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....Transform faults offset spreading ridges?
             (..in Earth expansion they do, ...but not in Plate Tectonics)



 
In which we see that contrary to Plate Tectonic dogma, animations depicting Plate Tectonic theory do not allow for spreading ridges to be offset by transform faults.

Fig.1.  Transform fault offsets in the Atlantic.  The offsets are obvious in the image, but Plate Tectonic animations depicting transform fault motion and the initial assumptions made regarding their configuration do not allow for offsetting of the ridges by transform faulting.
Fig.2. Spreading ridge offsets on transform faults.  Animation 1. . Animation 2.
 
Click the animations and watch carefully and see that the spreading ridges do not move; they are not being offset by transform faults.  The offset shown exists prior to the onset of transform movement - and therefore the growth of the ocean floors - right from their beginning - has nothing to do with the offsetting of the spreading ridges.

What Plate Tectonics is saying here is that all those displacements in Fig.1 (and all the way round the rest of the world) happened before the oceans began to open.  Read the caption in Animation 1:- " The ocean has not yet begun to open.  Segments of rift are linked by fractures that will later become transform faults."

But this is simply nonsense, surely.  A fault means displacement, and the animation clearly shows the ocean floors moving_as_one from the spreading ridge to the subduction zone, with no faulting (offsetting) of the ridge.  And that's what it says: "..linked by fractures.."  By definition fractures have no displacement, but 'the linking' clearly links a displacement, which is a fault.  So what Plate Tectonics is giving us here is a double contradiction: displacements of the ridges linked by "fractures" (which are in fact faults), and "transform faults" on which there is no displacement, and are therefore effectively fractures.

Sure they are faults all right, but offset is not being caused by the behaviour shown in that animation. <hold up animation>

Read the ritual responses ..? 
But Plate Tectonics unambiguously represents this 'fault movement' (which is not movement) as displacement of the spreading ridges:-
 
"The San Andreas Transform, for example, displaces the spreading axis of the East Pacific Rise northwestwards from the Gulf of California to its continuation west of northern California."  (Preston Cloud on Plate Tectonics, p.201 in: Oasis in space, 508 pps; Penguin books.

"In many places, the spreading ridges are offset by great transform faults.?......>  .In this program, we deal only with the class of transform faults that offset two spreading ridge segments. As you run the program, you may notice that the lengths of the transform faults remain constant and, as a consequence, the offsets of the ridge segments do not change."
http://visearth.ucsd.edu/VisE_teach/lessons/Sea_floor_LP.html

"Most transform faults are found on the ocean floor. They commonly offset the active spreading ridges, producing zig-zag plate margins, and are generally defined by shallow earthquakes."  ?http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/understanding.html>

"In order for seafloor spreading to occur on a nearly spherical Earth, differential rates of spreading between the equator and the poles is accommodated by transform faults that offset the ridge axis."  ?http://sorcerer.ucsd.edu/ERTH50/Lect23_Diverg.pdf>

...And so on.  All offsetting occurs prior to ocean floor growth, so no movement generated on 'transform faults' as the ocean floors develop contributes to any segmentation of the Earth's surface into "a number of plates" that "move independently" about the Earth's surface.  "Faults", "displacement", and "moving independently", is entirely the language of Plate tectonics, when there is no faulting, no displacement, and the spreading ridges encircle the Earth "like the seam of a baseball" precluding independent movement altogether.   Yet "plates move independently" is the key rote phrase parroted by Plate Tectonics.
 
"These plates move independently, sometimes colliding, some-times sliding against each other. The Earth’s surface is broken into 10 to 12 major plates and many smaller minor plates. These plates, each about 100 kilometers (60 miles) thick, move relative to one another an average of a few centimeters a year."
http://ct.gsfc.nasa.gov/journeys/Rocky_Paradox.PRINT.pdf

"Scientists now know that Earth's crust, which encompasses all of the continents and the seafloor, is made up of a patchwork of a dozen major and several minor tectonic plates. These plates move independently and shift uneasily atop Earth's molten mantle."
http://www.teachersdomain.org/resources/lsps07/sci/ess/earthsys/biogeography/index.html

"Earth's crust is divided into a dozen or so major segments, called plates.  These plates move independently of each other as a result of convection in the upper layers of the mantle as Earth loses heat."
http://www.courses.psu.edu/astro/astro010_pjm25/terr_1.html

"Earth's crust is not solid as once thought, but is made up of a dozen or so tectonic plates that move independently of one another"
http://www.answers.com/bb/bbsearch.jsp?Q=why%20do%20tectonic%20plates%20move

"Outer layer of earth's upper mantle and crust broken into lithospheric plates, like sutures in a skull.  These plates are rigid, and move independently "
http://www.ggy.uga.edu/courses/geog1111/lithos.html

"It has been hypothesized that there may be several mesoplates in the mantle that lie below the lithospheric plates and move independently."
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/geo/oceansci/ch/04/welcome.asp

"...the lithosphere thickens over time. It is fragmented into tectonic plates (shown in the picture), which move independently relative to one another. This movement of lithospheric plates is described as plate tectonics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithosphere

"Outer portion of the lithosphere is broken into pieces, called plates, that move independently of each other."
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~es10/classnotes/lectures/Lect.02.html

"According to the theory of plate tectonics, the earth’s crust is broken up into at least a dozen rigid plates  that move independently of one another. "
http://www.pacificislandtravel.com/nature_gallery/platetectonics.html

"Earth's crust -- the top five to 40 kilometers or so -- is composed of about a dozen huge, rigid "tectonic" plates that "float" on the semi-solid rocks of the upper mantle, allowing them to move independently. "
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/14344.asp

"Thus, if continents are found on different plates which move independently, it is reasonable to postulate that the plate arrangement may have been different at some time in the past. Many scientists believe that a great number of the Earth's surface features resulted from past movement of large portions of the crustal plates."
http://www.grisda.org/georpts/gr06.htm

"Q: What is a tectonic plate?
A.  A tectonic plate is a massive section of the Earth's crust (lithosphere) that "floats" upon the asthenosphere, a hot, flowing layer of the planet. These plates move independently, sometimes colliding, sometimes sliding against each other."
http://observe.arc.nasa.gov/nasa/education/teach_guide/tectonics.html
 

 
Since the offset occurs before the spreading ridges begin to open there is nothing equivalent existing on opposite sides of the 'fault' to be offset, for which reason it is questionable if it can be called a fault at all in the context of growth of the ocean floor.   It must be regarded as a pre-existing fault that somehow gets to grow with the development of the ocean floors.

This is in fact very close to Earth expansion, in which the transform is also a growth fault, but one which is very much active.  Its development is the whole active expression of ocean floor growth, and by itself is virtually definitive of an Earth that is getting bigger through ocean floor growth being *towards* the ridge and *UP*, i.e., utilising the third dimension, not away from the ridge in two dimensions.  (Plate Tectonicists, ...) ( Flat Earthers...) (Tut - tut!)

Plate Tectonics considers subduction the driver of the convecting machinery, dragging the ocean floors down the subduction zone ("slab-pull"). It also regards the partitioning of the ocean floor into transform-fault - bounded segments as due to ductile flow.  So it then faces the conundrum of trying to explain how the brittle  "cold subducting slab" (in a hot zone) can generate a pulling effect to generate ductile flow in the deep mantle half a world away;  when the brittle Titanic sank, the ductile water came up over the top, ... it didn't get pushed around to the other side of the Atlantic.  Nor did water get sucked ("slab-pulled") from the other side of the Atlantic.
Fig.3.  Sea-floor spreading according to Plate Tectonics.  By dyke intrusion (with some small magma leakage at surface).  The description given by the writers of the wikipedia obfuscate by representing the red slot (dyke) as "crust", but before it is 'crust' it has to be 'dyke', when the objection below is validated.   (Nice pic, .... Lousy interp.)


What Plate Tectonics is also saying by this model (where "all the fractures are there before the ocean floors have begun to open") is that spreading is by dyke insertion (any small magma leakage sits on the surface and contributes nothing to spreading). But dykes are feeders - to lava fields or to other overlying intrusions.  If anything were being fed (such as lava fields and other intrusions) then the ocean-floor  would not be as we see it - it would be covered up, ..hidden, by massive lava fields, of the LIPS sort that inititated all this ocean floor.   Also dykes would necessarily cut through transform faults, which, with subsequent growth would negate all the observed structural regularity of the ocean floors entirely. What Plate Tectonics is saying in its model, by saying that all the fractures were there to begin with, is that each element intrusion of these supposed 'dykes' (red-slot in the figure) zig-zag back and forth following the pattern of ridge offsets that was "already established before the ocean floors began to open", and it does this simultaneously right the whole way round the world resulting in a rate of spreading of 5-10cm a year.  Geologically speaking this is crass nonsense, the product of those who simply don't have a geological clue, and who deserve to be named as such, .. and an abuse of the scientific rules of falsification by those who had no interest in any such thing, and who deserve to be named on that score too. Laudits and plaudits from the crew of the Big Ship abound for Mr Wilson's imagination in devising this (non)- 'solution' to the apparent problem of "sea-floor spreading" according to convection. And this non-solution shows that it cannot be convection that's happening; spreading has to be the other way, .. *towards* the ridge.  The faults are simply adjustments to vertical displacement as the Earth's surface moves outwards from the centre.

...................

The really surprising thing in all of this however is how so many people, the bystanders who were not part of the in-crew, could so avoid recognising what was staring them in the face - that this transform fault 'solution' was bullshit. Can it really be that the collective cognition of a worldful of Earth scientists was (and still is) blocked from recognising the third dimension of our world to the extent that it is prepared to go along with this gobbledegook nonsense of Plate Tectonics, when just by a simple adjustment of cognition - that in real space the ridges are moving *away* from the continental margins, and therefore that the black arrows in Fig.3 should be the other way (with another vertical one showing 'up' because it's the only way it can go) -  everything falls into place?  That's every bit as bad as choosing not to notice that the Earth is rotating !  You'd think somebody on the Plate Tectonic side of the fence would hint at least for the alternative view, particularly since the consensus one (continents away from the ridges) is based, very unscientifically, on a "convenient assumption.".....    Why it almost makes you wonder if the science is really what it's about..   You'd think somebody would consider it worth a run, but no, ..that would go against the bodgy consensus and risk the ire of peer review.

(This 'science', ... it's a real tightrope for the career artist to walk.  Nobody had better poke him with a fact... or a logical glitsch.)

"To see what is in front of one's nose needs constant struggle.." (George Orwell)
 

 

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