Plate Tectonics - The House of Collapsing Cards
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Plate Tectonics - The House of Collapsing Cards
| Plate tectonics is a House of Cards, because 'plates' as they are depicted by Plate Tectonics are falsely represented. |
Status Structural element Description Spreading ridges .. The observed accretion of new mantle crust at the ocean ridges. Subduction zones .. Zones of destruction of ocean floor, exactly equivalent to the amount added or 'accreted' to the ridges, typically on the opposite side of the plate from the ridge. Transform faults The means whereby one plate moves past another on its way to destruction by subduction. Plate Tectonics fails on two out of three of its central pillars, and the third one, spreading ridges, is shaky as well, because the concept of "original offsets" is simply wrong. By itself it negates the whole edifice of Plate Tectonics.
Subduction Zones - the *convenient assumption*.
| ...Subduction was an assumption in the beginning.... | . | ....and a convenient one too. |
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".... Thus, an important element of the seafloor spreading hypothesis from the outset has been the assumption that oceanic lithosphere is being returned to the mantle landward of the deep ocean trenches. " F.J.
Vine 1987. Encyclopedia of Structural
Geology and Plate Tectonics (Seyfert), p.712 (confirming subduction was
and still is an ).
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"It is convenient, in the context of plate tectonics, to emphasise underthrusting (subduction) of one plate rather than overthrusting (overriding) of the other, although kinematically both are equivalent" John
G. Dennis 1987. Encyclopedia of
Structural Geology and Plate Tectonics (Seyfert), p.503 (emphasising ..)
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.Everything that we can see of the growth of the ocean floors defines Earth Expansion. Plate Tectonics therefore is really defined by subduction, not by anything representing the growth of the ocean floors. Subduction is the crux on which the whole of Plate Tectonics depends. And it is no more than a convenient assumption - dogma that has been repeated so often to the point it has come to be regarded as fact. However no matter how often the mantra of subduction is repeated it remains dogma. The data can be interpreted otherwise. And better.
Transform faults dividing the Earth's crust into "a number of plates" is a memic lie, ..a myth.It matters not how many say so (about the division) this common assertion counts for nothing. It is a furphie, and the reason why is clearly written in plate maps themselves.
Fig. 1. Transform faults on plate maps. No representation is made on Plate Maps of the historical extent of transform faults - Plate Tectonics only ever shows the active sectors at the ridges (the small 'jaggies' ). Calling these historical extents 'fractures' and not faults allows Plate Tectonics to leave them off the map and effectively disregard them so as not to muck up the distinction of 'plates'. You can see why (Fig.2), ..because when the full historical extent of transform faults is represented the unity of the ocean floors as a single element is represented - not their segmentation into plates.
Plate Tectonics says that the Earth is "divided- into-a- number-of-plates" (figure above), which "move independently" about the surface of the Earth, .. yet look at it - a child can see this is simply not true if the full 'fracture' extents of transform faults are taken into account as well as their localised active 'fault' extents at the spreading ridges (Fig2 below). ( Plates? So where, exactly, does one plate "move past" another - as distinct from diverging from it? )
Fig.2. Alternative plate map showing the parallel continuity of transform faults across the oceans. The full historical extents of the transform faults (white lines) emphasise the unity and structural continuity of the ocean floors and the nonsense therefore of the ocean floors being "divided into a number of plates that move independently about the surface of the Earth". If they 'move', then they move as one. Which is in fact what Plate Tectonics says:- "Whole mantle convection."
| Transform
faults are GROWTH FAULTS, but only the active sectors are typically shown
on plate maps (the short jagged sections offsetting
the ridges in Fig.1). Omitting their inactive sectors and calling
these 'fractures' and thus implying that there is no movement associated
with them is misleading in the extreme, and completely belies the importance
of these structures in the growth of the ridges over time. But fractures
are fractures, ...discontinuities in the rock on which (by definition)
there has been no movement - ever. The 'fracture' sectors
of transform faults however
define the *trace of movements past*.
They are entirely about movement! Yet Plate Tectonicists
call them 'fractures'. Why? Because to Plate Tectonics they
are really something of an embarassment - as the expression of earthquake-
mediated brittle failure they cannot be accommodated in a ductile flow/
convection model. Attempts to do so describe them as zones of ductile
flow, ..not brittle failure. So they are left off plate maps.
One can only surmise the reason to be because they interfere with the depiction
of 'plates' and therefore what 'Plate' Tectonics is properly about.
Well, ...clearly the Earth is not divided into a "number of plates"; the distribution of transform faults, their continuity and global extents uniting the spreading ridges proclaims the unity of the ocean floors from the Pacific to the Atlantic, not their segmentation into "a number of plates" that "move independently". |
. | That
is, there is just one plate, albeit segmented.
The segments are still united
and not fragmented to an extent whereby they could be said to move independently.
If convection occurs to sustain this unity then this implies that convection
occurs as a single continuous dynamical process on the scale of the whole
Earth, yet at the time of writing (13_01_2008) a google search of <"whole
Earth convection"> ( a popular terminology to describe convection)
returns a mere six entries. By comparison the fringe consensus view
of layered convection (separate convection cells in the upper mantle and
the lower mantle) returns one thousand, eight hundred and seventy entries.
So much then for the difference between a number of 'plates' (that "move
"independently" about the surface of the Earth" as in Fig.1, and the implication
in Fig.2 that there is just one plate - the lithosphere, i,.e., the upper
mantle with the continental crust on top which has been ruptured by spreading
ridges. However care must yet be exercised regarding Plate Tectonics'
description of plates as in (Fig.1). We could be excused for
thinking that in the past the plates in Fig.1 actually moved, colliding
with other plates and throwing up mountain belts, or pulling apart and
causing massive rifts that encircle the planet as spreading ridges (as
Plate Tectonics says ), but it is not really like that at all. It's all
a question of what Plate Tectonics actually means when it says "plates
move"
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Subduction
- the wooden leg of plate tectonics
