Weakness of Plate Tectonic Theory
            (... The ringin'-the-bell bottom line - observations... interpretations just don't add up)

The weakness of plate tectonic theory lies in the architecture of its construction in relation to the observed facts:-

1.   Spreading ridges-  Are huge submarine uplifts ('mountain belts') segmenting the ocean floors down the middle.  The Atlantic, Indian and Southern oceans are symmetrical about the ridge, the Pacific is asymmetrical due to the opening of the Atlantic and the overriding by the Americas. Ridges show a distinct 'magnetic striping' pattern parallel to and symmetrical about their axes, reflecting intrusion of the mantle.  The youngest mantle material is closest to the ridge.   Conclusion in plate tectonics?:-

• These ridge-like structures must be due to a process that was somehow symmetrical about  the ridge, and focussed at the ridge.
• The sea floors are being pulled (or pushed) apart on a giagantic scale, allowing the emplacement of mantle material.

...Some kind of process that is symmetrical about the ridge, allowing emplacement of mantle material. (So far so good.)

2.    Transform faults.  Cutting across the ridges at right angles, and in places extending the full width of the ocean floors and with extreme regularity the like of which do not exist within the continents, are sets of linear fractures.  The ocean ridges are offset on these cross-fractures by distances that vary from a few kilometres to (exceptionally) hundreds of kilometres.  Conclusion in plate tectonics?:-

• None. (!)
• At least not until the third element of so-called 'subduction' zones is incorporated (see below).  How do transform faults form?  Did they all form at once?  Why are they so regular? Why do some extend to (and through) the continents and some don't?  How do they relate to the process forming the ridges?  Why don't we see anything like them on the continents?   Are the tectonics of the continents so different from the tectonics of the ocean floors?  If so, why?   And why  are continental rifts parallel to oceanic rifts (ridges)?   What is the implication for basin formation v. mountain building?   To plate tectonics these questions, and the structures that raise them, are real head-scratching puzzles.  Plate tectonics can't even give the structures a useful name, until the following element of subduction is incorporated.  But one thing is true - by Plate Tectonics own construction, the dynamics of transform faults do not offset spreading ridges (although many descriptions of transform faults say they do; Plate Tectonicists simply do not understand their own model).

3.    Subduction zones.   Used to be called the Wadatti-Benioff Zone after the names of the authors who described it, but popularly shortened to 'Benioff zone' - now called 'subduction zone'.  Subduction zones are zones of Earthquakes that encircle the Pacific, and a bit round the corner in the Indonesian Arc (Java Trench).  Actually it's just one zone that goes from the Java Trench, arcs around the Celebes Sea and Australia/ New Zealand,  and then north into the Western Pacific, across to the Aleutian Arc, and down the west coast of the Americas, then skirts around Antarctica and back up New Zealand to the Celebes Sea.  This zone of Earthquakes  in the Pacific marks the interface between (roughly speaking) the crust and the mantle (lithosphere/ asthenosphere; the 'transition' zone).  Plate Tectonics' conclusions about the Benioff/ subduction zone?:-

• It is a zone of brittle - ductile interaction between the lithosphere and the asthenosphere.
• It is directly opposite (more or less) the ridges, and is therefore symmetrically implicated in ridge dynamics.
• The mantle turns down beneath the continents.
• The Benioff is therefore a 'down-turning zone' symmetrical with the  'up-lifting zone' at the ridge, (descriptive)
• 'Down-turning' = therefore 'downcarrying' (genetic/ behavioural) (a non-sequitor).
• Ridge uplift (and creation) therefore correlates with Benioff down-carrying (and destruction).

This last point is the bottom line of plate tectonics.  It is the lynchpin of the entire edifice, saying that the transgressive fractures which extend from the ridge to the subduction zone may  be regarded as the MEANS by which the uprising movement at the ridges is TRANSFORMED to downcarrying movement at the subduction zone, and are therefore termed TRANSFORM  FAULTS.

(...saying it again...)

Ridge uplift (and creation of ocean floor) corresponds to Benioff down-carrying (subduction) and ocean-floor destruction.  (So says Plate Tectonics.)   It's wrong because transform faults are an integral part of the spreading ridge and have nothing to do with subduction.     Movement is not 'transformed'.  The ocean floor moves up at the ridges - not along and away from them.

So, from making the assumption 'subduction zone' (instead of its alternative 'over-riding'), we now have a name for transform faults.   But see how it was arrived at, by first making the connection between ridges and the Benioff zone. That is, an explanation for transforms wasn't resolved (as it should have been, - and should be) through their integrated relationship with spreadng ridges, but by making an inferred connection between spreading ridges and the Benioff (subduction) zone.   And once that connection was established, then it became possible to place transforms in the picture.

But the placement is invalid, because beyond the initial offset on the spreading ridges (which Plate Tectonics says occurs before transform faults form) all plate segments across transforms are locked together; the whole lot is supposed to go down the subduction as one piece, unlike at the ridges where they 'shuffle' past each other as 'active faults' (which accoridng to PT's best construction displace nothing - see animations).
 

To put it another way, transforms are a part of the architecture of ridges; they represent the way that the ridge is offset as the Earth's surface must adapt to the changing curvature at it moves out from the centre - and the spreading ridges move away from the continents.  They belong to the ridge.  They are not some stand-alone 'lucky-bag third element' plate boundary.  To say that they are "the mechanism by which plates move past one another" is like saying the ridges themselves are the mechanism by which plates move past one another, or that the ocean floors are the mechanism of subduction. The only 'mechanistic' thing about transform faults is at the ridge itself, where they are regulators of ridge length as it extends along its length as the Earth gets bigger - not some expression of 'plate' motion.

Plates?  There are no plates.  To maintain that there is, is an intrinsic fault in the hierarchy of the data.  Tranform faults and spreading ridges naturally 'go together' and must be interpreted as such, in the context of each other | link |, and quite apart from so-called 'subduction'.

The shift in connotation from a descriptive term (Benioff) to a genetic one  (subduction) is the bugbear of plate tectonics that infects all clean-slates learning about it in school.  It's hardly possible to get rid of this infection, for couched within it are two assumptions and/or beliefs that are the fabric of plate tectonics.    Two?  Actually it's just one, but just as the weave and the weft of plate tectonics go both ways, so these two provide mutual support for each other.   They are 1. 'the Earth cannot be getting bigger', and 2. the mantle is convecting (i.e., what comes up at the ridges, must go down the subduction zone).  Note which is first:-
 

1.   THE EARTH CANNOT BE GETTING BIGGER

2.   THUS CONVECTION FOLLOWS.

Let's just recap Plate Tectonics here:-
 

1.  Assumption:- The Earth cannot be getting bigger.
2.  Dependent assumption:- Oceanic crust is being destroyed commensurate with its addition at the ridges.
3.  Convenient conclusion:- Spreading ridges and 'subduction zones' (oceanic trenches) are converse dynamic correlates).
3.  The mantle convects (because):- ....

...The statement "the mantle convects" is based exactly on the assumption of a correlation between  ridges and subduction zones.  And yet more ridges have no subduction zone than have subduction zones.  Instead of warning bells going off that would question the initial assumption - that the Earth cannot get bigger - Plate Tectonics simply shifts one leg of its goalposts and adopts the correlation that suits - that creation of ocean floor at the spreading ridges and its destruction of ocean floor must be commensurate correlates regardless of configurational problems.  In other words, Plate Tectonics sidesteps from its bald assumption of Earth size, to making the more reasonable (but unsupported) correlation of paired creation and destruction its default position, and turns things around, saying that 'the Earth cannot be getting bigger' is a conclusion from 'the fact' of pairing of ocean floor creation at spreading ridges with destruction at the Benioff zone.

Since "the Earth cannot be getting bigger"  is an assumption it follows that destruction of oceanic crust is itself an assumption.  The other way of stating the same thing - that the Earth must remain a constant size -  is in no way a conclusion from the evidence.  It is still an assumption.  And when the evidence is scrutinised closely -  i.e., spatially,  temporally, and behaviourally in the course of general geological investigations,  things just *don't *add *up.  Which is why plate tectonics has to *keep* shifting its goalposts.

(Carey has already extensively documented the flawed 'arithmetic' of plate tectonics.  These pages supplement it.)
 

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Whilst it is true that there is no easily understood consensus mechanism by which the Earth could be getting bigger, that is no reason to dismiss the evidence for it.  Anyhow,  when plate tectonics is scrutinised closely there is no satisfactory mechanism for plate tectonics either.  So, ...what?  Is the pot calling the kettle black?  Heat produced by radiogenic decay is insufficient in itself and contradicts the second law of thermodynamics:- "That which gravity has drawn together, let no thermal derivative set asunder". To get around this plate tectonics has substituted (ad hoc) a uranium - thorium heat source for its previous exposition of a potassium one, and makes up any perceived deficiency by further ad hoc reliance on residual heat from impacts during crustal accretion - despite the crystallisation of Archaean crust, a later Pangaean supercontinent, and the fact that the ocean floors (volcanic activity) have never been getting larger faster than they are at the present day, despite a diminishing heat supply.

So that's the weakness of plate tectonics.  Its thoughts are hidebound by its language.  In a very real sense it qualifies as junk science, because not only is the conceptual foundation on which the whole edifice is built critically flawed, but the flaws are well-known and, like the Emperor's clothes, realised to milk the poor blind cow of public funding for scientific 'research'.   Pteros may appear to be scientifically dumb, but they are politically astute when it comes to self-interest.