Nexus - 0706 - New Times Magazine-pages

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GLOBAL EXPANSION TECTONICS GLOBAL EXPANSION TECTONICS Modern data analysis smashes the theory of plate tectonics by suggesting that the Earth has been expanding since Archaean times, particularly since the Early Jurassic period. There is nothing more contentious in global tectonics at this time than the expanding Earth concept. — Owen, 1992 lobal tectonics was introduced a number of decades ago as an all-embracing science that seeks to quantify and explain the Earth as a dynamic, interactive entity. As an outcome of this new philosophy, we, in all our walks of life, have become accustomed to viewing the Earth globally, whether in relation to geology, ecology, climate, population, politics and so on. Global tectonics, however, in its strictest geological sense, has become synonymous with plate tectonics, where all continents move across the Earth's surface under the action of mantle-driven convective currents. Each of the continents is supposedly in a state of random motion, periodically colliding, amalgamating, breaking up and dispersing during Earth history. Global Expansion Tectonics is presented here as a viable alternative global tectonic explanation of geological phenomena, where the Earth has been expanding since the Archaean aeon and continents break up and disperse due to crustal extension, in an order- ly, pre-determined manner. In making this statement, it must be realised that the concept of Earth expansion is not new; only the technology available to quantify an expansion process is. The global geological and geophysical information available for Earth dynam- ic studies has only now reached the stage where all global tectonic hypotheses, including plate tectonics, can be confidently quantified, challenged or discarded. Earth expansionists, since the pioneering work of Christopher Otto Hilgenberg (1933) and, more recently, Professor Sam Warren Carey (1956, 1976, 1988, 1996) and Klaus Vogel (1983, 1990), have known that if all Earth's continents were fitted together they would neatly envelop the Earth with continental crust on a globe some 55% to 60% of its present size (the present mean radius of the Earth is 6,370.80 kilometres). This coinci- dence led Hilgenberg, Carey, Vogel and others to conclude that terrestrial expansion brought about the splitting and gradual dispersal of continents as they moved radially outwards during geological time. However, this coincidence has consistently failed to gain recognition within the scien- tific community as a viable explanation for modern global tectonics. The primary reason for this non-acceptance in the past is considered to have been the lack of supportive glob- al-scale evidence to quantify a reproducible expansion process with time. At present, sci- entists are so engrossed in forcing observational data into a singular plate-tectonic model that they are blissfully unaware that consideration of such a coincidence is necessary. It has only been during the past two decades that global-scale data gathering, computer processing capabilities and electronic communication have advanced sufficiently enough to maintain and publicly distribute geological and geophysical data. Global Expansion Tectonics utilises this modern data and is introduced here as a revitalised concept of Earth expansion, which uses modern oceanic and continental geological mapping to constrain both ancient Earth radius and continental reconstruction from the Archaean aeon to the present. This data was not available to early researchers and, because of this, scientists could not be convinced that modelling studies or conclusions about Earth expansion were anything more than mere coincidence. By using modern sea-floor mapping, Earth expansion can now be confidently modelled and constrained at reduced Earth radii by a simple process of progressive removal of sea- floor crust back to the Early Jurassic period (the age of the oldest sea-floor crust) and back further to the Archaean aeon by using continental geology. by James Maxlow © 2000 Terrella Consultants Western Australia E-mail: jmaxlow@enternet.com.au Website: www.geocities.com/ CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/6520/ Terrella Consultants Western Australia E-mail: jmaxlow@enternet.com.au Website: www.geocities.com/ CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/6520/ NEXUS - 41 by James Maxlow © 2000 OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2000