Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geology, Palaeontology & Archaeology => Topic started by: colorshapetexture on 28/03/2013 04:26:37
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As I have been investigating plate tectonics and earth growing. I have run into some information that the science we are told about might not be the whole story. Or discoveries are shelved becuase they don't fit with current knowledge.
Your comments or debunking are invited.
#1
Smoot and Meyerhoff (1995) have shown that nearly all published charts of the world's ocean floors have been drawn deliberately to reflect the predictions of the plate-tectonics hypothesis. For example, the Atlantic Ocean floor is unvaryingly shown to be dominated by a sinuous, north-south midocean ridge, flanked on either side by abyssal plains, cleft at its crest by a rift valley, and offset at more or less regular 40- to 60-km intervals by east-west-striking fracture zones. New, detailed bathymetric surveys indicate that this oversimplified portrayal of the Atlantic Basin is largely wrong, yet the most accurate charts now available are widely ignored because they do not conform to plate-tectonic preconceptions.
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#2
The continents and oceans are covered with a network of major structures or lineaments, many dating from the Precambrian, along which tectonic and magmatic activity and associated mineralization take place (Gay, 1973; Katterfeld and Charushin, 1973; O'Driscoll, 1980; Wezel, 1992; Anfiloff, 1992; Dickins and Choi, 1997). The oceanic lineaments are not readily compatible with seafloor spreading and subduction, and plate tectonics shows little interest in them.
Because?
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#3
The oldest known rocks from the continents are just under 4 billion years old, whereas – according to plate tectonics – none of the ocean crust is older than 200 million years (Jurassic). This is cited as conclusive evidence that oceanic lithosphere is constantly being created at midocean ridges and consumed in subduction zones. There is in fact abundant evidence against the alleged youth of the ocean floor, though geological textbooks tend to pass over it in silence.
The numerous finds in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans of rocks far older than 200 million years, many of them continental in nature, provide strong evidence against the alleged youth of the underlying crust. In the Atlantic, rock and sediment age should range from Cretaceous (120 million years) adjacent to the continents to very recent at the ridge crest. During legs 37 and 43 of the DSDP, Paleozoic and Proterozoic igneous rocks were recovered in cores on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Bermuda Rise, yet not one of these occurrences of ancient rocks was mentioned in the Cruise Site Reports or Cruise Synthesis Reports (Meyerhoff et al., 1996a). Aumento and Loncarevic (1969) reported that 75% of 84 rock samples dredged from the Bald Mountain region just west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge crest at 45°N consisted of continental-type rocks, and commented that this was a "remarkable phenomenon" – so remarkable, in fact, that they decided to classify these rocks as "glacial erratics" and to give them no further consideration. Another way of dealing with "anomalous" rock finds is to dismiss them as ship ballast. However, the Bald Mountain locality has an estimated volume of 80 km³, so it is hardly likely to have been rafted out to sea on an iceberg or dumped by a ship!
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#4
No smoke or mirrors here?
Plate tectonicists insist that the volume of crust generated at midocean ridges is equaled by the volume subducted. But whereas 80,000 km of midocean ridges are supposedly producing new crust, only 30,500 km of trenches exist. Even if we add the 9000 km of "collision zones," the figure is still only half that of the "spreading centers" (Smoot, 1997a).
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#5
The very low level of seismicity, the lack of a megathrust, and the existence of flat-lying sediments at the base of oceanic trenches contradict the alleged presence of a downgoing slab (Dickins and Choi, 1998). Attempts by Murdock (1997), who accepts many elements of plate tectonics, to publicize the lack of a megathrust in the Aleutian trench (i.e. a million or more meters of displacement of the Pacific plate as it supposedly underthrusts the North American plate) have met with vigorous resistance and suppression by the plate-tectonics establishment.
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#6
If the "Pacific plate" is colliding with and diving under the "North American plate", there should be a stress buildup along the San Andreas Fault. The deep Cajon Pass drillhole was intended to confirm this but showed instead that no such stress is present (C. W. Hunt, 1992).
More good science ignored/lost because it didn't fit?
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Lucky #7
Plate tectonics predicts simple heat-flow patterns around the earth. There should be a broad band of high heat flow beneath the full length of the midocean rift system, and parallel bands of high and low heat flow along the Benioff zones. Intraplate regions are predicted to have low heat flow. The pattern actually observed is quite different. There are criss-crossing bands of high heat flow covering the entire surface of the earth (Meyerhoff et al., 1996a).
And just yesterday this report comes out with the same result. And it still does'nt fit the PT model so they have to figure out how to twist it so it fits tectonics.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v495/n7441/full/nature11939.html
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#8
Some geologist have linked marine inundations and withdrawals to a global thermal cycle, bringing about continental uplift and subsidence (Rutland, 1982; Sloss and Speed, 1974). Van Andel (1994) admits that epeirogenic movements "fit poorly into plate tectonics" (p. 170), and are therefore largely ignored.
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#10
Oceanic crust is regarded as much thinner and denser than continental crust: the crust beneath oceans is said to average about 7 km thick and to be composed largely of basalt and gabbro, whereas continental crust averages about 35 km thick and consists chiefly of granitic rock capped by sedimentary rocks. However, ancient continental rocks and crustal types intermediate between standard "continental" and "oceanic" crust are increasingly being discovered in the oceans (Sanchez Cela, 1999), and this is a serious embarrassment for plate tectonics.
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#11
Dong Choi’s battle with the plate-tectonic establishment came to a head in the late 1980s, when he was working for the Australian Bureau of Mineral Resources (now Geoscience Australia). He prepared a manuscript presenting evidence that Precambrian continental crust was present under the northwestern Pacific, and that a paleoland had existed there in the Paleozoic to Mesozoic. He based this conclusion on dredging and deep-sea drilling data, seismic profiles, paleogeography, and the geology of the Japanese Islands. However, the Chief of his Division told him that if he published the paper, he would have “no room to stay with us,” while the Chief Scientist accused him of doing “bad science” and reminded him that he was on contract. Choi published his article in the Journal of Petroleum Geology (Choi, 1987), and quit the organization soon afterwards.
He publises his findings
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#12..
Seismic tomography has merely reinforced the message that continental cratons, especially those of Archean and Early Proterozoic age, are "welded" to the underlying mantle, and that the concept of thin (less than 250-km-thick) lithospheric plates moving thousands of kilometers over a global asthenosphere is unrealistic. Nevertheless, many textbooks continue to propagate the simplistic lithosphere-asthenosphere model, and fail to give the slightest indication that it faces any problems (e.g. McLeish, 1992; Skinner and Porter, 1995; Wicander and Monroe, 1999).
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Who here has an ax to grind???????
Anyone can find 12 discrepancies in physics, hundreds in biology. If science fit together hand in glove it would't be science, it would be listing facts. This list is not that scientific, esp. #10
There are bad actors everywhere.
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Just spotted this post.
How are you now?
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If you look at the history of geology as a science, you will note that it is quite happy to revise its paradigm when sufficient evidence is presented. The theory of plate tectonics is actually (as scientific theories go) fairly young and is still developing. There is plenty of scope to refine elements of it.
I would also go so far as to suggest - as with several subjects - the more you know the more complicated it becomes - there are always exceptions and there is always room for discussion and debate. The peripheral history of science is littered with rumor or anecdote of suppressed knowledge that seldom add up to much.
One of the biggest issues facing geological theory is that the timescales over which much of it occurs are mind boggling. We have to rely on Hutton’s principle of uniformitarianism as it is impossible to replicate plate tectonics in the lab. The other issue is that our understanding of the sub surface is from pin pricks (boreholes) and indirectly from reflected and refracted seismic waves so our modeling the interior of the planet is undoubtedly imperfect. For a bit of context - the Kola Borehole - drilled 12,262m into the crust. The earths diameter is 12,742 km - is there any surprise that there are questions over elements of tectonic theory?
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And Meyerhoff has published really insane things. He was president of the American Association of Petroleum Geologist at the time or else he would not have published those. He controlled the Assoc. Bulletin
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Hi colorshapetexture.
As someone who has an interest in non-standard ideas, I have been looking at some of the references, starting with Smoot and Meyerhoff (1995). Their references seem to range in age between about 14 and almost 50 years. I suspect that a lot may have changed in geology since most of those were written. Do you have any more up to date evidence that an interested enquirer could browse?
Also, while it is reasonably easy to knock ideas and theories, it is not always as easy to formulate convincing alternatives. Do you have an alternative to PT that provides more/better explanations for what we observe currently?