Don's model of Corpustular Convection
            (...knocks the whole box-and-dice of Plate Tectonics  on the head, rolls it off the cliff and bounces it stone dead..)

Fig.1. Compared :-  (a, b) The consensus soup-or-porridge model driving convection according to the USGS and Nasa,...and (c) Don's yew-beaut, absolute bonzer, gold-plated model of corpuscular convection that nobody's ever thought of before 'coz they're all as thick as two planks nailed to a bar stool,  and which grinds to a halt before it's even begun, thereby killing the entire notion of convection stone dead before it's even born.  Small squares represent dark energy released by even darker quanta of radio-active minerals in the mantle.  (two-dimensional quarter only shown to protect the gullible from bedazzlement.)

 

The mantle is thought to be solid because it transmits seismic waves.  In the lithosphere solid mantle is the equivalent of the liquid in the pan.  But solids in the mantle are different from liquids in a pan, and it is disingenuous to make the comparison.  Solids are crystalline, and the radiogenic elements that provide the heat are locked up in the crystals, which as far as we can tell should be uniformly distributed in the mantle.  And since what is rising is a body of rock (and not separate elemental radiogenic 'pieces', or crystals) which is supposedly homogeneous (because there is no good reason why it should not be) we are fleetingly made to question what is left behind when it rises, to which the answer would appear to be -  nothing.  Is Plate Tectonics then the Hollow Earth theory in disguise?   :-)

Obviously if, as Plate Tectonics says, 80% of  heat for convection arises from the decay of radioactive elements in the mantle, then convection can't work at all because there is more heat being released at the top of the system than at the bottom.  Count them - those little quanta, or corpuscles of heat released from radioactive elements -  and see.   In the corpuscular model (Fig.1c ) there's about twenty-two units of radio-active, heat-releasing quanta within the inner circle compared to about fifty of them in the outer one.  That is, the outer part of the mantle is releasing more heat at any one time than the inner part. Moreover the number applies to two dimensions and reflects a squared function.  It should of course be cubed for a three-dimensional spherical Earth.  That is, the further out from the centre, the more heat there is - IF we say that the heat is released from the decay of radioactive elements in the mantle.  And IF we say that the corpuscles are evenly distributed.

Well, equally obviously the heat quanta cannot be evenly distributed otherwise a whole lot of clever people would be wrong.  The above chequered flag would be true and there would be no convection, and since convection must occur (because there are plates being driven around like cars on the racetrack colliding like continents, crumpling the crust and pushing up the Himalayas) the only question that remains is 'how?' - how are the radioactive elements distributed, and how exactly do these feed convection?

You can see the abundance of problems here crying out for research, and the temptation for corruption of common sense in the name of  'science', for if the Himalayas (and the like) aren't being crumpled, and plates are not colliding, then what's it all about - this  'convection'?

You can see the problem -  If the dominant heat driver is supposed to be radioactive elements, and if convection is to work (two big IF's - and of course convection must work because the only known way the exterior of the planet can be deformed, says Plate Tectonics, is by heat from the interior), then some way must be found where these radioactive elements can be seen as not regularly distributed in the mantle, but as organised into particular areas that can sustain convection and give us the phenomena that we see at the Earth's surface.

And hence is born the idea of irregular convection and 'mantle plumes'  as a branch of (or as some would have it, an alternative to) regular convection.

So which is the assumption that would seem most reasonable to a 'reasonable man' (a test commonly applied in law and logic - but not in Plate Tectonics)  that the radioactive elements should be regularly distributed? ....or irregularly distributed?  Either way it's an assumption that is involved.

If we make the assumption that plates move (and do not grow), and the further assumption that this movement is driven by convection, and the still further assumption that this convection is fuelled by radioactive decay (three assumptions) then we can say (from what we see at the Earth's crust in the way of spreading ridges) that the distribution of radioactive quanta is irregular, and therefore that investigation of how that irregularity may translate into the deformation we see is warranted, but we should note that such an investigation is founded on (at least three) assumptions - which are not facts.

If however we begin with the assumption that the distribution of radioactive elements is regular (Fig.1c ) then convection can't work without invoking some other heat source that can overcome the resistance to convection.

Is there such a source?  Yes.  But is it sufficient to overcome the resistance to convection generated by a uniform distribution of radioactive elements?.  The consensus belief is that there are two heat sources which together make up the remaining 20% of heat emmanating from the subcrustal Earth.  Firstly is the residue from the original heat budget produced from planetisimal collisions that made up the Earth in the first place, and second there is the natural heat of burial.  However, it would seem that in an Earth which is already differentiated into a core, mantle and a crust that the heat of burial is irrelevant on grounds that:-  "That which gravity has assembled into a core mantle and a crust, let no thermal upstart set asunder!" a commandment that follows from simple consideration of the laws of thermodynamics - whatever the result of a dynamical process, no smaller-scale derivative of that process can undo that which the larger scale has already put in place.   And the first alternative source ('residue') - the remainder of heat from interplanetisimal collision - is, in the first place such a huge fudge-factor as to have no quantitative meaning whatsoever, and in the second place runs into the problem that a core mantle and a crust could never have formed had this 'remainder' been substantial.

And so we are returned to the notion of irregular distribution of radioactive elements founded on (at least) three assumptions driving mantle plumes and/or convection, and the question:- does such exist as a mechanism for global deformation?

You can see the abundance of possibilities that arise (founded on assumptions), and that indeed have arisen in the paths of enquiry now being followed - whole mantle convection, layered mantle convection (with an upper, near-global cell within a depth of 600 or so kilometres), and irregular mantle 'plumes, and all of them without in the least  considering the contribution of the Earth's first-order deformation - its spin-induced oblateness, which, if introduced to the question  "what causes deformation?"  would open up a whole new ball game that would render any notion of convection in whatever form or guise just simply irrelevant, particularly in view of the failure of Plate Tectonics to explain anything of just about everything we see, floundering instead in a morasse of unanswered questions which are impossible to address within the context of their model  - or as Pteros would see it, revelling in the glory of research opportunities.  Forever.  Phew!  Talk about the milk cow of academic research!

Pteros - they have to be blind, or nuts or both?    ...No, ...They just know how to work the gravy train of Free Lunch, when they refuse to address the obvious that is staring them in the face, ..that the Earth is round, that it rotates, and that its spin is inscripted in the deformation of its crust, ... that it is spin, together with gravitational correction that is deforming the planet, ..not heat.

"...The research opportunities are enormous".

Don't you just love it? ..real scientists, ... reaching for the truth, ..out the window of the gravy train of Free Lunch.  Do you think they really care if the reality is flashing past, just beyond their reach?  I doubt it...    And I doubt if they realise, given the implication for the rise and rise of uniformly distributed heat quanta in Fig.1 that Plate Tectonics is really the Hydra Horribilis of Hollow Earth and Earth expansion in disguise.

Subduction sucks