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....Transform Faults Negate Plate Tectonics.
            (...Case closed...Simple as that...)


 
 
 
Abstract:- Transform fault offsets distal to spreading ridges show patterns of sequential initiation, supporting the view that spreading ridges increase in length along their axis as well as across them.  This observation, unrecognised in Plate Tectonics but self-evident to any cursory examination of spreading ridges, implies serious error in the accepted consensus view that plate growth is balanced by its equivalent destruction.  Plate Tectonics is consequently fundamentally flawed.  Moreover, if it is accepted that transform faults are an expression of ridge growth then globally the sequential offsetting of distal sectors of transform faults implies that movement of spreading ridges is in real space away from continents and continuously upwards, since this direction is the only one which affords space for growth.  It follows that the Earth has increased in size to the extent of the area of the ocean floors, that subduction therefore does not exist, and that the features which purportedly support it express crustal equilibration and  overriding of the mantle and not 'carrying down' ( 'subduction') by convection cells'.  Coupled with the further observation that transform faults have a high degree of symmetry with the Earth's spin, and directional vector continuity,  that beyond those sectors of the ridges linked by transform faults the entire ocean floors moves as one, and that the continuous relationship that plates have to spreading ridges means that there can be no independent movment of plates, the entirety of structural elements known as transform faults militates against Plate Tectonics.  Plate Tectonics' explanation for what transform faults actually are,  i.e., the means whereby "plates move past each other", is grossly and transparently inadequate.

 
That's even before we ask the question what, exactly, transform faults are.  To say that they are "The means by which pates move past each other" is no more informative than saying that Holiday Magazine is the means by which people go on holiday, when by such a definition boats and planes and trains, their various pricing structures, government regulations, and the universal joints of the body are just as implicated - and much more dynamically representative of the point.   In those terms "Transform faults are.."  tells us nothing.  So much for Plate Tectonics 'definition' of transform faults.

One might at least assume that they are faults, yet for more than 90% of their length they are inactive, mere fractures, ...and where they are active no 'fault' is any more significant than the next when it comes to the 'moving past'  of plate boundaries, ...which in any case only 'move' at their leading edges' but grow at their trailing (ridge) edges, and,  in between, "spread" ("sea-floor spreading").   Do plates 'move' or 'grow' or 'spread' (by means of transform faults)?  ...What exactly ARE they, these transform faults?  Well, faults or fractures that are peculiar to the ocean floor certainly, but quite evidently not to the continents, for the simple reason that their very 'aggregate quality', their parallelism,  their astounding global continuity, distinguishes them.  They cannot be understood in terms of continental crustal structures, for as a set, they simply do not exist on the continental crust; comparable 'faults' are individual structures, whilst transform faults can only be understood as a set.

So, ..what is it is special about this aggregate of fault (and fracture) structures that pervade the ocean floors the likes of which do not occur on the continents?  ...why this global continuity and aggregate parallelism of transform faults?   Because we are dealing with mantle growth, not movement. Transform faults reflect growth, ..not movement, not spreading either, .. but growth.  Get the word right and the meaning right, and we might be able to approach the question what these structures actually are, other than 'Holiday Magazine'.  Movement and spreading are apparent only, merely the expression of growth.  Ridges increase by mantle growth, not movement. Three dimensions, not two.

There are no suites of faults on the continental crust that come anywhere near similar to those on the ocean floors, and the question, " "How do transform faults form?"  draws more than a blank from the google archives which have been accumulating for at least ten years (since 1995).  In that time virtually nobody  (repeat nobody)  has used the wordstring "how transform faults form", yet it is simply just not possible to address any question relating to the formation of transform faults without using this wordstring - and yet it has never been used.  How so?  Because nobody knows, ..and nobody is prepared to write a paper (and post it on the web) on the question.   It's a clear case of "who's looking at who" before anyone makes a move, underscoring what so-called 'science' is really about, ..namely consensus, career building and advancement, ..nothing to do with the science.  The science is only the vehicle.

So, finally, .. what are transform faults?   They are growth normal faults. Growing at the ridges.  UP, ever up.  They are the means by which the mantle at the ridges moves UP, ...and does so in elemental bits according to how a growing substrate cracks as it cools.  They are not (as Plate Tectonics would have it) the means whereby slabs of mantle move (in as yet mysterious and unknown ways), elementally 'sideways', "past each other", as "transform faults".

Case closed.
 

(Of course, this being the case, the algorithims by which earthquake motions are determined need reconstructed, when some progress might be made to determining pattern of occurrence, and hence prediction.)


 

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