.....Continental
collision - Plate Tectonic Style
(...
.....Continental
collision - Plate Tectonic Style
(...
| "... Among the most dramatic and visible creations of plate-tectonic forces are the lofty Himalayas, which stretch 2,900 km along the border between India and Tibet. This immense mountain range began to form between 40 and 50 million years ago, when two large landmasses, India and Eurasia, driven by plate movement, collided. Because both these continental landmasses have about the same rock density, one plate could not be subducted under the other. The pressure of the impinging plates could only be relieved by thrusting skyward, contorting the collision zone, and forming the jagged Himalayan peaks...." http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/himalaya.html |
Fig.1. Mount Everest. This is the image offered by the USGS to illustrate the point of "thrusting skyward, contorting the collision zone. ( Image copied from the website of the USGS)
"Contorting"? "thrusting skyward"? - indeed, .. Just in case you would like to see what is meant by 'contortions' and 'skyward thrusting', the USGS show them suffused in the golden glow of sunset. Nice pic., but not very informative re. "contorting". Here is better, showing they're not contorted at all. You really have to hand it to them, don't you, ..for sheer unadulterated nonsense. But this guy reckons he can do better:-
Fig.2. Continents in collision at a convergent plate boundary. "...Like the meeting of two Sumo wrestlers, continental collision stands the crust straight up, slowly giving rise to high mountains. As the crust is forced upwards it bends, buckles and twists..."
| "The two sumo wrestlers
enter the ring. Crouching, they watch each other like strange dogs
meeting in an alley. Slowly they circle, grunting and flexing, beads
of sweat glistening on their broad, oiled shoulders. In a sudden
explosion of muscle they charge forward, flesh collides with flesh and
the Earth shakes. The impact stands both wrestlers straight up.
Straining and pushing they jockey for leverage and position - bulk against
bulk = huge and proud.
"India and Asia met in this manner. Buckling, bending and twisting the crust the collision stood the two continents straight up and the Himalayas slowly rose. Continent colliding with continent forms mountains of buckled, bent and twisted rock; the Appalachians are mere remnants of such a collision, whereas the Alps, still tall, speak proudly of the collision between Africa and Europe." (Extract from T.L. Morton, 1996, Music of the Earth, Plenum Press, 312pps) |
Well, ..you know, ... What can you say? This is every bit as ludicrous as the ten centimetres of dyke intruding the ridges every year moving the continents, or helping to push the ocean floors down subduction zones, ..and would be funny if it were not firmly ensconced in the sanction of academia, and were it not factually incorrect: the mountains of the Himalyas are not crumpled, bent, buckled and twisted, but are of flat-lying stratigraphy, as is much of the Alpine region of Europe. Moreover the pull-apart of the Mediterranean lying between Africa and Europe mark this as as a zone of extension, not compression, ...as does the Persian Gulf lying between Saudi Arabia the Zagros Mountain chain, and the Ganges Basin in front of the Himalayas.Mountain building by Plate Collision is a *MYTH*.
| The $64,000 dollar question - the Elephant in the room that Plate Tectonics doesn't want to talk about .....Is the mantle subducting because it's convecting? ....or is it convecting because it's subducting?..." |
The answer of course is neither, ...it is neither subducting, nor convecting.