highlighting the importance of boudinage and global torsion were posted)
 
 

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