A  framework for Earth expansion, continental reconstruction and ore deposits for the 21st Century

This page is dedicated to the memory of  Sam Carey, who pioneered and championed the concept of Earth expansion as the true expression of plate tectonics.

The Big Cheese -
bigger than all the mice put together!

1911 - 2002
Image courtesy of Andrew Alden

Career Highlights
"Carey was Professor of Geology, University of Tasmania 1946-76.  He was an early advocate of the hypothesis of continental drift. His ideas were discounted for about 30 years until his theory, by then called plate tectonics, was supported by the discovery of spreading zones in the middle of the oceans."

 
"By this time (mid-1970's) the global tectonic revolution in North America had routed all opposition to the gross dispersion of continents and had reached what I had been teaching my students in the early 1950's, but I was disgusted that the "new global tectonics" had gone only halfway.  It still assumed axiomatically, notwithstanding the patent rapid growth of new oceanic crust, that the size of the earth had remained essentially constant. Hence it had to go back to the mechanism I had adopted in the 1930's and 1940's of swallowing great areas of crust down the ocean trenches, but which, after 20 years of working with it, I had found by 1956 to be unworkable on a global scale.  Hence my Elsevier book set out to quash this subduction myth"

S.W.C., 1989
(Theories of the Earth and Universe, preface extract)

Born 1 November 1911. Died 20 March 2002. AO 1977. Educated University of Sydney (DSc). Geologist, Oil Search Ltd New Guinea and Papua 1934-38; Senior Geologist, Australasian Petroleum Company Papua 1938-42; Australian Imperial Forces paratrooper, Captain, New Guinea 1942-44; Chief Government Geologist, Tasmania 1944-46; Professor of Geology, University of Tasmania 1946-76, Professor Emeritus 1978- . Gondwanaland Medal 1963; Clark Medal 1969; Johnston Medal  1976; Fellow, Australian Academy of Science 1989. President, Geological Society of Australia 1977-78.

see also

These websearch statistics support Carey's reference half a century ago to plate tectonics as a "consensus of sheep".  Little has changed.

 
A torsional tectonic model for Earth deformation naturally extrapolates crustal-scale boudinage to global scales.  A consensus plate tectonic model is transcended by torsion, which combines compression,  extension and shear in a single integrated global  framework for continental reconstruction and ore deposits.
 
 

 

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