Imaging or illustrating the trenches can produce misconceptions. Vertical scaling does not match horizontal, in order to create a greater sense of depth. It is the subduction concept that is in question, and continental sliding may be invoked with or without traditionally presented subduction trenches. Lloyd's links look largely logical to me. I don't think this is strictly a EU vs not-EU issue either. Some of the EU paradigm is bound to be disproven, just as the gravitation-only paradigm is slowly being overthrown, by closer examination of the evidence. The planetary formation dynamics of EU are highly hypothetical, and point to events in history that are outside the realm of science generally. This doesn't mean they are not true, but leads to valid questions posited by some of us who are more comfortable with other catastrophic scenarios. Shock Dynamics has a lot of EUishness to it, and explains a number of evidences without throwing the baby out with the bath water. Other aspects of traditional geology are just refuse and need to be treated as such... we're here to try to make sound distinctions between babies and refuse...
Lloyd
Ocean Ridges
* Webo, did you read http://www.newgeology.us/presentation44.html on How the Ocean Ridges Seem to Have Formed? What do you think? I'm imagining that electrical forces did much of the melting.
In the Shock Dynamics theory, features on the face of the Earth are primarily made by action on the surface. That applies to the spreading ridges that encompass the Earth like the seam of a baseball. When continental crust divides and moves over oceanic crust, the top of the oceanic crust melts and follows the moving continental crust in the manner demonstrated with parafin wax experiments. The most well-known of these was published in 1972, and is described below.
From reference 1, page 301. "A tray of melted paraffin was cooled by a variable-speed fan until a film of solidified wax formed between one end of the pan and a movable stick. The stick... was drawn at a uniform rate through the wax by a variable-speed a-c motor". The pattern of spreading ridge segments with transform faults between them was produced. "The upwelling of material is a result only of hydrostatic forces in the fluid caused by the separation of the plates." "The ridge crest has moved at one-half the spreading velocity." "Typical values for the velocity of the stick are a few millimeters per second." "The thickness of the solidified wax is typically less then 0.5 mm near the ridge crest and may increase up to a few millimeters near the plate boundaries." If the separation speed was too slow, the ridge crest solidified and a new ridge opened up in the same segment.1 Another experiment with spreading wax plates found that fast rates of separation produced longer transform faults and larger distances between ridge segments.2 1. Oldenburg, Douglas W., James N. Brune. 20 October 1972. Ridge Transform Fault Spreading Pattern in Freezing Wax. Science, Vol. 178, No. 4058, pp. 301-304. 2. Ragnarsson, Rolf, J. Lewis Ford, Christian D. Santangelo, Eberhard Bodenschatz. 29 April 1996. Rifts in Spreading Wax Layers. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 76, No. 18, pp. 3456-3459.
Lloyd
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
* Mike of Shock Dynamics said,
"... In the case of Shock Dynamics, it is easy to calculate mass-velocity values to demonstrate that a meteorite could provide the necessary force [to break up continents & push them apart on a fairly friction-free surface - LK]. How is that calculated for thunderbolts?"
* Can anyone provide an answer for that? * My impression is that positive megalightning could provide as great an explosive force as any impact, because lightning moves at relativistic speeds and I suppose the ions in it do too. But is there a way to calculate how much explosive force it could provide?
* Mike also said,
"... It seems likely that craters form from both electric discharge and meteorite impact (such as the string of comet pieces that hit Jupiter in 1994)."
* I'll try to remember to mention to him that the flashes seen during those impacts were much larger than anyone expected and were almost certainly electrical and the comet pieces were probably largely pulverized by it.
* I had told Mike,
"On this page I copied part of an article that says the Moho layer under the continents and seafloors is plasma, which I think is an excellent candidate for a layer that could allow the continents to slide after an impact: http://thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&~ It's the 3rd message on the page."
* And he replied,
"The notion of sliding landmasses will always raise eyebrows, and it should since, like interplanetary electrical discharges, it is foreign to our experience. The evidence that continents and islands did indeed slide is more important at this time than getting the mechanism right; the scale of mass and force is far beyond human experimentation. * "I have avoided forums in politics and science because they take away from research time, and opinion generally overwhelms objectivity. Still, exchanges with knowledgeable individuals can be worthwhile. * "Comet Shoemaker-Levy9 woke up the scientific community to the possibilities of impacts in the solar system. No doubt the observation of an electrical discharge between large bodies near us would have the same effect on attitudes about EUT. I hope I am here to witness it. - Mike"
saturnine
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
Lloyd wrote: * Mike also said,
"... It seems likely that craters form from both electric discharge and meteorite impact (such as the string of comet pieces that hit Jupiter in 1994)."
I'd like to see those craters on Jupiter.
webolife
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
Lloyd, I just finished reading and re-reading the article on ridge formation... It's interesting, but I can't totally buy it. I agree with Mike that the mechanism is likely very difficult to conceive, at least in part because of our inability to observe the process in real time. But I don't find the multiple impacts method of continent formation to be reasonable, considering the geologic evidences for fitting continental borders, and just about any scenario for the distribution of life across the planet. I see the shock dynamics mechanism in general as a mechanism behind the onset of continental drift, with the abundant evidence of this impacting the worldwide environment and geology, on a geologically short time scale. I see the resulting Ice Age as a natural consequence and worldwide mass extinctions and distribution of sediments/sedimentary rock, as well as a catastrophic view of mountain formation. Traditional plate tectonics doesn't answer all my questions by any means, but the evidence for seafloor spreading and continental drift and their impact on the deformation of both the continental masses and the ocean basins is pretty convincing.
Brigit Bara
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
Lloyd, Regrets on the loss of your files! You lost those files but just think, you got that lovely Google tan! :)
The point I was making is:
1. Did the higher, older mantle on Mars or the Moon ever get flung around like ice on water through Shock Dynamics? You seem to have responded by saying that the earth is a unique place. Mars certainly would be a candidate for the same process to work, esp. with that Hellas Basin it has for an impact.
2. Even if they did, what is the reason for the presence of so much younger and lower crust on the planets and moons--and earth--in our Solar System? It seems that is the question that needs to be answered first, esp. since it is a clear pattern. The location of the uplands is only a secondary issue. Expansion and EDM offer an explanation for newer surface but Shock Dynamics does not.
I read Steve Smith's wonderful Thunderblog about the moon, as I try to read everything he writes. If he is saying here that the material from our oceans — and logically by extension the Mers on the moon — were excavated and lifted out by Electric Discharge Machining, he did not say so in that blog. I am listening, if he is. But then, an EDM sea floor has to have something to offer in explaining what earth's trenches are and why they have such constant, deep earthquakes.
If trenches are a 'V' shape formed by crust having been pulled apart in opposite directions, then the quakes would be deep.
I am not trying to make you write me a book. You have provided your sources really well. I just wanted to put my thoughts out there. I find Shock Dynamics to be a hard sell, and I am open to EDM. Thx, Brigit
webolife
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
I appreciate your good questions Brigit. Scale is an important consideration in the reasonableness of any explanation, as well as time-scale. Shock dynamics or EDM can be understood at various scales of effect... some shock/impact/megalightning could certainly be responsible for "newer" surface/crustal deformation or planetwide deformation, but if you hypothesize a huge impact oe event, what are the consequences of that... if an interplanetary ED, how does that affect lifeforms on a worldwide basis? If the time scale is small the effect must be understood to be very large, and if that event is "historical" some justification must be presented for how anyone survived, etc. Many folks on this forum, incl me, discount the gradualistic view of earth history in favor of a catastrophic framework, but we must be ready to justify the enormity of catastrophic action in the light of the more mundane observations of our daily existence. Regarding the planetary catastrophe of the division of the continents, we must be ready to defend wholistically our mechanism... if megalightning, eg., carved the Atlantic Ocean while lifeforms were alive on the earth, how, where, how many, etc. did they survive such an effect? As I've siad repeatedly on other threads, just saying, "Here we are... it must have been survivable" doesn't really justify anything, or provide a good case for debate.
Lloyd
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
saturnine said:
I'd like to see those craters on Jupiter.
* You're probably jesting, but Thornhill has suggested that the surfaces of the gas giants are solid, probably like the Earth, because the Great Red Spot on Jupiter and the Dark Spot on Neptune seem to be disturbances over a prominence, and the planets likely formed from stars, which likely have similar rocky and metallic contents, though probably molten.
webolife said:
... the article on ridge formation ... I can't totally buy it
I don't find the multiple impacts method of continent formation to be reasonable
Shock Dynamics is not a multiple impacts theory.
Traditional plate tectonics doesn't answer all my questions by any means, but the evidence for seafloor spreading and continental drift and their impact on the deformation of both the continental masses and the ocean basins is pretty convincing.
You're too vague to understand here.
Brigit Bara said:
1. Did the higher, older mantle on Mars or the Moon ever get flung around like ice on water through Shock Dynamics?
Maybe not, but landslides have been observed on Mars that slide very long distances. And on Earth the continental movement was not like ice on water, but like ice on ice (over water).
Mars certainly would be a candidate for the same process to work, esp. with that Hellas Basin it has for an impact.
* It's not yet known if Mars or any other planet has a Moho plasma layer under its crust like Earth has. Without that layer, the continents would not likely have been able to move so easily. It's also possible that no other planet was struck as hard or in the right way or place as Earth's supercontinent was.
2. ... Expansion and EDM offer an explanation for newer surface but Shock Dynamics does not.
* It's not yet known if seafloors are younger than continental crust. EU theory is not yet satisfied that any dating method is very accurate. Mike, the Shock Dynamics author, does have an explanation for how the supercontinent formed, as the remains from when the Moon supposedly formed from Earth material, but I don't yet accept that theory. And that aspect is not important to his theory of how the continents divided. I consider it more likely that the supercontinent was formed as a polar bulge when Earth was below Saturn.
... an EDM sea floor has to have something to offer in explaining what earth's trenches are and why they have such constant, deep earthquakes.
* I posted earlier Fred Jueneman's article suggesting that many earthquakes seem to be due to the Moon's revolving around Earth. The Earth-Moon barycenter is a thousand or so miles below Earth's surface and constantly follows the Moon's movements within the Earth. The continental movements left hot spots under the surface in places, which continue to attract electrical currents, which combine with lunar movement to produce earthquakes, vulcanism etc.
I find Shock Dynamics to be a hard sell
* Then you didn't look over much of the [url]newgeology.us[/url] site yet: 1. you missed the evidence that the continents, except for Africa which held its position, all moved away from one single point on Earth, i.e. the Somali Basin, where there's evidence of a huge "impact"; 2. the idea that the continents could break apart like a slab of ice and slide on the Moho layer like ice sliding on ice; 3. how the impact first built up smaller mountains on the sides of continents closest to the impact and how the bigger mountains later built up on the farther sides of the continents as friction and ocean ridges etc finally brought the continents to a halt; 4. how the ocean ridges with their fault lines look just like paraffin pulled apart with a board; 5. how magnetic "striping" was produced and maybe other things.
webolife said:
... if you hypothesize a huge impact or event, ... If the time scale is small the effect must be understood to be very large, and if that event is "historical" some justification must be presented for how anyone survived, etc.
* The Shock Dynamics "impact" might have produced an initial jolt that knocked all of the animals down. This might have killed especially larger animals, including dinosaurs. Most animals living where the continents separated would have died. The same is true of those that lived where mountains built up and where flood basalt flowed on the land and where volcanoes erupted. The flood killed most of what remained, if that's when it happened. I heard that over 99% of species that ever lived are extinct, so it seems plausible that the under 1% that survived could replenish over a few decades. * Do you see a specific problem with the extinction record?
Wormwood
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
Hi, everyone-
I know I'm late to the game, and my comment here could take us all the way back to Tuesday, Jan 27, if you agree to consider my remarks. On that date, dahlenaz brought up what, to me, is an interesting bit of biblical history that points directly at what we're discussing: How the Continents Divided. dahlenaz said:
"The time seperating the story of Noah and the Days of Peleg is a moderately short period and it is in these days of Peleg that it is said that the earth was divided by water."
There could be significance in the name "Peleg," historically, but I don't know what the name means. My handy copy of the Bible (King James Version of 1611) doesn't mention a separation of the earth by water, as dahlenaz stated. My version says of Noah's great-great-great-grandson, from the lineage of Shem: "the name of one was Peleg, for in his days was the earth divided..." (Genesis: Chapt 10, Verse 22). I always took that to mean the children and grandchildren of Noah divided up the land among themselves. I believe the book of Proverbs mentions the land of Peleg as being a place from which King Solomon acquired much of his wealth. Since the earth had been destroyed by water just a few generations before Peleg's birth, any destructive, land-dividing event that occurred again and was powered by water would surely have drawn some mention as such, especially since that would be counter to God's promise that he wouldn't visit another such worldwide destruction on mankind.
In the days that followed Peleg's birth, mankind seems to have begun a worldwide program of etching events into rock formations that showed what was occurring in the heavens. The EU theorem indicates catastrophic events in the heavens that must surely have affected Earth, all its creatures and all its flora. We've already seen the transformations strong electrical events can make on Earth's geology, geography, weather, etc. Have we taken into account the possibility of mutations of flora and fauna that could have followed from the x-rays released by massive lightning painting the planet? Wouldn't massive tsunamis follow any splitting apart of the continents? Such an occurrence would be certain, I would think, to impress those putting together the biblical story as another destruction by water. We know EDM events take place in relative rapidity, and any water that got in the way would surely become vapor or break down into hydrogen and oxygen. Meanwhile, if we take the East Africa location as a focal point, and assume the continental division to take place all in one event, an eastward push and westward push, simultaneously, would seem to me to lead directly to such features as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and similar features in the Indian and Pacific oceans. The geological "newness" of the Himalayas and other mountain ranges would be landward products of the same forces. If the event was geologically recent, the stresses would still be seeking equilibrium, with many earthquakes and volcanoes as the result. And societies around the world would have mythology describing the events.
Grey Cloud
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
Hi Wormwood, Rather than derail this excellent thread with a discussion of Peleg etc, could I suggest that you have a look here: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1026&p=16350&hilit=peleg#p~ as Brigit Bara brought up the same subject. The discussion is interspersed with other posts so you will have to do a bit of scrolling to get to the end of it.
Lloyd
Peleg
* Wormwood, I think the rock carvings started long before Peleg's time, when Earth was still a moon of Saturn. I think Cardona considers the early ancestors to have been celestial apparitions rather than actual humans. I think both are possible. There may have been apparitions and leading people on Earth may have been named after them. I think the name Peleg means divided, but there doesn't seem to be any hard evidence that it meant the continents divided in his time. So far, it's just a possible clue, or a possible diversion. * The possibility of mutations from megalightning x-rays etc is something worth considering. Thornhill has discussed something like that, but not very much that I know of. You might like to start a thread on that on the New Insights board. Or do a search to see if there's already a thread on it.
Brigit Bara
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
Lloyd said, "It's not yet known if seafloors are younger than continental crust. EU theory is not yet satisfied that any dating method is very accurate."
Oh, hey... I don't see Peleg as being off-topic here... I would say that the language/lexicography of the "earth being divided" in Peleg's time is significantly different from the earlier reference in same chapter to the generations of people who became "nations being separated." Maybe this is picking at nits, but I would like to suggest that that continental separation being [possibly] referred to in the Peleg verse may have something to do with the sea level rise that accompanied the end of the Ice Age... this would have manifested in several new bodies of water appearing where landmasses previously stood, such as: Bering Strait Mediterranean Sea Black Sea Dead Sea The last three would have been fairly obvious to Mid-Easterners. This "division" would have been a few centuries later than the continental drift/Shock Dynamic event.
webolife
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
webolife said:
... if you hypothesize a huge impact or event, ... If the time scale is small the effect must be understood to be very large, and if that event is "historical" some justification must be presented for how anyone survived, etc.
Lloyd said: * The Shock Dynamics "impact" might have produced an initial jolt that knocked all of the animals down. This might have killed especially larger animals, including dinosaurs. Most animals living where the continents separated would have died. The same is true of those that lived where mountains built up and where flood basalt flowed on the land and where volcanoes erupted. The flood killed most of what remained, if that's when it happened. I heard that over 99% of species that ever lived are extinct, so it seems plausible that the under 1% that survived could replenish over a few decades. * Do you see a specific problem with the extinction record?[/quote]
No, I actually agree with your statement here, that's how I see it as well. My statement was aiming more at eg. an EDM or Saturn theory explanation...
Grey Cloud
Re: Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
What I don't get, and I may have missed it or it may just be me, is what the oceans are doing while all this shocking dynamism is going on. If, as this guy says, the landmasses are behaving like fluids and moving across the planet (in 26hrs) then surely the ocean(s) will be doing it more so? I'm thinking tserious tsunamis here. I'm also thinking that any previously fresh water sources would be seriously contaminated from gasses and other stuff released during the fluid phase. This, I think, would also apply to any newly formed lakes, rivers, etc. This would have a devastating effect on any flora and fauna which had managed to survive the fluid phase. If the ground turned to the consistency of dough then what would happen to a multi-ton dinosaur? Aquatic flora and fauna would also presumably suffer from the oceans being contaminated with silt from the land and a general stirring up from runaway landmasses? Plus current and temperature changes?
On a related note, what about other impact sites such as Chicxulub(?), would they cause the fluid dynamism effect albeit on a smaller scale?
