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you'd realise that all of our knowledgable pontification about what can and cannot be is kindergarten explanations for things far beyond our ken.
So, we have to take all this Plate Tectonics stuff with a big pinch of salt, for how can a theory of the Earth be claimed without taking the continents into account? .. Which is what Plate Tectonics, by its own admission (and oceanic brief), does. In two of the most authoritative histories of the development of Plate Tectonics I've come across (Menard* and Oreskes** - see footnote) there is not even an index entry for "mountains", which by the failure of Plate Tectonics to recognise peneplanation as the precursor to building, is still the most perplexing feature of the continental crust.
Consideration of global geology stopped at the continental margins, where, as Tanya Atwater succinctly puts it: - "Subduction was a necessary adjunct concept" (Oreskes**, p.247)
Well, indeed it surely was, .. "if you believed Plate Tectonics was going on", .. and when necessity deemed denial of growth of the ocean floors ( = Earth expansion), which the 'tape measure' had so spectacularly documented was happening.
So what did they do? They invented subduction, ..and rigid 'plates', and backed it up with seismology (Isacks, Oliver, Sykes). More rubbish, because you see, seismicity is overwhelmingly an expression of movement related to the continental crust and its margins,
Originally posted by Arbitrageur...But, it doesn't explain why some plates are moving together. If the Earth was expanding, shouldn't all the plates be moving apart?...
Originally posted by SG-17
As the plates move apart, magma is exposed to the ocean floor and hardens to form new rock. As the plates come together, parts of them are either crushed together and form mountains or are subducted beneath the crust and melt into magma. There is no need for the Earth to grow at all to explain the age of the ocean floor, or to explain the matching patterns of the continents, or anything else really. We can actually measure continental drift.
Here's an animation showing how continental growth occurred on the west coast of North America:
Originally posted by Shamatt
There is no explanation of the mechanism of continental growth.
Continents can grow by accumulating crustal material along their edges at convergent boundaries. Here, a terrane carried by a subducting plate is fused to the edge of a continent. The attachment of terranes such as this contributed to continental growth along the west coast of North America.
Then how do you explain what happens to the crust when two plates collide in places where subduction zones are thought to occur, and where seismic activity is angled down as if one crust is sliding under the other like this one?
There is no proof of any kind of subduction zones either, it just fits the theory.
Seismicity cross-section, Kuril Islands subduction zone
The deep earthquakes along the zone allow seismologists to map the three-dimensional surface of a subducting slab of oceanic crust and mantle.
Originally posted by ken10
The Galapagos Island are only a few million years old, so where did the matter come from to make them ?
Originally posted by benevolent tyrant
I have found no "falsification" [?] , as you have mentioned , in the material that I have read regarding Expanding Earth Theory.
That's pretty good evidence, isn't it? It's not "week" as you put it, it's not even month. It provides a pretty clear picture of where seismic acticity is occurring and it sure looks like subduction, and it has the well measured plate movements colliding to back it up.
Plate Tectonics portrays Africa as colliding with Europe to form the Alpine mountain belt (check Google link above), yet it is obvious from the distribution of earthquakes that it is the northern side of the 'collision' that is doing the moving. Contrary to Plate Tectonics' view of African collision, it is Europe that is collapsing over the Mediterranean, not Africa that is colliding with Europe. The dynamics are definitive of rapid crustal extension in which surficial stretching and mantle uplift (and following collapse) are vertically paired as opposite sides of the same lithospheric extension. The contact zone (the Alpine fold belt) of Europe is a tract of substantial elevation compared to North Africa (Libya and Egypt), which lies barely above sea level, and is recognised since before the advent of Plate Tectonics as a zone of gravitational collapse.
Originally posted by ThisIsMyName
Question - If the earth is in fact growing... where is the matter coming from to support this growth?
Originally posted by MichaelNetzer
Originally posted by ThisIsMyName
Question - If the earth is in fact growing... where is the matter coming from to support this growth?
This is the very most important question about Growing Earth. However, in order to answer it, we must develop some common background understanding in particle physics and cosmology, which can be quite complex.
Why do you say "inferred and extrapolated"? Do you doubt we have the ability to determine the epicenter of an earthquake?
Originally posted by JohhnyBGood
What you have there is a 'Picture' inferred and extrapolated from a lot of earthquake data -
In no way that I can see does that explanation even come close to explaining the graph I posted, where as a subduction explains the data extremely well.
I would contend that these quakes are coming not from one plate inexplicably sinking and sliding below another, but from the recurving of the plates on either side after earth expansion, making them compress, grind and move against each other at the edges.
You made specific claims about lacking evidence and when I provide it you choose to not address it but to make vague reference to "external quotes".
Originally posted by Shamatt
There have been as many external quotes supporting my claims as there have been supporting yours. I guess we just have to choose who to beleive. I think I am more inclined to beleive those who are humble enough to say they don't have all the answers than those who think they know it all.
Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Why do you say "inferred and extrapolated"? Do you doubt we have the ability to determine the epicenter of an earthquake?
Originally posted by JohhnyBGood
What you have there is a 'Picture' inferred and extrapolated from a lot of earthquake data -
And that, in a nutshell, is plate tectonics' position. But can we see subduction? Is it well documented? The answer is no, ...we can't. And it isn't. What we can see (that is well documented) is a zone of earthquakes that releases about ten times as much energy as spreading ridges and transform faults combined, that occupies about 200km of lithospheric thickness, that reaches down to about 760 - 800km, that goes all around the Pacific, and whose relative first motions of displacement are in fact much more ambiguous than the 'carrying down' of subduction says, and many of which are as much (if not more) sideways than down. But plate tectonics assumes that these earthquakes (= brittle behaviour) mean that the zone of mantle in which they occur (which they call a 'slab'/ 'mantle slabs') is cold, and is therefore more dense, and is therefore sinking. So when plate tectonics uses the term "subducting cold mantle slabs" as shorthand for what it intends to convey, it is being highly misrepresentative of the facts. It is in fact saying no more than "..a zone of Earthquakes that reaches down to 800km".
There are ways of interpreting that zone (as described on this site) other than plate tectonics says. The mantle is not necessarily 'subducting', nor even (as it supposedly 'descends') is it cold, .and the 'slab' is actually constituted of the entire ocean floor right back to the ridge, not simply the turned-down sector that Plate Tectonics usually labels 'slab'. If coldness and slabness is the point, why doesn't the entire ocean floor just sink? It is after all cold, and more dense than the mantle on which it is sitting. And it is huge - making up two thirds of the Earth's surface in fact. Why must it travel so far from the ridge before it is cold enough to sink? It's pretty cold right where it is, on an Icelandic slope, say, ..even in the sunshine. And why (if it is cold) must it always sink on a line (a continental margin)? Why doesn't it just sink anyhow, ...like a 'plate' - and zig-zag to the bottom? Because there is a space problem? ...no room for all that ocean floor at the surface to sit on the much smaller curvature of the core-mantle boundary? Or maybe, because gravitational force tapers off with depth it will tend not to sink at all after a while?
Originally posted by Essan
Actually, with regards the EE hypothesis, we have to ask what size the Earth started out at and/or why it only started expanding after 4,450,000,000 years and not before?
If the Earth was less than half it's size 250ma then what size was it 750ma?
Simple question, And a robust hyposthesis wil have a ready expanation .......
Originally posted by Essan
Originally posted by MichaelNetzer
Originally posted by ThisIsMyName
Question - If the earth is in fact growing... where is the matter coming from to support this growth?
This is the very most important question about Growing Earth. However, in order to answer it, we must develop some common background understanding in particle physics and cosmology, which can be quite complex.
Actually, with regards the EE hypothesis, we have to ask what size the Earth started out at and/or why it only started expanding after 4,450,000,000 years and not before?
If the Earth was less than half it's size 250ma then what size was it 750ma?
Simple question, And a robust hyposthesis wil have a ready expanation .......