"As the continents move apart"
                (...or, "How plate tectonics really works"...)

Deficiencies?   What deficiencies?

Well one which is pretty fundamental is :- Are the continents being driven apart?  ...or are they being pulled apart?  And how do you tell?

Plate tectonics says they are pretty much the same thing - and therefore avoids the issue of having to (tell the difference).   As convection cycles in the mantle a frictional drag is created on the base of the crust which pulls the crust and fractures it.  The zone of weakness thus created is then a zone of pressure-release and partial melting which creates a buoyancy anomaly which lifts the mantle and creates the ridge off which the crust slips.  So the crust is being pulled apart by the frictional drag of convection, and is aided by the trundle of gravity sliding off the ridges.  But wait.  That's not right.  Another opinion is that it is the force of the intruding mantle melt at the ridge that is driving them apart.  Or still, it is the collapse of the ridge flanks that is causing "Ridge Push" - which pushes the ocean floors along -  despite the profile of the ridge being a thermal effect, not due to gravitational instability.

At least that is what it  used to say.   But seismic tomography shows that the pattern of presumed upwelling to accommodate the distribution of ridges does not fit that distribution.  So, .. what then causes the continents to "move apart"?

Well (says plate tectonics), ...since mantle rise and mantle descent are paired (to give convection), then (despite there being no tomographic evidence for mantle rise at the ridges)  if it's not the frictional drag that's doing its, then it must be the subducting slab that's pulling everything down with it - maybe helped by the push off the ridges.    Pull (by the descending slab at the subduction zone) creates a tension which localises pressure reduction at the ridges, which in turn initiates partial melting which lifts the crust and creates a ridge, and eventually ridge-fracture.  Gravitational sliding off the ridge then assists the pulling subducting slab.  Ergo, we have 'slab-pull - ridge-push" as the driving mechanism.  This effectively shifts the driving mechanism for plate tectonics away from any 'subcutaneous frictional drag' mechanism related to convection in the mantle, to the movement of the skin of the mantle itself.    In other words, it's not the drag of the cycling mantle that's doing it (driving Plate Tectonics), it's the drag of the cycling skin!   It is the cooling subducting slab - i.e. the coldness of outer space - which creates 'ridge-push - slab-pull.  ...Plate tectonics is slab-pull.

Uggh!

So, what's driving?   Is it the heat in the interior (with its radioactive decay)?  Or the chill of the skin (loss of heat to space)?    It is even suggested that return of subducting slabs back into the mantle forces an ambient background mantle lift (a bit like the way the water in the sink rises when you put your arm in) which creates a redistribution of the water content in the mantle and partial melting, which in turn feeds mid-ocean ridge basalts, ...which is a bit like saying that plate tectonics is driven not by its interior heat, but by its exterior chill.

(More uggh!)

This is the story of plate tectonics, about which the evidence has always been contradictory - and 'needing more research'  - because the geological evidence is either being ignored or being fundamentally wrongly interpreted.  'Subduction zones' are not, as plate tectonics would have it, zones of subduction and convective return which have swallowed a Panthalassa-sized ocean.  They are simply as they appear to be - the outcropping zone of uplift between outer and inner shells of the upper and possibly even lower mantle in the Pacific region,  as the Pacific diapir has extruded the crust and forced the Pangaean hemispheres apart

Whilst plate tectonics flusters and blusters its superficial explanations of driving mechanisms, and comes up with contradictory (and silly) explanations, Earth expansion tells it like it is - when it comes to the fundamental bit of how the Earth can double its size in such a short time, it simply doesn't know.  All it can say is that the crust of the Earth is being pulled apart all-of-a-piece by the extrusion of the Pacific, and that, in the pull-apart of this multilayered crust boudinage is a useful analogy, ...- an analogy certainly of limited application since 'growth boudinage' would be a better term, but a useful one nevertheless.

 
Fig.1.  A boudinage analogue for "..As the continents move apart...".  One frame in the movie of Earth expansion.  Pull-apart of the lithosphere expressed as lithospheric-scale boudinage. The uplift is simply an expression of gap-filling by pull-apart.  Red = zone of partial melting in the 'gap'.  Spreading and corresponding uplift exhumes the chilled layering in the mantle (lines above red zone = zone of mantle growth).

The same question faces Earth expansion as faces plate tectonics - what is driving?  Are the lithospheric segments being driven apart by mantle rise?  Or is the lithosphere pulling apart, and the mantle being drawn passively into the gap?  Retrofitting the continents and unravelling the movement picture in the process the answer is clear: the Pacific mantle diapir is being forcefully (actively) extruded through the crust (mountain belts/ detachment etc.), ...and the Atlantic is a peripheral, passive result of this process (no mountain belts).

The further question then arises: is the Pacific mantle diapir being pulled out (gravitational stabilisation of moon capture/ barycentre stabilisation)?   Or is it being pushed out (heat transfer from capture being dissipated in a 'slow explosion'/ phase changes etc.).   Or something entirely other?

Don't know.

But the Earth is getting bigger.  The way the geology of the dilated crust all fits back together (in the way that plate tectonics cannot even begin to manage) precludes wholesale destruction of anything.  The ocean floors are big - two thirds of the Earth's surface area - and their creation has left their mark, not only as the exposed mantle itself, but in the precursor deformation (and formation) of the continental crustal margins.   To say that an equivalent two-thirds has been destroyed, and left no sign of its destruction, and to maintain this as a  convenient assumption  is considerably less than 'science'.   It's asinine.  To further point the finger at culprit subduction zones when their geological role can be shown to be manifestly otherwise,  is at the very least disingenuous, and at worst, fraud.   For consensus to still further club together and do it with one voice (and one finger), ...well, if there was a jail to put it in, that's where it should go.  The charge?  "Creating a false belief."

... Go directly to jail.  Do not pass go....

As the continents move apart.... ?     Indeed..!
 

(...Enlightenment, ....coming soon to a guru near you....)
 

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