Plate Techtonics

[uniface]

Sticking this here because the discussion (initial part quoted below ; click the link for the rest) starts out with a map of Alaska. It'll probably draw the usual, predictable canned response. But the guy makes some points that don't go under the rug without huge lumps.

Serious Issues with Plate Tectonics

The above schematic of Alaska reveals regions of rock strata that appear to have “accreted” to an original craton. Southern Alaska is composed of fragments in all shapes and sizes, each one telling its own tale. They are all “exotic terranes”, formed at different places and times. How they were transported to their present location, and why some are rotated with respect to adjoining terranes is a mystery.

Some exotic terranes arrived from regions on the other side of the world, while others are from nearby locations. They are each quite different from one another in their characteristics, representing strata from many so-called “geologic ages”. There are deposits from the Quaternary period lying in proximity to those from the Cambrian and Mesozoic periods. Those epochs represent hundreds of millions of years. If the theory of continental movement is correct, then “collisions” between landmasses took place more than a dozen times in Alaska. However, each terrane is not arranged side-by-side with its neighbor, they are intermixed with each other, as the schematic reveals.

Another puzzling aspect to the terrane lithography is that some of it is oceanic crust, while some is continental. Some terranes appear to be from volcanic islands. Others appear to be the remains of continental shelves from South America. Less than one percent of Alaska is thought to be from the “original” North American continent.

In the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 14, No. 3, pages 307–352, David Pratt took issue with the theory of tectonic displacement of continental and ocean floor structure. As he wrote: “The classical model of thin lithospheric plates moving over a global asthenosphere is shown to be implausible.” . . .

http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/2012/11 ... ctonics-2/

[Minimalist]

Congratulations. You finally found someone so obscure that even Wiki has never heard of him.

I did see some reference to Pratt being a philosopher of some sort.... and I have a low opinion of philosophers.

[E.P. Grondine]

Hi uniface -

Don't be confused by this latest load of sh*t from the "Thunderdolts".

Sudden crustal shifts are a key element of theosophist "science".

For more on these guys google "Leroy Elllenberger", who has been calling them on their pseudo-science for years.

[uniface]

Thank you, friends, for once again protecting my intellectual virginity from the assaults of the evil badthinkers.

In my naivete, I found his list of things drastically wrong with the currently accepted model pretty compelling :

1. The lithosphere is not a contiguous structure. There are alternating layers that make the separation of the lithosphere from the asthenosphere impossible to determine.

2. Earthquakes and volcanoes are supposed to define plate edges. However, recent oceanic research detected earthquakes at depths that are supposed to have no seismic activity, since the deep oceans are far from plate boundaries.

3. Many plates seem not to even exist. As Pratt describes, the northwest boundary of the Pacific, North American, and Eurasian plates, the southern boundary of the Philippine plate, part of the southern boundary of the Pacific plate, and most of the northern and southern boundaries of the South American plate, are fictitious.

4. The appearance of the “continental fit” is an illusion. Many proposals for how the present day continents fit together leave out important considerations. Overlaps of the continental shelves are passed over, while gaps are given no credence. The reader is referred to pages 7-9 of Pratt’s paper.

5. The assumption that rocks are magnetized when they form, and that they retain that magnetization over eons of time is untenable. Furthermore, it is necessary that they retain the magnetic orientation that existed on Earth at the time of their formation.

6. Rather than India being an island for over 200 million years after it separated from Antarctica, and before it “crashed into” Asia, the evidence is that it has always been part of Asia. India shows no sign of a unique flora and fauna that would suggest hundreds of millions of years as an isolated environment, such as the biota in Australia.

7. Heat flow from the spreading zones in the mid-ocean does not fall off farther from the zone. Instead, there is hardly any variance in temperature distribution from the ridges and the rest of the ocean. This fact contradicts a concentrated flow of magma creating new crust in the seams of the ocean floor.

8. The seafloor spreading theory of magnetic anomalies on the ocean floor has been disproven by drilling cores. The so-called “magnetic bands” on the ocean bottom have been found to be composed of isolated ovals, rather than linear formations.

Silly me.

What you actually have to say doesn't matter.

It's all about who you "are" in the minds of the true believers.

I keep forgetting that.

[Minimalist]

Miracle, EP. Uni got us to agree!


(Time to bundle him up and send him to the Middle East!)

[Ernie L]

There does appear to be some very deep water associated with the plates

The Mariana Trench is part of a global network of deep troughs that cut across the ocean floor. They form when two tectonic plates collide. At the collision point, one of the plates dives beneath the other into the Earth’s mantle, creating an ocean trench. (1)

1. http://deepseachallenge.com/the-expedit ... na-trench/