Memes and mnemonics (again) - 'VIP' and 'VAP'

Crustal-scale boudinage and the geosyncline
( Blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )


Today we're doing meme-ology (again), .. and today's mnemonical meme (doubling as both a mnemonic and a meme) describes the active interfaces of crustal-scale boudinage structure as 'VIP'.

'Very Important Principle?  Certainly, .. but the 'V' is for vertical and the 'P', stuttered as  'PP',  is for parallel and paired.  Then once the 'i' is duly noted it can be replaced with an 'a' for 'asymmetrical'.

VIP and VAP:  vertically parallel-paired, and asymmetrical.  And Important.  Why important?  Because the parallel pairing of the interfaces of the neck obviates all that was problematical about the geosyncline before it was deemed obsolete and became reinvented as the Wilson Cycle. 

By solving the problem with a VIP and a VAP there is no need for any W.C.  Nor anything else of Plate Tectonics.  VIP and VAP means a whole new game, and had that been realised at the time of the geosyncline, Plate Tectonics would never have got up.

The problem about the geosyncline that caused it to be flushed down the W.C was, "How did anomalously thick welts of sediments deposited in depressions of the crust thousands of kilometres long come to be uplifted as chains of mountains? By what dynamic could crustal extension (/subsidence) be followed by crustal compression (/uplift) in the same location, in a belt that extended for thousands of kilometres?  What was happening peripherally?  Surely extension in one location would be balanced by compression building mountain belts in another elsewhere? - not in the same place. ..  And vice versa when it came to inverting the welt as a mountain belt.  Surely mountain building must be balanced by crustal extension and basin formation elsewhere as well?"  Where were the corresponding mountain belts and basins?

Fig.1. The conudrum of the geosyncline.  Extension to form sedimentary basins must be partnered by compression to form mountain belts *elsewhere* (beyond the arrows), and vice versa for mountain belts.  Where were they?



The answer was,  nowhere.   Nowhere was there any evidence of corresponding belts that might pair with such 'accordion-like' behaviour.  And so it became derisively known by some as "accordion tectonics" - a parody of reality that seems to have escaped the recent crop of inductees into the Plate Tectonic Hall of Fame - which googling "accordion tectonics" (with quotations for 1,300 entries today) will show is still alive and well.  And in any case, surely buckling should happen where crust was thinner, not thicker.  But the opposite was true, .. it was not only that the thick welt was buckled, but the thin crust was not!.  To rebrand the situation as due to a 'Wilson Cycle' did nothing other than change the language to re-state the conundrum in the context of emerging theory of 'moving plates and subducting slabs, when doing so provided no additional understanding whatsoever but merely legitimised the conundrum while at the same time adding to its perplexity.

However by interpreting the geosyncline as crustal-scale boudinage, the problem evaporates, .. as does every other conundrum of Plate Tectonics - as well as all the luggage of language (lol) that has accumulated to describe it.

Fig.2. Geosynclinal development as crustal-scale boudinage: problem solved.  Crustal inversion, ..or, what goes down, comes back up - in the same place.  1 = crust/mantle interface, 2 = asthenospheric rise.  E = crust/mantle (lithosphere/asthenosphere) equilibrium.  Gravity determines temporal (down first / up second), and spatial (see here) asymmetry of dynamics as the ductility contrasts of the shell-interfaces of the crust are exploited.

Recognising necklines of boudinage structure on a scale that incorporates the whole crust and (if the lithosphere is included) is certainly cognitively challenging, particularly when the upper part of the neckline is laterally displaced from the lower one, but that is precisely what is happening in the case of mantle breakthrough  that has formed the ocean floors.  Or at least (since scale *is* an issue) it is a useful analogy by which to understand the vertical relationship between the crust and mantle when the mantle does break through.

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


Surficial distension initiating the Pacific was profound.  Driving above its equilibrium position, mantle lift caused a circular elevation in the Indonesian region, perhaps much like occurs as Noctis Labyrinthus on Mars.  A breakout around the periphery of the dome (due to collapse and crustal loading ) then split the mantle initiating the Pacific spreading ridge.  Crustal collapse, manifest as the Javanese arc and overriding of the Western Pacific margin, continued to encroach on the trailing edge of mantle growth as the ridge dilated. 

Fig.2.  Rise of the lower mantle initiates a circular breakout in the Indonesian region.   (a)  Breakthrough of the lower mantle rise (red) is accompanied by crustal collapse (grey).  (b)  Swivel opening of the crust during collapse duplicates (and triplicates) the Pangaean equatorial zone. Green = upper mantle.  (See also)


Hemispherical torque of the Pangaean crust swivelled it open in a triplicate fan-like dilation on the Asian side to form the back-arc basins of the Western Pacific.  A simpler duplicate dilation spread the American Cordilleras.  A mirror of this Cordilleran duplication, less dilated but with triplicate apophyses in the region of the '-istans' ('Uzbekistan' etc), extends from the Western Pacific through the Tarim Basin to the Mediterranean (previous link).

The breakout appears to have had a very close analagous comparison with that relating Noctis Labyrinthus to Valles Marineris on Mars, and it is most intriguing to consider, given the evidence for the massive extrusion of water apparently related to these structures, if something similar might have accompanied the birth of the oceans on Earth during the Mesozoic (and if a fate similar to the dessication on Mars may await Earth as Pacific extrusion dissipates).  It is quite possible that the initial breakout was water, to be followed by magmatic extrusion (it being well known that water forms the largest proportion of gaseous magmatic exrtrusion).

Hawaii may illustrate a further comparison, because continental reconstruction shows it appearing to have been closely central to this initial doming on the Pangaean Earth, a comparison supported by its deeper 'hotspot' status, and its almost daily seismicity.

?? [ Noctis Labyrinthus / Valles Marineris / Water / Olumpus Mons on Mars  == Indonesian bubble / Pangaean equatorial dilation / Water(?) / Hawaiian Chain on Earth ]   ??

( .. Just saying.. )

Further displacement of the spreading ridge from the Indonesian bubble (crustal dome) occurred by a combination of crust-uppermantle detachment, detachment within the upper mantle itself (such as is apparent in the Indian Ocean), and growth at the spreading ridge.

Compared to this forceful breakout with its swivelling crustal dilations, the Atlantic appears to have been a relatively innocuous, passive affair, where the mantle has broken through the crust only to the extent of rising to its equilibrium position to fill the gap created by crustal rupture as it trailed Pacific dilation.  Unhinging of the Caribbean pivot of American dilation contemporaneous with Atlantic opening represents stretching around the periphery of the Pacific (Fig.1 here).

The difference between active and passive mantle behaviour is dependent on many things, .. rates of extension, crustal stiffness /viscosity, asymmetries of developing structure, but most of all it is dependent on what caused the massive circularity of mantle breakout in the Indonesian region in the first place, an answer to which must be found in a very rapid (geologically speaking) asymmetrical disturbance of the Earth's gravitational field and its rotation, .. which is still happening.

Moonpull due to capture causing a shift in the Earth's gravitational centre?  What else could cause a spherical disturbance of the Earth's gravitationally-formed spherical shells? (The gravitational beat of once-a-day Earth rotation meets the drum of a once-a-month Moon?)


(Just saying.)

:-)
....................

 
Geology began with observations of stratigraphic sequence, fossils, and questions of geological time and igneous intrusion - granitoids from the base of the crust and basalt from the mantle rising in advance of the mantle itself, ..  observations that were further superimposed by structural disturbance, and all smoothed by erosion wherever the crust was raised above sea-level.  Its simplicity is a bit overblown now as evermore geologists (and modelling geophysicists) have obscured it, but it is still recognisable as a consequence of crustal-scale boudinage.  The analogy does break down somewhat when we say, "boudinage of the lithosphere', because as modification of Pangaean crust  it's not really very clear exactly what the substance of the lithosphere, or its areal distribution actually is when we step aside from its present-day definitive earthquake expression.  But in a nutshell boudinage of the crust (i.e., wholesale extension of the crust) (i.e., global expansion) and its myriad geological effects steered by gravity and Earth rotation, does provide a very useful analogue (model) by which to understand the evolution of the Earth's outer, more brittle shell. However questions do arise in regard to the massive increase in the volume of the mantle that has happened, and the relationship of both to Earth's spin, the magnetic field and questions re the creation of matter and increase in mass - and what mass actually is in a context of the quantum world of its existence.


The reason the importance of this essential geo-simplicity  is not more widely recognised (and why geology has become mired in the complexity of platespeak) lies in the contrast between the anatomical ('elemental') approach required by reductive science. and the much more wholistic approach required to identify patterns of structure at the larger scale, a contrast that is nicely written in the history of the subject because from the earliest days the principle of scale invariance (the maxim that the small-scale structures are the key to the larger scale) has been widely applied to structure such as joints, faults and folds, .. but curiously not to boudinage.

"..Relatively little attention has been given to geological structures that form when layered sequences, or rocks with a fabric are compressed at a high angle to, and/or extended in the plane of the layering or fabric.  The reason for this is not clear, for 'extension' structures are much more common in nature than one would infer from the paucity of literature concerning them."  (Price and Cosgrove, 1990.  Analysis of Geological Structures, p.405.  Cambridge University Press,. 502pp; introductory paragraph to the chapter on boudinage)

The reason why it hasn't is because the cognitive challenge of recognising pattern is not met by the reductive nature of 'science', and goes to the heart of the difference between the linearity of the reductive scientific mind that likes to pull things apart to see how they work, and the more wholistically engaged, inductive approach that prefers to see things in terms of the contextual framework of the larger scale - "the whole as more than the sum of its parts".   Even though there has been tacit recognition since the term was coined that "boudinage occurs on all scales" it is only today that there is some interest in exploring the implications of this, even though this typically refers to highly simplistic two-dimensional sectional representations of the crust in a context of Plate Tectonics.  Its application to the larger three-dimensional extent of the Earth's surface still largely remains to be explored.

The failure to properly appreciate the connection between basin formation and its deformation embodied in the concept of the geosyncline mentioned above was the brick wall encountered when geologists failed to meet the challenge of their own maxim of scale invariance as it applied to boudinage.   Why did they fail to meet the challenge?  Because the quirky etymology of 'sausages' got lost in translation between outcrop and crustal scales, and because the active process of boudinage is not really one of forming boudins at all, but of forming the necks that separate them; boudins are only the passive result of actively developing necks, and whilst two necks are needed to define a boudin, one neck will do to define the process: one neck does not a boudin make, but the process of boudinage occurs nevertheless.

Geologists know all about big boudinage of course, but just tend to see it in terms of one-to-one equivalence with its small-scale counterpart.  The implications of process in time and space just hasn't quite penetrated their collective consciousness in a way that will help them  (as a collective) to challenge Plate Tectonics.  If it had there would have been no dismissal of the geosyncline and no adoption of the Wilson cycle.

They need a meme to help them conceptualise and vocalise. United they stand, but as sheeples they don't.

And so, .. what?  Do we wait for one to memenate from our stellar institutions of learning that will help transport the VIP (very important principle) of vertical parallel pairing of crustal-scale boudinage to the forefront of geological lobotomemes.  I don't think so.  So, .. in the memetime,  ...

"Meme us up, Scotty."    :-))

[OK - because Plate Tectonics evidently can't.]

(Vertical, parallel-paired, asymmetrical - and by no memes off the planet.)


 [ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]

Colostomy bag break-out ( sausages )

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

Remember? .. what we said about when you get a log-jam in the natural flow of things? .. and everything gets clogged up? .. and a breakout happening further back upstream so that the flow can find a better course to continue on, and leave the stagnation behind?  (link)  Well, .since we are into profanity, scatology and bad puns when it comes to plate tectonics, .. and in the name (believe it or not) of trying to clean things up, I want to have another go at floating a certain geological word past everybody, .. firstly because it is so delightfully risible, causing (as it frequently does) everything from a polite grin to an uproariously coarse cackle of unrestrained guffaws that helps to earn the Earth sciences the reputation of a romance that you can't take seriously, and secondly because i.m.h.o. it rates as *THE* most important structure in geology, such is the simultaneously holistic, scale-invariant simplicity/complexity that the structure offers as a key to understanding geology at all scales. 

And the word is? ..

Boudinage.  Or, as it is increasingly known by its larger-than-life expression - lithospheric boudinage.

Boudinage is ...

 "....a rare geological phenomenon.  There is no mention of this type of deformation in any works in English, so far as the writer is aware, nor does it seem to have had consideration from any but the geologists of Belgium... There seems to be nothing in the arts or in nature which can be compared in mechanical origin to boudinages, which makes them the more interesting and the more worthy of study." (Quirke, T. 1923. Boudinage, an unusual structural phenomenon. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, v.34, pp 659-650 

 [ Quirke was wrong.  The structure was described nearly a century earlier by MacCulloch, J. 1816, A geological description of Glen Tilt.  Geological Society of London Transactions, v.3, p.259-337.]

It is nearly a century since Quirke eulogised its importance, and I would agree with him.  Completely.  The way I see it, the dearth of attention to it in the interim decades is the reason Plate Tectonics has gained such a foothold.  Anyone cognisant of its holistic qualites cannot help but be awed by its (quirky) explanatory power when it comes to understanding crustal deformation, particularly when it comes to relating domains of extension to compression at all scales through geological time ( link )

A 'boudin' is a sausage (French word), defined, once-upon-a-time, not as your end-to-end links-type British sort piled in a heap, but (it is said) the bigger continental salami sort that you often see side by side on a slab or hanging up in the butcher's window - though the way the links sort  are packaged these days for the supermarket there's not a lot of difference.  The arrangement is a bit like the hand, firmed up for a karate chop, is like a layer of rock, .. the closed gaps between the fingers being like fractures.  If you cut the fingers off (as a butcher might), and enclose them in some mince then squeeze the package down on the table, the fingers separate but keep their orientation relative to each other.  That's the sort of separation that happens when a layer is stretched. The compression is like gravitational force, and if the layercake of fingers and mince is free to spread then the separation of the fingers is like what happens when a sequence of rocks that is riddled with fractures is spread.

It happens at all scales, from micron-scale muds to the scale of the lithosphere, and at all levels in the crust from unconsolidated sediments on continental shelves to the highest temperature regimes. Given that two thirds of the Earth's surface is defined by extension (as abyssal hills) boudinage is, holistically speaking, the most comprehensive framework there is by which to understand geological structure.  For geologists in the dining car of the gravytrain to keep saying they don't understand what's going on and that more research is needed, is akin to them saying they don't like the House Special where the waiter encases their fingers in mince and squeezes them down on the table for their delectation.  They'd far rather have the dish dressed dressed up as "non-homogeneous stretching".  However this is a naked attempt to appropriate a simplicity that has served perfectly well since the term was first coined by Lohest, Fourmarier and others more than a century ago.  It's what science does when it doesn't much care to be labelled 'Johnnie-come-lately', and wishes to represent something old as new.  First, you change the language, .. next you emphasise the word 'new'.

"Boudinage is a result of compression and consequent elongation which, in large complexes must yield truly large-scale plastic transfer of rock matter; this is of obvious significance for large-scale tectonics."  (Hans Ramberg, 1955.  Natural and experimental boudinage and pinch-and-swell structures, Journal of Geology, p.513.)

"Boudinage occurs on all scales." (Dennis, J.G., 1972.. Structural Geology, Ronald Press, New York, 532pp.) (Student text book.)

And indeed Lohest interpreted the uplift of the Batogne region of Belgium as due to large-scale boudinage, an interpretation that was later (1980) applied to the metamorphic core complexes of the Basin and Range province of North America.

If all roads lead to Rome (Earth expansion) then the shortcut is lithospheric boudinage.  But going by the heap of bullshit that is building up in the name of Plate Tectonics, it sure will be very interesting to witness what happens when there is a breakout and the *importance* of it for understanding the larger-scale framework for crustal stretching hits the fan.

Why the delay?  Because Plate Tectonics got in the way, and however much that paradigm is wrong it serves a purpose - which is that of 'scientists', ..  not of science.

But it's getting there.  It's just a matter of time until scientists are forced to take cognisance of the facts rather than their theories.

From go. ..

Fig.1.  Asymmetrical boudinage in ferruginous muds.  Specimen is about 5cm across

.. to woh :-

Fig.2. H. Fossen modelling lithospheric boudinage, citing Gartrell, 1997, .. also modelling.  Crustal thickness is between 20-40 km -  an order of magnitude more when the lithosphere is referenced.  [ Note the asymmetrical structure chosen for the illustration.]

(Scale invariance - the most important phenomenon encountered by astrophysicists exploring the universe and by (some) geologists noticing the crustal structure of this little old Earth. )

 ".. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.  The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.  The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.  All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.  Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us. There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after."   (Ecclesiastes :  "All is vanity, .. a chase after wind.")  

And more than wind it certainly will be, when that bag breaks. ...  ...  You know, ..   I get the feeling it already has, which is why everybody is keeping their head down on this topic.  The calm before the clamouring storm?  Nope.  It will all creep in the back door as the train clatters over the points at walking speed, to save everybody falling off - as the above figure is doing.  There are no marks for making a noise when it comes to the memes of change that everybody discovers they already know, .. nor for drawing their dormancy to attention - like mountains are erosional features, and that there is a belt of them going all around the Earth's Pangaean equatorial zone, and that it split around the middle to let the mantle out, and that subduction is really overriding, and that rollback is silly, .. etc., etc. ..and that the Earth is getting bigger (because of all that obvious ocean floor, the ridges, the transform faults, the mountains etc etc.)

It is absolutely amazing, is it not, .. that given the magnetic and gravity detail of the ocean floors available today there isn't a structural map of it coming out of any of our institutions.  Anybody got any idea why the only one we do have is that multi-hued rainbow map-of-ages?  What's that?  There really *is* a pot of gold at the end of it?  (Oh, .. right, .. I see ee.)

Joke?  I don't think so.  I think that is *precisely* the reason. Nobody's game to upset it.  They're all working out how to cannibalise the new stuff from satellites and gross regional compilations into the old, so that nothing of the old ideas changes, .. very quickly at any rate.  First you have to milk the golden eggs for what they're worth, *before* they lose their attraction, even if it is becoming much tarnished.  From the consensus veiwpoint there is nothing acceptable-to-purpose to put in its place.  When it comes to resurrecting old stuff that is as redolent and on the nose as Earth expansion, .. well, .. that is very risky business.

It will have to be done though, before geology makes sense again.  The bubble needs to burst.  Breakout needs to happen.  The stagnation needs to be cleared.

"Mash with your sausages, sir?"


 [ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]

Plate Tectonics' Double Whammy

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



Many points militate against Plate Tectonics, and at the same time indicate an Earth that is getting bigger, however I would pick two :-
1.  Spreading ridges that keep rising up. (That's one.)
2.  And no subducting slabs going down.  (That's the other.)
Each of these support expansion, and together negate Plate Tectonics. We could of course add many more, all the facts of global geology in fact, but for now, .. two, because in a very direct way they are corollaries of each other.

The first is evidenced by the fact that the spreading ridges are longer than the extent of their original continental breakthrough as this might be determined from transform fault markers, which means that the spreading ridges simultaneously increase along their length as well as across them, and that the only way this can happen is if the spreading ridges grow *UP* - and keep growing up against the equilibrating forces of gravity.  The further support for upward growth lies in the existence of the abyssal hills ("the most prolific landform on the planet"), which represent the exhumation of mantle underplating making up the increasing size of the Earth - the still further direct support being the transform faults which represent the continual brittle adjustment to this along-ridge increase at the spreading ridge. (And of course the many supporting aspects of continental, and continental margin, geology.)

Fig.1.  Along-ridge growth in the Atlantic.   Ridge extension is not everywhere the same.  North and South Atlantic spreading is essentially E-W, while along-ridge spreading is largely restricted to the (more curved /oblate) equatorial zone. ( Red lines = continental margins; purple lines = equivalent penetration to the mantle; yellow lines = first-order Atlantic 'transform' expression in continental crust; green line = penetration of yellow lines to the mantle; white zones and arrows = spreading associated with unhinging of the Caribbean Pivot due to continuing equatorial dilation.)


In the Atlantic the difference is not great when the spreading ridge is compared to the African margin (Fig.1), though is substantially more complicated (never acknowledged in Plate Tectonics) when the North and South American margins are taken into account. The difference is more again when the spreading ridge of the Indian Ocean is considered ( link ), and more still for the Pacific, where the focus of dilation (mantle breakthrough) is the Indonesian 'bubble' ( link ) whose rupture and dilation forms the Western Pacific margin from Indonesia to the Russian Peninsula and whose trans-Pacific correlate is the swivelled-open American Cordilleras.

That's the first point ( = along ridge spreading means 'UP' - not 'sideways').

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

The second whammy follows from this length difference, because it means that the ocean floors grow *away* from the continents, not towards them, thereby negating subduction as an *oceanic* dynamic.  The subduction (Benioff) zone is, as Mr Benioff said, due to crustal collapse from the continental  side, not push due to convection from the oceanic side as Plate Tectonics would have it.

This view is supported by Plate Tectonics' own suicide note, already written in anticipation of its demise, titled "Rollback". Rollback is the free-fall of cold mantle slabs into the mantle when the hinge of sea-floor turndown migrates ("rolls") back towards the spreading ridge.  Rollback is proposed to provide the extension needed to drag chunks of continental crust away from the mainland to form the arcs and the 'back-arc' basins between,  much as flotsam will be pulled over the hull of a sinking ship.  However if this is the case then there can be no grinding of mantle slabs down subduction zones, .. and no earthquakes.  Hypothetical rollback to account for island arcs happens not only at the cost of supposed subduction, but also at the cost of earthquakes and volcanism.  The slab can't be "grinding down", pushing against continental lithosphere to make a fiery ring of earthquakes and volcanoes, and at the same time be in vertical free-fall.  If rollback occurs then island arcs have nothing to do with earthquakes and subduction.  Rolling back means that the island arcs (/continental margins) of the Western Pacific are not fashioned by anything happening in oceanic crust.  What *is* fashioning them is the arcuate shape of crustal and lithospheric collapse, which occurs in continental exposure all the way from the Russian Peninsula south and around Indonesia to the Himalayas, through Iran to the Mediterranean Alps ( link ), where surficial effects can be seen and studied on land.

So , .. The first half of this second whammy follows from the first whamny, and the second half of it is Plate Tectonics shooting itself in the head.

Bang - Bang!  Dead, .. by Plate Tectonics' own hand.

("Rollback" indeed.. )

With such contradictory stories - based on such a *LACK* of observation, where is Plate Tectonics' centre supposed to lie?  Theory is all very well, but it has to be based on more than just 'ideas' rattling around  empty heads.  Where's the observation?  Earthquakes? First motions on earthquakes support expansion just as much as Plate Tectonics. GPS? Don't know anything about the assumptions underlying the mathematics of this tool, but it would seem to me that twenty years or so is nothing to compare with the geological evidence of two hundred million, that it doesn't take account of random crustal block movements, that mathematics anyway would be based on an assumption that expansion is not happening - and may be even too crude to take account of the full complexities of the geoid and the assumptions that go into defining this, and that it wouldn't take into account crustal lag due to the Earth's rotation.

(This is tiring me out.  ...   And we haven't even *mentioned* the architecture of the spreading-ridge /transform fault-combo.)


[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]

Mince

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


The great thing about being wrong in science is that it detracts from the incentive to be right, thereby providing an excellent opportunity for prolonging what science is really about - funding.  For without it, there would be none.  Conversely being right in science is something of a lemon because it presents the problem what to do next when the question being pursued is finally answered (given that the business of science is to provide answers to perplexing questions about the world, and not just to observe it aimlessly). The problem confronting science (and the funding underpinning it) is that its business is to provide answers beyond the boundaries of common sense, .. for if common sense does the job of answering the question, then there is no need for science.  Science therefore ventures into territory where, for one reason or another, common sense cannot go. 

The usual reason stopping common sense from going is cognitive limitation.

Cognitive limitation is usually two-fold, .. scale and pattern.  And a third reason (much advertised in these blogposts) is the politics of trying - or not trying as the case may be - to actually go,.. and we have demonstrated this with the emergence in Earth science of the theory of Plate Tectonics.

However much simpler instances of cogitive failure abound.

The space traveller.   To our space traveller the roundness of the Earth (which perspective is denied the resident leprechauns who observe it to be flat) is passingly obvious; to our leprechauns however, the manifestation of flatness is equally passingly obvious.  To blend these cognitive differences is the challenge science faces at every turn, .. and particularly Earth science as cause and effect are merged across scale and time in a kalaeidoscope of reflections of our own cognitive ability that reduces all to ... mince.

If anybody wants an instance of how this common sense gets put through the mincer and comes out the other end as big ideas, rabbits from the hat, fluff from the morning navel and feathers from the bed, cop the following (below) - cited with (some) respect for the intention (and some for the incidental spin-off that may result), but not for the Plate Tectonics supporting the project.

Transcending 'mince', but raising a pertinent point regarding tis composition, is the current misery caused by Earthquakes in China, which is, .. when the Earth shakes, everything falls down.

Now here's the fine point about the mince:-

                     It's been shaking and falling down for thousands of millions of years.

Probably about four and a half thousand millions to be more precise.  Which is to say that everything should be pretty fallen-down by now.  There should be nowhere further-down for all this fallen-down stuff to fall down to.  All the holes that ever there was should gather (where?) for certain because ..  (there are a whole lot of teddy bears having a picnic).

On your and my money.

According to Plate Tectonics' version of cognition (pattern and scale etc., but it's really about funding),  all this falling down is a response to all that pushing up.  By moving plates. Colliding.  Crumpling the crust and building mountains.  All silent of course.  No Earthquakes - because all that crumpling and building actually happens deep in the crust in the regime of heat and flow and metamorphism, .. where everything is no longer brittle and noisy.  It only makes all the noise when everything gets too high and falls down (with a bit of help from some blustery weather).  So how, precisely, did all that crumpling (down)  due to colliding plates and regular subduction transition to uplift? .. uplift that is universally, epeirogenically, and resolutely 'flat', consequent on the universally "flat subduction"that's  making it uplift - when continental crust (being less dense than the other) "cannot subduct"?  What makes one bit of continental crust get shoved flatly under another bit of flat continental crust rather than crumple it up, and why should both happen in the type area of crustal crumpling /mountain building /flat subduction - which is the Himalyas?

That's the sixty-four thousand dollar question occupying the minds of the pair in the cab as the engine careens downhill, 'cos the dill in the guard's van won't pull the communication cord and do something to stop it, because doing so will derail the whole political shebang - of funding.

" Plate tectonics has been the major unifying theory in geosciences for the last 40 years. By linking the evolution of the Earth’s surface to the dynamics of the deep Earth, it has provided a coherent framework to understand the formation of mountain ranges and oil-rich sedimentary basins, as well as the distribution of major catastrophic events such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Yet, until recently, mantle convection and plate tectonics have been studied as independent systems. In convection studies, plates were generally considered as rigid rafts dragged along by the convecting mantle. On the other hand, "lithospheric" studies focused on the petrological evolution and on the deformation of the crust, often neglecting even the lithospheric mantle. This duality is now over. The last decade has seen a clear evolution. We now understand that plate tectonics is an essential feature of mantle convection. However, the processes allowing convection in the mantle to produce plate tectonics at the Earth's surface as well as many aspects of the interaction between the convective flow and the plates remain poorly understood.
http://www.gm.univ-montp2.fr/CRYSTAL2PLATE/Crystal2Plate-AnnexI.pdf

Or the synoptic advertisement for the grant proposal :-

...  These multidisciplinary projects altogether aim to answer a key question in Earth Sciences, still unsolved 40 years after the establishment of the plate tectonics theory: How mantle convection produces, and is modified by, plate tectonics.

The above is typical of the eulogies.  Or consider the following, canvassing a broader application of funding relevance that includes just about everything you care to think of :-

"While the new study provides some answers for the jumble of land masses that make up the North American west, it does not explain every piece of the jigsaw puzzle and further study was needed, authors said.   "Poorly understood, such collisions are of broad scientific interest," authors wrote. "They cause rapid geographic changes, affecting climate, ocean circulation, biota and the formation of economically important mineral deposits."
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-cordilleran-north-america-20130403,0,3350177.story

(Or google ["plate tectonics" "poorly understood"] for 340,000 other entries.)

They really are doozies, are they not? ignoring the common-sense obvious (that they just *might* be wrong), and doing something to question the possible error.  But no.  Despite *everything* of Plate Tectonics being full of contradictions at every turn, no effort *whatsoever* goes into questioning its basic premise. In more than twenty years I don't think I have seen one paper questioning the veracity of subduction.  And why should they when it's such a yew-beaut little money spinner, thank you very much, which helps to piss ever more funds for research up against the wall.
http://users.indigo.net.au/don/nonsense/consensus.html#90%

Of *course* Plate Tectonics remains poorly understood and unsolved.  It's in the nature of the paradigm.  Plate Tectonics is both unsolvable (because its contradictions make it incomprehensible), and .. well we just said it - "incomprehensible".   It is one 'mutliple working story' too far, because it addresses the questions of global tectonics from an invalid asumption (that the dynamics are dependent on subduction).  But it does provide a framework for touting for your and my money for 'scientific' research, .. and that's what's most important.  That's the bit that has to be gotten right in any submission.  Then with that in place you can say it still needs tweaked a bit, .. which we can do with a little help of some money from some friends.

But does it matter whether it's science or funding is the issue?  As reductive 'science', with its plethora of bady-parts, .. it's mince.  Labelled and priced it's how it comes from the shop and you don't want to look at it too closely because that means checking what gets put in at the other end, when all you want to do is dish up something tasty for the paying customer providing the funds.  There's no point.  What does it matter if it's wrong?   Who knows, maybe the diversions along the way (helped by some money and peace on the streets from all that potentially thwarted intelligence being employed in 'restaurants') will help to put it right.

Cheap at the price?  ..  These days of,   "We'll whitewash coal if necessary", maybe it is.  Meanwhile earthquakes will continue to make the Earth fall down

And why shouldn't they (earthquakes), .. no amount of erosion and collapsing is going to stop them, far much less the confabulous esoterics of Plate Tectonics shoving things 'up' as mountains ("building").

(Nothing gets shoved up. Shoving up is crass bandwagonism.  Everything falls down.  Forever.  It's what the whole story of Geo-Logic tells us stratigraphic sequence with its fossils and all, and its deformation in response to the mantle breaking through,  is all about.

(There, .. the biota factor again, ...  ) (and yes, .. weather's in there too.)


[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]

Contradicting consensus

No Prizes
( blog for website at http://users.indigo.net.au/don/ )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Stanczyk_Matejko.JPG


Mostly, there are no prizes for contradicting consensus.  Prizes are for consolidating an existing consensus in a way that will allow it to roll better, not (to use a railroad analogy), for switching the points that make it turn sharp left, or stops it in its tracks, or, as is the case here, go into reverse.  Not only are all the bandwagoners likely to fall off, but the vehicle is likely to be so severely damaged it is only fit for the scrap heap.  Even moreso there are no prizes for blowing whistles while doing so. If significant deviation is the intention it is usually better to adopt a quieter, more sober, and more surreptitious (political) approach by canvassing opinion and building a consensus, so that with time the bandwagon (and the people on it) are able to take the curve at a more acceptable pace.

It is half a century since Plate Tectonics left the station, and has been gathering momentum ever since as the framework for interpreting geology.  The increase in momentum however is due more to its path being downhill, helped by the weight of conjectural baggage, than it is to to do with any fuel stoking its firebox, which at every test turns out to be more damp squibs than anything else.  "Downhill all the way" ('subduction'), is Plate Tectonics default acknowledgement of the imperative of gravity.  It would surely far rather have a primary mechanism tangential to the Earth's crust whose full force could better make plates collide and crumple crust. 

It's actually something of a discomfiture for Plate Tectonics (not at all highlighted), that its *primary* mechanism *is* vertical - as in Earth Expansion.  The difference is simply that Earth expansion's primary verticality acts in the opposite direction - up - and has a geological signature related to the Earth's rotation and its first-order deformation (its oblate shape), and the way that oblateness has been modified in the dilation of the crust.  The big question for Earth expansion, which it can't yet answer (because it is a question for theoretical physics, not geology), is how rotation and energy are linked to create the material of the mantle (with its magnetic signature).

There is a further irony for Plate Tectonics too,  in that the more directly this primary force is actioned (as in slab 'rollback'), the less collisional crumpling and moving plates can happen, and the more crustal extension is increased (e.g. the 'back-arc basins of the Western Pacific).  But crustal extension is what happens at the ridges where the supposed convection cell is rising. So no matter which way Plate tectonics turns, gravity-driven extension is its primary dynamic (as in Earth expansion).

In Plate Tectonics gravitational adjustment (by falling mantle slabs) is the motive force, .. the driver, .. the *cause* of plate movement.   In Earth expansion downwards gravitational adjustment is a *result* of upwards (/outwards) global enlargement, that has a symmetry of inscription linking it to Earth's rotation - which Plate Tectonics ignores.  What precisely is causing the enlargement is not known, but it is materially manifest in the creation of the mantle (including water).

Earth expansion thus *empirically* (not hypothetically) links the Earth's gravitational field with rotation and the creation of planetary material, and is a pointer to the physical reality of the quantum world at a scale that is directly accessible to us.  It is an exciting perspective on a subject that for half a century has shown no inclination to progress.  Plate Tectonics on the other hand remains mired in the *assumptions, speculations and escapes* of goal-post shifts of half a century in order to avoid exactly this conclusion, and even then is forced to recognise gravitational collapse (of the mantle) as its primary dynamic, despite its yearning for a dominantly tangential one.


There are costs for contradicting consensus in science, for in a very real sense it is whistleblowing,  and since the public see science as a sacred cow of sorts, shooting the messenger happens from both the science and the public side.  The time (mis-)spent working through something like this is substantial and negatively affects income in a number of ways.  And a desk job is a pain, literally.  There is also the psychic cost of being irked by the corruption and the threat to free speech that contrived conformity induces.  Encountering corruption in science (our "truth-teller"), is not good for you. Scepticism is insidious, and leads to cynicism, which tends to spill over into other areas of life, and the often spectacular errant behaviour of our commanders of societal institutions generally doesn't help.  And of course if you're going to indulge in what others see as a foolish enterprise, then there's the cost of having to dress the part too. Well, .. it allows some concession to their view - but if they don't understand the nuttiness of the target subject(s) I doubt they'd see the irony in the deliberate fancy dress adopted to hob-nob with the walkers and the talkers.

Others, scientists among them who should know better, typically trot out the shibboleth, "If you have something to say, you should say it within the pages of scientific discourse and test it with peer review, .. scientists would give their right hand to say something new..etc etc."   This of course is a myth.  To bring any alternative message to the attention of a monolithic consensus (particularly when it reeks of corruption) is simply an invitation to be shot.  As has been demonstrated over the period of some ten years of posting about this on the internet, scientists are *not* interested in questioning the cardiac health of consensus, even when that consensus appears increasingly like a cadaver. The reasons are not on account of any geo-logic, but on account of their own personal professional security.  Despite its logic and scientific credentials, Earth expansion is professional poison that by the evidence, virtually all academics will not touch however much they might be inclined, or even want, to do so.  And be sure there are no prizes for drawing attention to the courage of their convictions.


Finally, a word of caution for others who think they might be in a position to go forward with this.  Make no mistake, there will be no prizes.  Geology today is far too ensconced in its own conviction and the institutional kudos that supports it. Previous advances in the field followed crises of sorts, when things weren't working.  There were questions about what to do with the ocean floors.  Were they submerged continents?  Did landbridges exist? Exactly how were the vertical movements of orogenesis, taphrogenesis and epeirogenesis related? And what about the thousands of kilometres of trans-Atlantic displacement (Continental Drift")?  And the heat source apparently necessary to do that?  And (to cap it all) the astounding discovery of recent sea-floor spreading.  All of these represented advances from a position gained.  Earth expansion represents nothing of the sort, but a return to an earlier position already discarded. Investigating it means undoing everything that has been assembled to support a false consensus, and by implication to a considerable extent, the reputations of those who have built it.  Despite the  manifest contradictions of Plate Tectonics, and the vistas offered by the alternative of expansion, the advocates of Plate Tectonics (aided by cohorts of willing idiots), will do everything in their power to maintain its status.

After the war and the triumph of theoretical physics in the creation of The Bomb, the whole way science was done, changed.  Natural philosophy was replaced by more quantitative and theoretical methods to which the principle of multiple working hypotheses was seen as better adapted.  It allowed focus, .. a more reductionist, 'scientific' approach.  Logic took a back seat.  Overnight it was acceptable to allow illogical contradictions, because if you scratched beneath the surface (with a little more arithmetical scribbling based on a 'good idea') you might find (at best) they were not contradictions at all, .. or (at worst) have another 'piece of the jigsaw' to add to the mix.  In the case of geology, neither has proven to be true.  There has been no conceptual advance since Plate Tectonics was first formulated, only goal-post-shifts of the 'escape' sort.  Of course, these are not seen as such by a new generation, who have learned the litany (and the method), but as proof of the theory.

Is this why (Earth) science is failing?  Because its core principle of logic has been usurped by theory?  Because theory has come to be maladapted?  ..  and, in the case of the Earth sciences at least, made it possible for those who inherently cannot see the difference between the two, to hog the driving seat?

Sam Carey (on Earth expansion; interviewed in 2002 just before he died).

"Through the 30s and 40s and 50s if you dared to propose this sort of thing [EE - d.f.] in America you'd be laughed at, you're a ratbag flat-earther. And there was no chance of getting a job if you had that kind of idea. But by about 1956 I could see the glimmerings of the recognition that something was wrong."   http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/tribute-to-sam-carey-and-peter-hunt/3508908#transcript

The present cohort, demonstrating obeisance to consensus.   Paradoxically, those who can, and should, and who are ostensibly in the best position to do so, .. will not, because like ingenues coerced to the sex trade, their hands are tied by the threat of retribution.  Even when the door is opened to set them free they cannot escape.  The risks are too great.  They are prisoners of the politics of consensus.

"Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-- science and the nation will suffer."    (Michael Crichton quoting Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences.)

Plainly, the worst of it is that the science is not the issue. Rational argument is irrelevant. The subtext, 'consensus' and the politics of one sort or another that attend it, is the issue.  

Why (Earth) science is failing? - Willing idiotry in the driving seat, incompetence stoking the firebox, and consensus politics in the guard's van.



[ See also - Debunking Plate Tectonics - at :-
http://www.platetectonicsbiglie.blogspot.com/ ]