Subduction's conundrum
        (...The nemesis of Plate Tectonics..)

Fig.1.  Subduction's conundrum: spreading ridge - subduction zone relations. If subduction were to operate according to Plate Tectonics, then the ocean floors would never open, the emplaced mantle would be destroyed down the continental margins (green) as soon as the continents tried to separate -  raising the question, how wide does the ocean floor have to be, before there is subduction?  (Figurative sketch: transform faults red, ocean floor blue; continents brown; continental margin green, with the little black teeth representing the dislocation between the continents and the breakthrough of the ocean floors; "somewhere else" is on the other side of the 'continent' - the Far Side).

 

Ultimately, the continents will be displaced far from the ridge, but in getting there (wherever it is they're going) the ocean floor must widen.  The question is, how wide does the ocean floor have to get before subduction begins?  The answer is no width at all, for according to Plate Tectonics subduction mechanism, as soon as the mantle breakthrough of the oceans tried to open it would be destroyed by the continental margins forcing it back down into the mantle.

In order for Plate Tectonics to work in the real world there needs to be an ocean 'somewhere else', beyond those continental margins immediately facing the spreading ridge - an ocean (or oceans) that have their own spreading ridge(s), their own subduction zones, and their own conundrums, and that must be destroyed in order for the blue one in the figure to come into being.

But this linked figure, which is typical of virtually all on the net, shows the subduction zone as the one directly facing the ridge, at the green zone  in the image, yet the Atlantic, Indian and Southern Oceans have no subduction zones facing the ridge.  Was there ever subduction?  Is it yet to start?  And how wide would the ocean floor have to get before proximal subduction sets in?  As wide as the Pacific?  ...until which time growth is accommodated elsewhere, ....where, exactly?  Far away, apparently, down a subduction zone somewhere else beyond the continents facing the ridge.   And how did that subduction start in that far-away place?  Was it just "spontaneous", as some think?  Or what?  Did 'the plate' really have to travel half the world before getting cold enough to sink?  And if on the way it is colder and more dense than the mantle that is directly underneath it anyway, why didn't it just sink 'right there' (wherever), maybe even right at the base of the slope of the spreading ridge, once the lava cooled?  And what about all the stuff that's supposed to be going down the back-side of the far away subduction zone that has to travel in subterranean ways beneath continents to get there?  How does that get "cold enough to sink"?  And anyway, how does the extent of all that surface area of the Earth get accommodated down there, where the space is substantially less?

Read a book?  I don't think I've ever come across a book or a paper addressing either the question of limiting ocean floor width (before subduction) or the question of crustal accommodation.

That's all we have to say on this page: Subduction as hypothesised and as figured in most illustrations on the net, is illogical.  For all the media hype and plate spinning to support it, and for all that it is the central pillar of Plate Tectonics, logically there can be no subduction, for the oceanic plate would be "forced down" as soon as it tried to open the continents.

The ocean floors are just getting bigger. That's all.  And an integrated global geological picture defines how.  Plate Tectonics is just a collection of ad hoc pre-Copernican epicycles that should be committed to the rubbish bin of history.  There's nothing wrong with the fact of ocean floor spreading.  It is the fundamental factual base of both Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion (although there are certainly many questions regarding Plate Tectonics' depiction of it), it is simply Plate Tectonics' extrapolation to a need for destruction of a mythical Panthalassa that is the issue.
 
 

Striking terror into the heart of Plate Tectonics

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