Origin of the Wilson Cycle

The weak link in the chain

( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )


 With the number of bit-players doing Plate Tectonics these days, and making it into such a can of worms, it is refreshing to be able to get hold of the end of one worm at least and trace it to its root, thereby disentangling the knot of others around it.  The worm in question being the Heath Robinson contraption known as the Wilson cycle, and the tangled knot of others being the entries on the web for "layered mantle convection", .. 26,000 of them if you google them up with quotation marks.  For the Wilson Cycle was devised, not, as is mostly represented, to explain the cyclicity with which oceans appear and disappear and how continents become rearranged in the smoke-and-mirrors convecting mill of the "subduction factory", but from a perceived need to refute what was - and still is - simply apparent to all from the relationship of continental margins to spreading ridges - which was that the continents don't move away from the spreading ridges, but rather that the spreading ridges move away from the continents.

Plate tectonics, with its refuge-rationale in *relative* movement, very much ignores this distinction.  However, just as the difference between the avalanche covering the village, or the village rushing under the mountain has behavioural and logical distinction, so too the distinction between the continents moving away from the ridge and the ridge moving away from the continents also has very real directional and logical consequence, for if a spreading ridge moves away from the continents then the making of ocean floors is *towards* the ridge, not away from it, .. and there can *be* no subduction - and therefore no convection.

Now, of course, ..we're not saying that the 'subduction' zone does not exist, just that consequent on that aforesaid behavioural difference, 'subduction' must be interpreted differently from the consensus story, and since there are only two alternatives, the correct one (depending on ridges) must be continental correction (= overriding), not oceanic correction (=subduction).

Those of the inner circle of sea-floor spreading, and particularly Tuzo Wilson, were well aware of this implication of ridge development for Earth expansion, for, as well as following obviously from the configuration of young ocean floors in relation to the continents, by 1958 the principle supports for it had already been rounded out by Carey as the most viable explanation of global deformation, and whose ideas Wilson, in earlier years, supported.  Why did Wilson flip?  Seems to me the short answer is expediency, and going with the flow. Careers were in the making, and the exclusion of Bruce Heezen and the perception of Carey as committing "professional suicide" in their support for Earth expansion was almost palpable. So you don't go that way.  Wilson, much lauded for his ingenuity in getting the unworkable to work, was acknowledged as a powerhouse of inventive and convenient  'explanations', and a great asset to 'careers'.

However, the likely veracity of any explanation lies, not in any hotch-potch ad-hockery of multiple working stories, but in simplicity, and the "obvious that was apparent to all" could be gauged from the simplest fact of sea-floor spreading - that the spreading ridges are longer than their original break-through extents.  And a ridge that grows in *two* directions (along as well as across the ridge) obviously means an increase in surface area of the ocean floors greater than if it just grows (/'moves') in one (across the ridge as mandated by plate tectonics and the small-circle movements on Euler poles).  Or to put it another way, by the time the subduction zone begins to swallow any particular time-slice marker of the ocean floor at one end of the convecting conveyor belt, the ridge at the other end has increased by its further along-ridge extent.  Which means in turn that however efficaciously subduction is regarded as a mechanism for 'swallowing', the Earth gets bigger anyway - unless subduction zones match along-ridge lengthening with a commensurate along-zone shortening, which would be a bizarre state of affairs by any stretch of imagination, particularly when the whole contraption is considered to be driven by subduction..

So, .. got it?  Longer ridges means Earth expansion.

This simple ridge-length factoid is central to the simplicity of Earth expansion, and its ignore-ance (and the implications that follow from it) is central to the wall-eyed,  one-eyed, smokey Plate Tectonic factory that rests its validity in the contradictory multiple stories of  (non-) 'working hypotheses'.  For a continent girdled by ridges (as Carey had pointed out and anyone can observe) clearly meant that continents were not simply moving away from ridges, but that they had to be shrinking as well (if areas must be conserved), and nowhere more noticeably than in the case of Africa and Antarctica.  A truly non-sensical situation.  How did Antarctica manage to move away from the spreading ridge on all sides without shrinking?  How did Africa likewise?
Well, Wilson had an inventive idea here too.  Menard:-

 "Wilson then addressed the fact that the median ridge nearly circles Antarctica and Africa.  It was this fact that caused Carey and Heezen to call for an expanding Earth.  Not at all, wrote Wilson; concerning Antarctica:

"To escape the dilemma one must suppose that, instead of a current flowing south from the ridge, the ridge itself is migrating northwards and that the ring which it forms around most of Antarctica is expanding in radius.  If so the current flowing northwards on the other side of the ridge is moving at twice the normal rate,... "

"Thus the migrating ridge would sweep the continents before it and thereby produce the northerly drift recorded by palaeomagnetism. The ridge around Africa was also migrating, and in the Pacific two ridges were migrating without an intervening trench.  This caused the very rapid movement on the San Andreas fault.  Thus Tuzo first explained in terms of convection many of the phenomena that would enter into plate tectonics.  He also concluded from the arguments that Hess and I had advanced  that convection patterns could change."  (1986) Ocean of Truth,   (P.179)

 [ ..And apparently change to order ! ]

 Oh?  Would it ("sweep")?  Anything based on a "suppose - if" in order to "escape" a logical conclusion from a clear observation is a far cry from "factually-is", for of course *IF* the supposed convecting current north of the ridge is flowing north at twice the normal rate in order to accommodate Antaractica as a non-shrinking landmass, then it has to be also flowing at half this rate (whatever it might be) in order to accommodate the similar widths of ocean floors on each side of the ridge - unless (of course) somebody can think of a way whereby twice the rate of convecting flow on the 'far side' can mean half the rate of mantle growth there.  What's more, in advocating ridge-lengthening, Wilson is validating transform development on *great* circles where Plate Tectonics needs them on *small* circles (Jason Morgan and Dan McKenzie in that Euler pole link above).

Such is the contradictory cock-eyed junk ("multiple stories") that Plate Tectonics finds itself necessary to invent in the name fo so-called 'science'.  But it is one thing to be inventive in an attempt to get at the truth, quite another to be inventive to avoid it, .. and invite people to hang their common sense up at the door and suspend belief while the ringmaster does the spreading ridges, subduction zones, and relative movement trick with mesmeric dexterity, following which the master of ceremonies invites a standing ovation (for the sake of keeping careers - and budgets) intact.

And thus was born the idea of migrating ridges, not out of any thing intrinsic to their geo-logical nature, but simply out of a need to deny the obvious implication of along-ridge growth. And, further, to do it *layered* convection needed to be invoked, i.e., another convecting cell underneath the one at surface in order to migrate a 'normally-growing' ridge..  Wheels within wheels - epicycles within epicycles.  Some trick indeed, and one that for some was not without some disquiet as mentioned in the above link to euler poles and plate movement.

(quoting Menard again) :-

"The discussion was brief, but it offered Vine the occasion to refer to convection cells as "presumed" and "mythical." Certainly , the many problems related to convection that had been troubling the conference members would have been solved by eliminating convection entirely. " (Menard, The Ocean of Truth, p.276.)   [ Fred Vine of the Vine and Matthews Hypothesis]

But that's all about ocean-floor spreading, which is Earth expansion, so we can understand his "presumed-and-mythical" disquiet when it came to the problems posed by convection in dealing with the lengthening of ridges and layered convection.

But regardless of the ad hoc postulate of layered convection, if Wilson was saying that spreading ridges could move *away* from continents then in postulating such migration (even on just one side of the ridge), and whether he means to or not, he was leaving the door open for convection *not* to be the driver for continental separation at all. And *that* is at least one consequence of the "suppose-if escape" offered by Wilson, a convenient and expedient manoeuvre on which much has come to be built, but which is essentially flawed :-

 "There is a current debate within the geophysics community as to whether convection is likely to be 'layered' or 'whole'.  (...) "Seismologists are also divided, with some arguing that there is no evidence for whole-mantle convection, and others arguing that there is."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantle_convection   | Scroll down to "Types of convection"

 It's a meaningless tower of bable over an issue that has no foundation.  And all built, and continuing to be built, in the name of 'science'.

So, enough damage.  On yer bike, Mephisto, and 'cycle' that instead.  Let's deal with the lengthening of ridges as they move away from the continents, leaving in their wake the derelict graveyard of seismically silent fractures that define the ocean floors - and the continuing adjustment of continental margins to the original breakthrough of the Pacific.


[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/ ]

Reality check

( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

Just by way of setting the background to some Pangaean and Wilson Cycle posts (whenever), ... the bit in the previous post about Scientists, and the public watching Reality Television, highlights a point that we've mentioned before (several times) but going by the responses elsewhere on the web it seems to be a point worth repeating. 

.. Which is that there is this view that both Plate Tectonics and Earth expansion are both theories, versed against each other in some sort of contest, except that some would say,  "There *is* no contest.  Plate Tectonics has long ago been shown to be correct. Consequently Earth expansion is wrong."  However there is a fundamental difference in the way that both aproach the question of understanding the Earth's geological history which belies this.  They're not really on the same page at all, and therefore cannot be considered to be contestants - at least not for the reason just mentioned.

Plate Tectonics is derived principally from hypothesising on the meaning of the global distribution of Earthquakes (spreading ridges and the circumpacific "Ring of Fire"), and the assumption that is made at the outset, that there must be a balance between the lithosphere created at the spreading ridges and that destroyed at subduction zones.  Subsequently the geology is 'plugged in' according to the 'Principle of Multiple Working Hypotheses', in the expectation that some sort of overall truth will be revealed.  The problem here however is that there is a tendency to be guided by indiscriminate 'plug-ins' according to ad hoc hypotheses, when these can (and do) result in serious contradictions. However contradiction is not necessarily regarded as signifying error.  By citing  the Principle of Multiple Stories as a legitimate part of the scientitic method, Plate Tectonics argues that apparent contradictions are merely alternatives that are not properly understood, and that further examination, hypothesising and testing will clarify the perceived discrepancy. Traced to its root, this approach is heavily homocentric with the theoriser being both scriptwriter and ringmaster, directing and telling the story according to how the facts may be conveniently arranged.

Geology on the other hand is much less homocentric.  Guided by rigorous attention to scale and the principles of stratigraphic and structural superposition, investigation is far more structured, and virtually ensures that the local, regional and  global geology tells its own story.  Contradiction is strictly disallowed, and what 'hypothesising' there might be is mercilessly highlighted and subject to revision, not admitted as yet-to-be-explained legitimacy under the aegis "multiple stories".    In this approach, which eschews theorising, geology is a passive affair of 'letting the story be told' by the rocks themselves, not a hyperactive (and often schizophrenic) consequence of the 'scientific' method, executed by scientists concerned to show how clever they can be.  Geologists by and large are (like me) a pretty dumb lot who couldn't think of an idea to save themselves, but have a pretty good grip of the caution that must be exercised when it comes to putting two and two together in the geological milieu, .. which is why they mostly leave it to geophysicists who think they do, and are happy to go along for the ride.

And that's why Plate Tectonics remains as a THEORY -  because geologists are happy to play second fiddle to the ringmasters of geophysics who necessarily must begin with assumptions about the constant state of the Earth before their genius can shine - and geologists don't caution them on the disconcertingly ad hoc way in which they do it.  And why would they, when to do so encroaches so fundamentally on the territory of physics? .., and, .. well, what does it matter after all when the name of the game is publication, and publication is maximised by going with the flow?  Doesn't take a big idea to work that one out.

Earth expansion on the other hand is a FACT.  It begins with no assumptions, but observes and structures the picture scrupulously according to the abovementioned principles of stratigraphic and structural superposition, bound by the logical implications of scale that Plate Tectonics so transparently ignores (link above).

And incidentally, that is why support for Earth expansion will not come from any construct derived to support Plate Tectonics, probably not even from what is purported to be 'raw data' (given the end this is intended to serve).  Plate Tectonics is flawed in its heart, and any supposed 'credibility' using its derivations or foundations will only serve to undermine expansion (not support it).

Like the festering core of an abcess the assumption on which Plate Tectonics is based needs to be excised.  In the face of the facts it corrupts the very heart of enquiry.



[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/ ]

Pangaea and Plate Tectonics

Or, In the beginning was the word, and the word was *Pancake*( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

(click images for bigger figures)

Fig.1.  The theory of Plate Tectonics (going as Plate Tectonics does from the theory to the facts). (a) Toroidal convection generates a crustal  'pancake' (the coloured bit on top), H. Hess, 1962, on the recipe for which Mr Wilson bases his kookery book (b).  (c) The 'facts' as represented at the time of breakup of Pangaea - modified and highlighted to suit (a) and (b).

1.  In the beginning.

Now I have to admit I don't know too much about 'the beginning', the bit anyway that begins with the geochemical partitioning of iron and silicates that led to differentiation of a core, mantle and crust and concepts of how the Earth as we know it came into being - just that the rocks reckoned to be the oldests on Earth are from my old stamping ground - Western Australia :-

Fig.2.  Looking NE along Jack Hills - the oldest rocks on Earth.  See also :-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hills :
(Just about the oldest landscape too.)  (Click for a bigger figure or Paste to Fly-To window in Google Earth:-  [-26.050519, 117.261310 ] )

... where, when we take into account the sequence of rocks that represent that old look of the planet, implies that the rocks making it up then were not so much difference from rocks that accummulate today - except for the banded iron formations, which *are* a lot different from rocks we see today, and which I think could well be related to impact structures (rather than the biogenic accummulations they are advertised as today, .. but that is another story).  The banded iron formations (mnemonically known as 'bifs') are water-lain rocks that only existed during the deep time of the Archaean and Proterozoic.  Commonly associated with basalts (which are themselves commonly 'pillowed'  [meaning that they were extruded under water] these bifs occur world-wide, showing that water was an essential part of the crust back then - and might have been fairly deep.  That is, the crust back then had passed from whatever state it was in before, maybe a whirling ball of molten accreted stardust (magma) - or maybe not - to a state much like it is today as far as sedimentary accumulation is concerned.  What's more, the finely laminated rythmic layering making up these bifs suggests conditions of sedimentary quiescence that belie their near-synchronous deformation in conditions of shallow burial in a crust that was highly mobile. The crust was thin (compared to the forty or so kilometres of today), and as the strata that sit on it show, continually subject to basalt extrusions and granitic (and basaltic) intrusions - in intriguingly close association considering the spacing of their respective geochemical provenances.

Anyway, .. Jack Hills.  Given that the age of the Earth is reckoned to be about 4.5billion years, and the zircons from this area with the old rocks are about 4.4by, well, .. there isn't a great 'window of opportunity' for molten and differentiated behaviour to happen, is there?  100million years is not a lot of time, one might think, for the Earth to organise itself from being an incandescent ball ( if ever it was), to one with a lot of water on its surface accumulating sedimentary debris - especially when we consider the much longer period of time during which life has evolved.  

2.  Plate Tectonics and The Big Pancake.

The reason Plate Tectonics must begin with a pancake of continental crust on one side (or top /bottom) of the Earth follows from the hypothesised  *NEED*  for one, which in turn follows from a hypothesised *need* for the Earth to remain a constant size, which in turn a refusal to acknowledge the implication that follows from that greatest achievement of the Earth sciences to date - recognising sea-floor spreading and that the ocean floors are everywhere young, .. and the consequent observation therefore that the continental landmasses must once have fitted together to cover the entire surface of the Earth. [ For some background to the reason for beginning with a pancake please read this blog regarding Carey - and scroll down to "Eldridge Moores casts an interesting light". ]  Plate Tectonics does not question this fitting for the Atlantic, Indian and Southern Oceans, in fact in rather needs it.  The failure lies in not recognising that the Pacific too was once closed.  The problem for Plate Tectonics is that with all the oceans closed it logically follows that the continental crust must have once have covered an Earth that was about half the size of the present one.  [But we can't make that logical step without acknowledging first that the Pacific indeed closes.  See intro. here :-
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/earth-expansion-synoptic-simplicity.html ]

This "failure to recognise /acknowledge need" is then coupled with ignorance in a highly questionable and revealing exhibition of what science is (*not*) supposed to be about.  It goes like this:- "We do not know how this enlargement could possibly have happened.  Nor can we, within the scope of consensus physics, advance any hypothesis that might explain *how* it has happened.  Therefore we feel justified in refusing to accept the facts that tell us it has.  However, we can with a little imagination, cobble together a perfectly good (we think) explanation how it could *not* have happened, provided we only use *some* of the facts and ignore others, and ignore the contradictions inherent in how our various explanations might relate to those facts, and provided everybody ignores us being downright illogical too.  That way we've got a pretty good story for everybody."

The 'everybody' of course, believing that scientists have the high ground when it comes to facts, truth and logic, and that they are enthusiastically pursuing all three (instead of next year's research grant), are prepared to let them get on with it because they are mostly watching TV reality shows, and consider themselves therefore fairly expert in the business of reality, and know it when they see it. At least, that's what the scientists, who are aware of this predilection of 'everybody', are hoping for.  So we begin some posts about this "perfectly good explanation" of Plate Tectonics, just to illustrate how factual, truthful and logical it is. This one being the first of a few - so watch this space, as_they_say.

And so we begin with Mr Hess's Big Pancake, followed by Mr Wilson's recipe for massaging it into Plate Tectonics as it stands today.

But first a more serious and somewhat harder word.  In choosing to deny the logic that follows from the observed facts of sea-floor spreading in order to shore up ignorance, and further choosing a false alternative that defies logic in order to support this denial, Plate Tectonics is placing itself squarely in the realm of Junk Science. And that so many go along with it, is reprehensible.

So let's see exactly what it is they go along with.


3.  The Big Pancake (as seen on reality TV.

Fig.1a.  A cross section through the toroidal convection of the Earth again,  as Fig.1 above) (north not necessarily at the top.)  The pancake is the 1/3rd circumference at the top (coloured). From H. Hess, 1962.  http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Hess1962.pdf

Note that the figure does not actually puport to illustrate the intrinsic, true nature of convection in the Earth as it is commonly understood  but is a device to explain how, using a hypothetical convectional model [that people can easily understand from analogies of soup cooking while watching TV], an accumulation of crust might occur as a 'pancake' on one side of the Earth.  That is, the convection model follows from the *need for a pancake*, not vice versa.  There are clearly problems with a toroidal configuration in relation to the spherical symmetry of the Earth's core, mantle and crust that are not explained - unless two toroids, mirrored one above the other are used, for surely convection would more logically be a symmetrically radial affair, based as it is on gravitational return of a cooled fraction to a hotter environment . But that would mean we'd have two pancakes - which wouldn't do, not with us (rather than the Earth) being in charge of the stack.  Anyway, even if we allow that the configuration of overturn may be correct to form the pancake, why should its configuration subsequently change to cause its disintegration, re-formation, and further repeated cycles of the same?  Any causal explanation here is purely speculation and cannot be supported by reference to the pancake itself, which is a hypothesised *result* of the overturn.  Speculation is no basis for any confident assertion of anything, but this is indeed the starting point of Plate Tectonics.

So, ..Summary.

1. It is assumed that the Earth cannot get bigger [See Hess's "philosophically unsatisfying" comment in Carey link referenced above - ]
2. Therefore it is necessary to hypothesise an earlier ocean (Panthalassa) equal in size to the sum of the present ones (and consequently a primeordial crust essentially equal in size to the sum of the present continents.
3. Therefore it is necessary to conceive some sort of convectional engine that would reflect this bilateral asymmetry (2/3rds ocean, 1/3 continent.)  An event termed "The Great Catastrophe " is proposed to form the Earth's core, consequent on toroidal mantle overturn, but Hess's acknowledgement of its hypothetical nature is unquestioned :-

Hess, 1962, p.601:-  "Dozens of assumptions and hypotheses have been introduced in the paragraphs above to establish a framework for consideration of the problem. [The problem being how to justify the assumption that there must always have been an ocean equal in size to the present ones. d.f.] I have attempted to choose reasonably among a myriad of possible alternatives, but no competetent reader with an ounce of imagination is likely to be willing to accept all of the choices made. Unless some such set of confining assumptions is made, however, speculation spreads out into limitless variations, and the resulting geopoetry has neither rhyme nor reason."  http://www.mantleplumes.org/WebDocuments/Hess1962.pdf  

Hess's disclaimer is in answer to his hesitation re. Carey's expanding Earth being philosophically unsatisfying (a bit further up the page of the abovementioned Carey link), and highlights the lack of factual basis prefacing the next lynchpin Plate Tectonics - subduction  [because the old ocean needs to be got rid of; so first hypothesise an ocean that needs to be got rid of, then hypothesise a way to do it.  And find 'proof'.  Neat Huh? (according to the scientific method)]


... And that's where the pancake and "Great Catastrophe" derive their legitimacy - from the denial of the logic that follows from the facts of sea-floor spreading - if we take away the convenient assumption that enlargement can't happen.

[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/ ]

The Wilson Cycle

( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

(Click images for a bigger figure.)

Fig.1. Pangaea according to Plate Tectonics. The ocean that always was and always will be : Panthalassa, the fabled ocean of Plate Tectonics necessary to make the theory work, is all blue round the back (so you don't much notice it), and is continuous with the Tethys Ocean, which is the 'pie-slice cut-out' from the continents on the right.

Fig.2. The Wilson cycle, massaging the Tethys and the Panthalassa (to make Plate Tectonics work).


[ From the archives, Scientific American - about How Plate Tectonics is supposed to work (J.B. Murphy and R.D. Nance, 1992 (April). Mountain belts and the Supercontinent Cycle.]

Twenty years down the road from the previous thirty, makes half a century during which nothing has changed.

You try, because my best efforts to explain what they were getting at there, fail me.

To me, simple dilation is much simpler :-

Fig.3 Earth expansion. Mantle breakout is shown here as a single contiguous area for comparison with Fig.1. In reality mantle extrusion disperses the continents as we see today in the translucent under-layer (continents assembled according to the split of Pangea into Laurasia (north) and Gondwanaland (south). The red line fringing Laurasia and Gondwanaland = the orange rim in Fig.1 Compare with Fig.2 here.

See also http://users.indigo.net.au/don/nonsense/subdrum.html


[ See also Expanding Earth blog at
http://www.earthexpansion.blogspot.com/  ]

" Omm..." = Other Mysterious Movements

The Mantra of Plate Tectonics
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

 "Professor Seiya Uyeda (Tokai University, Japan), a world-renowned expert in plate tectonics, concluded in his keynote address at a major scientific conference on subduction processes in June 1994 that "subduction . . . plays a more fundamental role than seafloor spreading in shaping the earth's surface features" and "running the plate tectonic machinery." The gravity-controlled sinking of a cold, denser oceanic slab into the subduction zone (called "slab pull") -- dragging the rest of the plate along with it -- is now considered to be the driving force of plate tectonics. http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/unanswered.html

And we also learn (from Tuzo Wilson, another world-renowned expert in this matter of Plate Tectonics) that :-

Transform faults are "A new class of faults", .. and (as accepted in the more general consensus) .. "the means by which plates move past each other".

It seems reasonable to think therefore that this sinking slab could be linked in some way to the development of spreading ridges.  But if we thought we could go the extra yard and say that this "fundamental role of subducting slabs in shaping the Earth's surface" could also be linked to the making of transform faults, then (according to the said experts) we would be quite wrong. Transform faults (it is said) exist before the ocean floors begin to open [ google up any animation, or try Animation 1 in Fig.2 on this page ] and are generated half-a-world away from the subduction zone. 

Although it might seem intuitively obvious that a subducting slab would have no role in generating transform faults half a world away, and which formed even before the continents began to separate, there exists nevertheless a disconnect that requires some consideration, because (we are told), plates have boundaries that enable them to move past each other, ..  the boundary in question being specifically the third one - the transform fault, the fault along which area is "'conserved" : no area is added (as at spreading ridges), .. and no area taken away (as at subduction zones). 

Evidently if the displacement on transform faults exists before the continents begin to separate, then we don't need to consider them as part of the Plate Tectonic machinery.  Supposedly we must regard them as some sort of 'happy convenience' to be passively exploited by the later slab-pulling and general "plate movement" that defines the Plate Tectonic process.

Though exactly how (in Plate Tectonics) this passive exploitation operates is a m..m... mmmystery, .. because in the context of the plate machinery plates in fact don't move any more than the sides of a fishpond do, as the water in it circulates.  The plates as depicted on maps are static.  There can therefore *be* no *plate* movement or ("plate collision building mountains") even though the mantle underneath may be conceived as circulating.  Of course, just as flotsam carried by the current moves, so continents riding on top of a convecting cell could be said to move, and no doubt this is what Plate Tectonicists mean when they talk about "plate movement".  But if that's the case then they need to tidy up their language - and any thinking that might go with it.

This lexical substitution (plates for continents) was originally designed to remove the language of convective machinery as far as possible from that of continental drift, which had already been extensively denigrated for several decades, but the stroke of real genius (attributed to Tuzo Wilson) was the labelling of transform faults as "a new class of faults", which developed prior to continental separation.  Thus labelled they could be disregarded as part of the active process.  However it is precisely this labelling that has led to the mystery of movements that Plate Tectonics suffers from :-

"The tectonic plates ... are driven by definite yet unseen forces. Although scientists can neither precisely describe nor fully understand the forces, most believe that the relatively shallow forces driving the lithospheric plates are coupled with forces originating much deeper in the Earth."  (opening quote link again = http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/unanswered.html.)

And ..

".. Lately, the convection theory is much debated as modern techniques based on 3D seismic tomography of imaging the internal structure of the Earth's mantle still fail to recognise these predicted large scale convection cells."  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics

 Although both citations implicate the thinking that subduction zones and spreading ridges are regarded as corollaries of convection, neither mentions the linking architecture of the transform faults, which are the key to understanding the connection.  Mysterious unseen forces that somehow move whole ocean floors across their entire off-ridge extents as silently as night, when piggiebacked continents that supposedly don't move with respect to their substrate are riddled with a cacophany of earthquakes that would waken the dead, .. is a mystery indeed.

The solution to these mysterious, ghostly, unseen forces for which there is no evidence is obvious :   slab-pull as a driver of the Plate Tectonic machinery is a furphy, .. mere window-dressing designed to help distance Tuzo Wilson's clever invention of a "new class of faults" [ for which he was much lauded ] from the dynamics of creation of the ocean floors.  By labelling them such, .. by dismissing them as existing prior to the separation of the continents (and thereby avoiding any need for further enquiry), .. and by allowing them only a convenience role as "the means whereby plates move past each other", they were therefore placed in the same convenient bag as that other convenience - the convenient assumption that "the Earth must remain a constant size, for to do otherwise..etc/ etc.,  (is inconvenient). 

'Mystery'?  There is none.  The ocean floors grow towards the ridges leaving in their wake 1. the graveyard of the once-active ridge fractures that defined the growth of the ridge over geological time, and 2. the cross-fractures that define its continual collapse as that growth adjusted to the increasing radius (reduced curvature) of the Earth necessitated by 1.

Which means 1. that there *is* no subduction, and 2. that what is happening around the Pacific is simply overriding as the continental lithosphere (aided by dislocation related to Earth rotation = 'crustal lag') also adjusts to 1 and the consequent curvature of 2, and collapses over the ocean floor  [ 1, Fig.2 ], [ 2 ], [ 3 ].

This geologically simple solution without mysterious consequences for mantle movements is evidenced in the architecture of spreading ridges, particularly in their lengthening by the development of the transform faults, which foxed PT-ers in the beginning. Shoving these structures under the carpet has taken Earth science down a wrong road.  'Progress' is not always built on rational (or honest) 'scientific' assessement.  The personalities and self-interest of the players bear much on the outcome,
See:-
[ 4 ]  Maurice Ewing staking his claim to the results of ocean-floor research.
[ 5 ]  Resistance to Heezen's work and the role of Marie Tharpe on identifying spreading ridges.


See also blog for Earth expansion at :-
http://earthexpansion.blogspot.com/]

Mountains arise (!)

(Through a Head of Cloud)
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

Fig.1. India collides with Asia.  The image from Preston Cloud's Book, 'Oasis in Space*' illustrates the consensus view of mountain building in the type area of continental collision: "When continents collide, they pile up into mountains with deep roots, as in the complex multicollisional Himalaya." - p207.  .. Or compare with these :-

"When plates and the continents riding on them collide, the accumulated layers of rock crumple and fold like a tablecloth that is pushed across a table." 
http://www.geography.learnontheinternet.co.uk/topics/foldmountain.html 

"The pressure of the colliding plates could only be relieved by thrusting skyward. The folding, bending, and twisting of the the collision zone formed the jagged Himalayan peaks. This string of towering peaks is still being thrust up as India, embedded in the Indo-Australian Plate, continues to crunch relentlessly into Tibet, on the southern edge of the Eurasian Plate.  "http://www.platetectonics.com/book/page_11.asp 

..and so on..

 * Fly-leaf:- Preston Cloud, professor emetitus of geology at the University of California at Santa Barbara, holds a doctorate from Yale University.  He is the editor and co-author of Resources and Man and of Adventures in Earth History as well as the author of Cosmos., Earth and Man.  Dr. Cloud is a member of the National Academiy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences. In 1976 he was awaded the Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America.  For many years associated with the United States Geological Survey. (died 1991)

The quotes cited are typical of the current consensus as regards so-called 'Fold Mountains", mountains that are formed by the "buckling, crumpling, and upward thrusting of continental crust as plates collide", and are so named to distinguish them from volcanoes and 'erosional mountains'. The Himalayas are generally regarded as the type area.

What Professor Cloud's figure does (by showing the limits of Indian crumpling restricted to simply the Himalayan sector), is give voice to the consensus view how mountains are formed at the date of publication of his book (1988), by which time Plate Tectonics had become well entrenched.  Of course he knows full well that the mountain belt continues out of the figure, ..extending eastwards to encircle the Pacific and westwards to the Carpathians and the Alps (and with the Atlantic closed the Appalachians as well).   And so does everyone else.  So what we are witnessing in this 'figurative voice' is a kind of struggling for words around a silent question,  "How is this uniformity of circumglobal elevation to be explained by "independent plate movement" "? -  India crumpling Asia, Africa crumpling Europe (but what is crumpling the Americas?) ..  and a certain tacit agreement not to try to answer it.

"So arose at different times the Atlas Mountains of northwestern Africa, the Pyrenees, the Alps, and their eastern European extensions and, with them, the distinctive flysch deposits of Alpine deformation. The orogenies responsible for that picture-book scenery then gave way to the vigorous erosion whose distinctive post-tectonic sedimentary product is the Alpine molasse."

"And so arose... " There reads to me a certain lyrical, almost creationist tone here, and Preston is covering his bets by adding erosion to the picture.  But notice he attributes to it, not the tossing high of the jagged peaks everybody calls mountains, but the rubbish down the slope we all call 'dirt'.  With which I would agree (about dirt), .. but not the bit about arising.  It is an expert sleight-of-word from a professorial purveyor of Plate Tectonics that does two things, 1. it avoids addressing the question how, exactly, this "arising" happened, and 2. with it, Professor Cloud gets to state his own probable view (as a geographer) about the 'arising' of mountains without actually having to state exactly how they do that, .. because (as a pre-Plate Tectonic, old-school geographer) it is almost certainly different from the view he is having to state and is tip-toeing around.

Really, what he should be doing is not promoting Plate Tectonics at all, but from the vantage of his geographical experience, questioning it.  And since he doesn't question it, I'll do it for him : "How in the face of all this convergence, collisional crumpling and the thrusting skyward of so-called "fold-mountains", does the surface from which the mountains are carved (Fig.2) manage to stay as flat as a tack?" - and as well, that flatness for the most part be the same flatness as the flatness described by the flat sedimentary sequence as it was deposited on the sea-floor. How do we get all this flatness way up there?  Mmmh?   And no doubt Mr Cloud could answer it to my satisfaction very well, being as he is a pre-Plate Tectonic geographer - as could all geographers before the advent of Plate Tectonics.  But somehow, with the need to be part of the plate-colliding club, the significance of plateaus has come to be unlearned.  Obeisance to consensus has its metaphorical equivalent of nose rings and belly studs as well, to signify being part of the herd. 

Fig.2  Mount Kailash, the Holy Mountain of Tibet.   The remnant flatness of the Mesozoic sea floor preserved in Mount Kailash is mirrorred in the flatness of the Tibetan Plateau.  Flatness extends even to Mount Everest.  The white line is the Himalayan front.  India to the south. (Right click / new window for bigger figures.)

Location

 So to properly understand Professor Clouds subterranean dichotomy (how to present his view without actually presenting it), we should have another read of his description of fold mountains (Fig.1) in conjunction with those just below his, but this time compare the careful wording chosen by Mr Cloud with the gung-ho flamboyance of the others.. Does he mention folding?  No.  Crumpling?  No.  Why?  Because the Himalyas, and Tibet behind them, are essentially uncrumpled, ..not folded.  And Professor Cloud knows this because he is old school, a palaeontologist /geographer, and also knows very well the signifance of the plateau surfaces from which mountains are carved.  He's just not telling anybody since the rise and rise of Plate Tectonics, and the need (then) to fit in with it if he wanted to keep his job. (" Preston Ercelle Cloud, Jr. (September 26, 1912 – January 16, 1991) was an American paleontologist, geographer, and professor - wikipedia.). 

It couldn't have been easy, trying to find words that would convey to the reader what the reader wanted to read, and the same time satisfy what Mr Coud wanted to write.

"Wherever the current cycle of continental motion has caused plates to converge and collide, mountains have arisen."  Preston Cloud Oasis in Space, (p.417).

Does Mr Cloud use the word crumpling?  No.  Folding?  No.  Contorting, crushing, crashing etc etc etc.?  No, .. just (obligingly, if a word must be used) "arisen" - Like Jesus on the third day, .. a kind of predictable event, a foregone conclusion; no need for the histrionics of 'plates' according to Saint Tectonics.

So mountains do not crumple by collision, they just "arise" and "pile up".  What he does say is that India first "docked" then according to seismic evidence, proceeded to "tuck its leading edge" beneath the Asian Plate, thickening the crust and uplifting the Himalayas.

"When the leading (oceanic) edge of India itself first docked along the present northern margin of the Himalaya, it generated a 2,400-kilometre-long suture, or zone of joining (refs fig. above) tracked now by the sacred Indis and Brahmaputra rivers.  Seismic reflections from the crust-mantle boundary in this region indicate that India thereafter tucked its leading edge beneath that boundary and was overriden from the north in the main Himalyaan mountain building event terminating perhaps 10myBP"

"Docked"?  "Tucked"?  What sort of language is that to describe the spectacular consequences plate collision,  crustal crumpling, buckling, and the upheaval of mountains to form the roof of the world?  No sort of language at all, really. By his use of the much more moderate language of "rising" we might expect some qualification along lines that stress the retention of essential flatness.  We don't get it, but at least we don't get the popular liturgy of "tossing high of mountains by crumpling and folding, twisting and collision".  Instead we merely get sedate "docking", and  "tucking under".

Publication may have been jeopardised had he cast doubt on Plate Tectonics from the vantage of his lifetime credits. Yet this is in fact what a close reading of his book suggests, cloaked as it appears to be in academic diplomacy and written more as an impartial onlooker, than as participant, ... which is interesting given that he (Cloud) lived the transition from continental drift to Plate Tectonics and knew full well the arguments for Earth Expansion.  He was also critical enough of the arguments for subduction, referring to Panthalassa (one of the lynchpins of Plate Tectonics) as  "The phantom global sea"  (p.166).  Still, .. he was old-time, and knew about plateaus.  Geologists and geophysicists today apparently don't.  He impartially puts the two emerging hypotheses of the day in the same "outrageous" and "preposterous" bag (an interesting word-choice, given the nearly 20-year acceptance of Plate Tectonics by the time of publication of his book in 1988): -

 "Two seemingly outrageous hypotheses have been proposed.  One calls on plate tectonics and subduction since the Archean to recycle the ocean floor so completely that no trace of it is left outside the residual greenstone minioceans.  The other hypothesis is even more outlandish.  It proposes that an Earth of a once much smaller volume has literally expanded like baking bread, extending its diameter to the present size.  Preposterous as these ideas may seem they meet the essential criteria of scientific hypotheses.  They explain what we know and they have verifiable consequences.  They are testable."

Testable?  To be sure they are, and the test is the simple one of flatness in Figure 2 that Professor Cloud fails to address, yet as a geographer he is surely cognisant of it.

The writing seems to be of one who is personally bemused by the conundrums of  both hypotheses yet, possibly on account of keeping a certain 'professorial distance',  is at pains to represent the status quo impartially and let the voice of others speak. "Will crustal compression continue?" he asks.   "Assuming it does, will the Himalaya grow still higher, or will they at some point flow to lower levels under their own weight?"   (p.421.)  The question is an interesting one (considering it already has, as we go east to Indonesia, and Mr Cloud probably knew that too), .. and carries a barb that goes right to the core of Plate Tectonics, and supports the argument for Earth Expansion - that the Himalyas are intrinsically gravitationally unstable and are, as professor Cloud says (but the Plate Tectonics of his time didn't), collapsing over India.  That is, .. India is not pushing from the south, Tibet is pushing from the north under its own gravitational weight - the collapse of the now unstable, remnant curvature of the Pangaean Earth.  India never was anywhere else relative to the collapsing Himalayas, .. but was attached to Africa (according to a smaller Earth).

If there is one thing we can admire about Professor Cloud's appraisal of Plate Tectonics, it is his carefully chosen wording to describe it, and an angelic hesitation to tread where others have no qualms rushing.  Plate collision by "docking" and "tucking"?  Indeed.  Others after all are far more extravagant in their advertisement of an event that in fact never happened, in order to maintain a belief in the fineness of cloth and feathers that dress the lunatic emperor who pulls their strings.

We should thank Professor Cloud for his manifest hesitation, if perhaps not for the disingenuousness that underpins it, .. and also give some consideration to the benefits of 'going-with-the-flow' under the aegis of such a lunatic and naked leader, when the price is merely one of lip-service and suspension of belief.


[See also blog for Earth expansion at :-
http://earthexpansion.blogspot.com/ ]

The Plate movement of Plate Tectonics

(..is meaningless, shameless twaddle)
( blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don )

Of course, .. if subduction happened the way Plate Tectonics says, by continental lithosphere forcing the oceanic lithosphere down, .. then the ocean floors would never open.  Plate Tectonics overlooks this nicety because of its need for the destruction of a pre-existing Panthlassic ocean to make way for the present ones - so that the Earth remains a constant size and the question of an enlarging Earth therefore does not arise.  Plate Tectonics doesn't even consider the question why a second ocean floor would break through the crust when there is already one doing a perfectly good job as it is, of separating the continents and keeping the Earth the same size anyway.  Why doesn't the first one just keep opening at one end and subducting at the other?  Why should the whole contraption suddenly change configuration?

According to Plate Tectonics the answer appears to be embodied in the so-called Wilson Cycle.   although this is really a restatement of the question rather than any real answer, since it simply says that there must be an arbitrary change in the location of the convecting cell, or at least a change in the location of the rising current.  However goalposts have shifted since Wilson's day.  Plate Tectonics is no longer driven by the uprising part of the cell, but is driven specifically by subduction, .. the downgoing leg of the cell.

"The greater density of old lithosphere relative to the underlying asthenosphere allows it to sink into the deep mantle at subduction zones, providing most of the driving force for plate motions. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Driving_forces_of_plate_motion

Overlooking the obvious point why the old lithosphere doesn't get warm and bob back up, .. the question is thus reversed: what is it that causes the subduction zone to change *its* location; if subduction is the driver for plate movement, then how is subduction initiated, and how is its location changed? - and how then is the 'Wilson cycle' - still a major part of the Principle of Multiple Working Stories -  supposed to work, predicated as it is on continental rupture by the uprising part of the convecting cell?   All of which begs the further question, how wide does an ocean floor have to be before subduction happens, .. and what then determines the respective roles of cooling (making the oceanic lithosphere dense enough to sink), and 'forcing down' (by continental lithosphere) in driving the Plate Tectonic machinery?

If these are difficult questions to answer, then perhaps they are invalid in the first place. If the uplifting part of the convecting cycle is not the driver, and there are serious questions besetting the subduction alternative, then  perhaps convection is not the way to look at it.  Perhaps we have to back up a bit and reconsider that the way to look at it is indeed as Mr Benioff suggested in the first place (Fig.3B here;  it is his zone after all), that as the distribution of earthquakes shows it is the continental lithosphere that hosts the dynamic side of the action and that it is the continental crust gravitationally adjusting on its substrate that is responsible for the seismicity, and and that there *is* no movement of the seismically silent oceanic plate, .. that there is no cycling return of the oceanic lithosphere to the deep mantle, .. and therefore that there *is* no convection.

This point is actually implicitly conceded in Plate Tectonics which acknowledges that the domains of oceanic and continental lithosphere are different, and the continents are rooted more deeply than the thickness of oceanic crust, so that continental crust cannot be ferried around on oceanic lithosphere to collide anywhere.  The theory talks of plate movement, but the facts talk of 'plates' as fixtures.

Also, the difference in length between spreading ridges today compared to their initial breakthrough during the Mesozoic means that the sideways movement of plates is really only an artifact of upwards movement of the ridges (Fig.2 here), which negates the premise of the ocean floors ever getting to the subduction zone in the first place.  The only option open to structural interpretation at the 'subduction' zone, is therefore overriding - or (as it has become in Plate Tectonic terminology to accommodate reality), .."Flat subduction".

So, .. it's not so much the plates we're taking issue with here as the aspect of "movement", and even more to the point the aspect of "independent movement (although there is a point to be made about the difference between segments of the Earth's crust making shuffling adjustments to gravitational collapse and segmented plates of lithospheric dimension sailing about the Earth's surface like stately galleons, and colliding with each other to build mountains). 

If I am sitting in a chair reading a book, I could be said to be moving round the Earth and I'll be back in a day, or round the sun and I'll be back in a year - but that is not the analogy implied by Plate Tectonics when it refers to 'plate movement' on the surface of the Earth.  Neither could I be said to be moving just because my circulation is convecting gouts of blood around my body.  However intended or not, this second state of affairs is actually closer to what Plate Tectonics means by movement, because plates as depicted on plate maps are actually fixed - they don't move around any more than I do in my chair, .. though what's underneath them supposedly moves by convection, i.e.,  the skin of the planet as mapped by plates is not moving, but its internal circulation (supposedly), is.

Fig.1.  Plate Map.  (Courtesy of the USGS.)


Plate maps are like the window in a glass-bottomed boat through which we can see the movement of the convecting cell.  Although we can see the movement of the flotsam  (= mantle convection) through the window,  and there might be water running across the top of it,   the window itself ( = plates on a plate map) is not moving.  The ridge is a boundary that stays where it is.  And although the subduction zone could be said to be moving, the preponderence of  earthquakes clearly shows this movement has an active commonality of movement from the continental, not the oceanic side.  Satellite data for the Pacific also clearly shows the azimuths of movement vectors for the continents and the ocean floors are different, which is consistent with Earth expansion in relating crustal movement at the continental margins to the continents, not to the ocean floors.  That is, even if the ocean floors are convecting, sea-floor spreading has nothing directly to do with the earthquakes around the Pacific rim.  Certainly there is a correlation in that both sets of movement are related, but not in the direct causal way that Plate Tectonics says.  Both are related to a third factor - Earth enlargement.   Pacific rim earthquakes are an artifact of continental overriding by the peripheral continental crust, not subduction by movement of the Pacific 'plate'.  

Fig.2.  Movement vectors of the North Pacific due to earthquakes and crustal collapse (around the rim), and transform faults and spreading ridges ("North Pacific").  For movement vectors according to satellites see last link -  http://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/mbh/series.html


Readers who have got this far who object to the above point about fixed plates, and think that the convecting cells (and therefore plates) are indeed moving about (independently) as Plate Tectonics says, should consider the origin of this opinion.  It was precisely this vector difference in the North Pacific (Fig.2) that led McKenzie to propose, if North America was considered (for convenience) to be fixed, then wholesale movement of plates in a direction other than that indicated by the 'tramrails' of transform faults could be postulated (Fig 5 here).   However (another point conveniently overlooked by plate tectonicists), if the North Pacific Plate were to be moving in a direction different from the 'tramrails' of transform faults, then so too must its spreading ridge, *and* the adjacent plate on the other side of the ridge as well.  And since all 'plates' are tied one way or another to spreading ridges ("which encircle the Earth like the seam on a baseball"), this means *all* the plates are moving in the same direction (relative to their ridge).  And since the pattern of vectors related to earthquakes encircling the Pacific are clearly determined by the movement from the continental side (as logically deduced from earthquakes, the larger picture of global geology, and now supported by satellite data), this so-called "independent plate movement"  (reflecting sea-floor spreading) is just meaningless twaddle.

Repeat:- " Plate movement is just  meaningless twaddle." 

Nothing wrong with the "sea-floor spreading" of course.  That's what the whole thing is about! - it's the subduction that converts it to Plate Tectonics is the twaddle.

Earth expansion's view that the spreading ridges are moving away from the continents (and *UP*) means that segments of continental crust are always moving away from each other and can never collide on this account. The 'collisions' (overriding) that we do see in the thrust belts of the world - from the Alps through the Middle East to the Himalyas and through the Americas are due to crust - mantle instability and the collapse of the crust on an Earth which was once more oblate than it is now, and is tending to increasing sphericity, .. a once-equatorial oblateness which yet remains in the continental crust , and which as erosion and earthquakes show,  is doing its level best to adjust to the increasing sphericity of the planet.

And so we are in a position to assess as garbage Plate Tectonics' core tenet, .. that the Earth's crust is "divided into a series of plates that move independently on the Earth's surface, colliding, crumpling the crust, and building mountains".  To be sure, the Earth's crust is indeed partitioned into a number of segments, as many as we may care to represent defined by the distribution of Earthquakes and the faults they represent, ..but that is not quite the same thing as saying it is broken into a number of *plates* that move independently around the Earth's surface.   And of course if there is no plate movement, then there can be no "colliding plates".  And whilst there is certainly crumpling of crust (in the manner of gravitational correction) (/ folding), there is no "building mountains" by the mechanism of "colliding plates".

Plate Tectonics (as the flag-bearer for Earth science) is like a bad experience in the hall of reflecting mirrors - wonky and laughable for the glaring inconsistencies with which we have burdened it in the name of 'theory'.   Why are we teaching it in schools?  Whatever the reason, it has nothing to do with the science, .. and everything to do with consensus.

It needs outed.  That's it.


[See also blog for Earth expansion at :-
http://earthexpansion.blogspot.com/ ]