,,,,,Plate Tectonics 'Soup-on-the-stove' analogy
              (...is fundamentally flawed...)

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Fig.1  Plate Tectonics' Convection Paradigm - the  'Soup-on-the-stove' analogy.   1-3 shows the gradual development of 'hot spots' -  circular, diapir-like plumes of clear-soup surface disturbance is rimmed with bubbly juice from below, which pushes aside the more tomato-rich gunk floating on the surface.  Where are the spreading ridges?  Where are the transform faults?

Fig. 2.  Floaters and swimmers.  Detail of Fig.4. The reddish gunk is floating on the clear fluid beneath.  The white flecks in the clear bubbles are swimming about hell-for-leather underneath, ..never breaking the surface.  The whitish small-bubbly scum is accummulating, pushed aside as the bubbles grow.  There is no analogue of either spreading ridges or transform faults developing, ..only bubbles and marginal scum.

 

What?  Even when we look closely?  No analogues of spreading ridges, ..or transform faults?  What then the value of 'soup-in-a-pot convection' as an analogy for Plate Tectonics?  Dare we say, "NIL"?  We had absolutely better not, for soup-in-a-pot is the golden standard for convection-driven Plate Tectonics. Check it out.  Where is the big split , right across the surface of the scuim?  Or right across the bubbles?  Where are the transform faults, ..anywhere?

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Plate Tectonics' 'soup-on-the-stove'  analogy is fundamentally flawed because there is no analogue of the principal features of Plate Tectonics - spreading ridges,  transform faults. Or to put it another way, certainly the images are showing convection, as soup in a poton the stove does.  But if suchlike convection is operating in the Earth it is certainly not to produce the spreading ridges and transform faults of Plate Tectonics.  The closest analogue is more like granite intrusion, and in this respect the 'pot-of-soup' analogy is more accurate.  The shield areas of the Archaean and the early Proterozoic more likely fit the bill.

But Plate Tectonics is not based on the structure of the Archaean, neither is it based on granite intrusion.  It is based solely on the crustal structure of the last three hundred million or so years, of the basaltic *mantle* breaking through the crust, first of the Atlantic which is an observed pole-to-pole split in the crust, and secondly on an assumed destruction of a commensurate amount of exposed ocean floor.  And this looks nothing like the bubbly granite intrusions of the Archaean. There is anyway an order of magnitude difference.

So we can hardly say that there are close analogues between hotspots in soup and hotspots in the Archaean and that this is a useful analogue to show that convection drives Plate Tectonics.  Convection does not drive Plate Tectonics.  PlateTectonics is purely a hypothetical aberration deriving from an invalid assumption.

So we can dismiss the soup-on-the-stove model as an analogy for Plate Tectonics.

(Well, ..that was easy,  ...  wasn't it? )

What is operating here is the power of the meme, the way that concepts are easily transfered from one individual to another through a simple analogy.  In one breath Plate Tectonics offers the 'soup-on-the-stove' convection analogy as a model for the deformation of the planet's crust, in the belief that cooking is something that everyone can understand: stuff gets hot, and boils when you put it on the stove, volcanoes extrude hot magma therefore what is below the crust is magmatic and hot.  Therefore the two are comparable.

But in the next breath plate tectoncists will tell us that what is down below transmits seismic waves and is therefore solid.  What do they care if the public mind and children believe in broth and froth? ..rather than as they too know from earthquakes and the seismic waves they generate, that the mantle is in fact solid, and the upper part of it (the lithosphere) is in fact brittle.

Do they reckon the public's a bunch of pot-boilers, and will believe any old gunk?  And are we in fact being confronted with an appalling choice?  Are we to think that they are deliberately pulling the wool over people's eyes, or (God forbid) that they actually believe it themseves?

Which would you rather have in charge of your Earth sciences?  Duplicitious Desperados?  or Dopey Dummies?

It's your money that's supprting this.  Why not get a better deal and contribute to this site instead, and learn how the Earth's geology shows it is expanding.
 

Fig.2.  No Luck.   Lazarus begs some gravy from the train of food that keeps arriving on Dives' table - "the gift that keeps on giving".   (Your money)

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