#1 Neal does not use his mind in any way to discover a new way of understanding. He doesn’t accept argument. He truncates debate when he is backed into a corner. He doesn’t listen to established fact, and suggests, wildly, that there is a conspiracy of science about subduction zones.

#2 The oceanic crust is heavier than the continental crust, so it will preferentially subduct. Maybe in the first instance of Continental/Oceanic collision, there was a brief bit of ‘piling up’ of the oceanic crust, but then this will still subduct. There are some rare instances where sections of ocean crust have been ‘cleaved’ up onto the surface (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ophiolite). Yorrike has posted some links on the subject already in this post.

If you are going to enter into a debate, read the debate first. He has already answered this question.

Here is a video of (crude) animation showing drift up to 800 million years ago through various supercontinents. Do you really think these plates are flying all around the surface of the Earth?

No. No one believes they are flying around the surface of the Earth. The oceanic and continental plates ARE the surface of the Earth. And a few millimetres a year is hardly “flying around”. Continental plates “move” (i.e., rotate), at about the same speed as your fingernails grow. You may perceive them as “flying around”, but that’s because you’re looking at hundreds of millions of years of movement over the course of a few seconds. Let me say that again. HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF YEARS. Look out! It’s coming right at us!

Compare that to one of Neal’s videos. Smooth and symmetrical all the way through for the entire planet.

Smooth and symmetrical is not how the Earth works. If you find it more pleasing than the hap-hazard motion discovered by science, that’s your problem, not science’s.

Occam’s Razor is crying for attention.

Firstly, Occam’s Razor is not a stead-fast rule. It says the simplest explanation is likely the right one. LIKELY.

And you really think Neal’s idea is simpler? Let me summarise what you think to be simple and then what plate tectonics says;

An expanding Earth according to Neal Adams demands;

• Matter is being created at the centre of the Earth (even though he has no evidence for this, and isotopic geochemistry would have surely picked up long-lived but now extinct isotopes in plume lavas were this the case) - a process NEVER OBSERVED and not possible in within modern physics.
• That the Earth was smaller, yet there was no difference in gravity or atmospheric pressure has been detected in the geological record.
• That there was nothing but continental crust 180 million years ago (the oldest ocean crust near Japan is 180 million years old. There’ plenty of crust older than 70 MYr, despite what that first rubbish video of yours says. Here’s an article about 3.8 billion year old oceanic crust). And there’s oceanic crust that’s been preserved on land that’s older than 180 MYr).
• That the sciences of particle and nuclear physics geology, geophysics, geochemistry and palaeontology are all wrong (given experimentation is constant and hasn’t described anything Neal REQUIRES for his hypothesis to be accurate, I’d say he’s on the wrong track).

According to plate tectonics;

• The Earth’s surface, due to the ocean, displays a pattern as a result of a top-cooled convection system (convection is well understood).
• Dense oceanic crust and underlying lithosphere tends to sink into slightly less dense upper mantle when it encounters and is pushed down by even less dense continental material (more dense stuff sinks into less dense stuff - but the mantle isn’t liquid, it’s a solid that flows over long time scales like silly putty).
• The formation of Blueschist, Greenschist, Oil, Coal, Marble, Jade, Diamonds and oceanic arc volcanics such as around the Pacific ring of fire and most metamorphic rocks and minerals, can be explained easily if there’s wet, carbon-rich or oceanic material being forced down into the upper mantle. In fact, given the particular geochemical and physical conditions presented by plate tectonics, the materials I mentioned are EXACTLY what you’d expect to form. Hypothesis->Evidence->Theory. It’s that simple.
• Through the process of fractional crystalisation and planetary differentiation (on a planet about the same size of the current Earth 4.55 billion years ago), the mantle should consist of mostly olivine and pyroxene (and the seismic waves generated by earthquakes show that this material at the calculated heat you’d get from the radioactive material heating the sub-crustal earth, would have seismic waves pass through it at the exact speed we detect them). Samples of the mantle known as peridotites or dunites are exactly what we expected should modern science be right.
• Tectonics plates have been imaged through the process of seismic tomography, subducting into the mantle. Let me make that simpler: we effectively have photos of plates subducting. It’s happening in the exact locations we expected - trenches at the boundaries of continents and oceanic crust. And in the manner we expect.

…And you think Neal’s explanation is simpler? That none of the evidence in support of plate tectonics is right? It’s all wrong!? He gets so much wrong (and knows so little about what he’s opposing) that anyone with a few undergrad classes in physics, chemistry or even worse, geology, find his assertions beyond ridiculous.

There’s thousands of scientific papers produced every month that would not reach their conclusions or get the measured results they did if PT wasn’t happening. There’s rocks like blueschist that requires high temperature, low pressure metamorphism to occur on oceanic crust basalt like you’d get in a subduction zone. It’s not some wild crazy-scientist’s wild hypothesis Neal is opposing here, it’s well-established, good quality physics, chemistry and geology that needs to be, and has never been, explained, were the Earth expanding as Neal describes it.

Do you really think so?

Well yes, the Indian plate is riding over the top of the Asian plate. The Indian plate is OLD, so there’s bound to be older rocks underneath that get pushed to the surface in places. But as soon as Neal can provide a reasonable explanation for these observation without having to resort to rewriting the laws of physics and ignoring sciences like chemistry and geology, I’ll listen. The article does not suggest plate tectonics is wrong, it suggests there was mountain building in northern India 470 million years prior to the himlayas forming. It’s not surprising, but it is exceptionally interesting. And the evidence they gathered to suggest this require plate tectonics to be active (with a big, cold, cooling ocean) almost half a billion years ago.

Can’t the mountains have been sitting and building and continue to build, for the last 400-500 million years?

Nope. The Deccan traps were produced when the Indian island continent eiher moved over the Réunion hotspot, or was involved in oceanic rifting and the failed formation of a rifting margin (a proto rift valley perhaps) between 60-68 million years ago (read about it here - and note this is one case study using more real-world, peer-reviewed references than Neal has ever read). Whether is was the Réunion model or the tectonic model, India was between 20 and 40 degrees SOUTH of the equator 60 million years ago. This is factual. If you’d like to postulate that India was in it’s current position 400 million years ago, I’d like to hear your case (you’ll have to explain a lot of geochemical evidence - including isotopic dating - it’s a big, complex and fast-moving field of science and one I’m actively involved in). Also, given the article you cited, you’d have to explain how and why mountains formed, stopped forming, eroded away producing enormous amounts of sediment, and then started reforming 470 million years later. Any ideas?

The Himalayas are YOUNG (in a geological sense). Have a read of this article. Isotopic dating, marine and terrestrial fossils, and lithologies preclude the Himalayas from having been formed prior to ~30 million years ago.

Marine fossils found in the Himalayas are of creatures that weren’t around before the extinction of the dinosaurs. So areas of the Himalayas were at sea level AFTER the dinosaurs became extinct. And in sea water, too, so at sea level or less. And we have a good idea of where sea level was going back in time (thanks to oxygen and other isotopes in various sediments, and the geological column in key regions around the world).

Let me put it this way. Neal can make all the pretty videos in the world and tell people the world is expanding until he’s blue in the face. The evidence says he’s wrong. If I were you and I was truly interested in the Earth, I’d do what I did and go to a few geology courses at university. If for nothing else, just to appreciate what a mature and complicated and rapidly developing science it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-EiQgPbp7c&feature=related

http://www.continuitystudios.net/guestvid.html

Not only does he use that same exact map, but you can watch the Australian Plate through the entire video.

Here is a video of (crude) animation showing drift up to 800 million years ago through various supercontinents. Do you really think these plates are flying all around the surface of the Earth?

Compare that to one of Neal’s videos. Smooth and symmetrical all the way through for the entire planet.

Occam’s Razor is crying for attention.

Did you know that some of the oldest rock forming the Himalaya’s is over 400 million years old?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/10/031006071157.htm

To sum up the article, there were mountains before. Those mountains were flattened by some unknown land mass. Those mountains were lifted up again 50-60 million years ago when India collided with Asia.

Do you really think so?

Can’t the mountains have been sitting and building and continue to build, for the last 400-500 million years?

You said; “If you take a look at this map from National Geophysical Data Center:
http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/crustageposter.jpg
The extra Earth that Neal uses to fill in the Pacific can be found on that Map just to the right of Australia.”

- Have another look at Neal’s video:

http://www.continuitystudios.net/clip00.html

You can clearly see that he shows the coastlines of Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica matching up to the coastlines of Asia and the Americas. He is not matching the edge of the Australian plate’s underwater continental shelf with the Asian and American coastlines.

My argument still stands.

Dave

Madagascar broke off over 200 million years ago

No, it broke away from the Indian island-continent about 88 million years ago (where did you get the 200 MYr figure from?). India was breaking away from Gondwana at about 120 million years ago (here’s a picture - notice there’s not that much water separating Antarctica, SA and India). The connection that existed between the components of Gondwana in the form of land bridges and island chains is unknown, and still an active field of research. This toad is another piece of the puzzle giving us a clearer picture of what was happening tens of millions of years ago.

I’ll cap this topic off with the quote from the lead author of the research;

He contends the giant frog provides evidence for competing theories that some bridge still connected the land masses that late in time, perhaps via an Antarctica that was much warmer than today.

Now let’s get into the history of plate tectonics.

Some guys were sitting around and noticed that the continents all appeared to be able to fit together. They called this finished puzzle Pangea. I know that isn’t how it actually happened, but you know what I mean

Wow that’s wrong. You haven’t actually read any of the history of plate tectonics, have you?

The only problem was, they did a 2D puzzle of a 3D world. They never tried to fit the Pacific side of continents together as well, which do fit

- The pacific sides do not fit. THEY DO NOT FIT. Not in 2D and not in 3D. Have you noticed the large gap fillers and twisting of Siberia to fit alongside North America that Neal performed in his video!? Northern Siberia against California (of which there is no evidence)! Go and look at his video again, run it slowly. It doesn’t fit.

I think it was Wegener, but he or someone else published a book based on Pangea and came up with the idea of Continental Drift (see, most theories start out as personal ideas with little to no evidence). When he first introduced his theory, he was mocked. Kind of like how EE guys are mocked today. I know how he must have felt

- You are correct, Wegener did publish a book on his idea. But he never produced any convincing driving mechanism or geological links between the continents. Was it right to mock him? Probably not, but suggesting a process with no evidence to back you up is not science. It was years later when evidence did turn up, that an idea of a driving force (mantle convection) and evidence (sea floor spreading) came about and his idea was reassessed and cited as the genesis of Plate Tectonics. For the record, his idea is still wrong. The continents don’t drift. They appear to, but that’s due to the movement of oceanic and continental plates. Continental drift is NOT Plate Tectonics.

Harry Hess made up (as in make-believe) and proposed Subduction. It gave them an easy out since there is no need to explain expansion which couldn’t (and still can’t, this is key) be explained.

The only difference between the two, is subduction. There is still, to this day, no irrefutable evidence of Subduction actually taking place. Sure, there are places we assume it might be.

- Um, just because you’re too lazy to look into it, in enough depth to understand the MANY lines of DIRECT evidence of subduction, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Let me summarise some direct evidence for subduction;

# Volatile content in lavas (i.e, water) from volcanoes that exist on the flanks of where subduction “supposedly” occurs. What that means in short is the volcanoes near subduction zones are highly explosive, while the volcanoes that are the result of volatile-poor plumes (Hawaii and Iceland) are nowhere near as explosive. The water gets into the lavas from the ocean plates, which are wet when they are subducted. This lowers the melting point of the rock, and thus you get arc volcanism almost everywhere there’s a subduction zone. Look at the pacific ring of fire for a prime example of this.

# The chemistry of volcanoes in subduction zones vary depending on the distance from the subduction zone, due to mantle processing and enrichment of certain elements. For example, Mt Taranaki in New Zealand is enormously rich in potassium when compared to the volcanoes closer to the subduction zone. This is due to the source for Taranaki being deeper and having a magma source enriched in what’s know as large ion lithophile elements - which are reasonably incompatible in crystal formation and therefore preferentially left out of crystals forming around a subducting slab. The deeper the slab goes, the more potassium is left out of crystals, and therefore the more of it there is if melt occurs. Sure enough, the volcanoes distance from a subduction zone is directly proportional to its eruptives concentration of potassium. Read this paper detailing two volcanoes in New Zealand at different distances from their associate subduction zone.

# Earthquake depths get deeper the further from a “supposed” subduction zone you get. Look at this map of South America. The earthquakes get deeper, because they trace where the oceanic plate is subducting. The earthquakes are CAUSED by the plate moving through the mantle (and surprise surprise, all subducting regions are associated with dense earthquake activity).

# You don’t even have to imagine it from a top-down view, or use earthquakes. Here’s a picture of the subducting plates on the west coast of the Americas shown as density differences. It’s generated using a method called seismic tomography. And here’s the associated article. Dense oceanic plate material is blue, hot, less dense mantle is red.

Telling me there’s no evidence what-so-ever for subduction just shows your complete ignorance on the subject. We’ve pretty much taken pictures of subducting slabs. Just because you don’t think it feels right, doesn’t mean it isn’t. Subduction has been proven chemically and physically. If you don’t believe the interpretations of any of this, explain the observations in a model where the earth is expanding. The observations are there for anyone to use. I challenge you to use them to prove EE.

There is more than enough evidence that just about every single faultline in existence, is and has been spreading for the last 20+ million years.

That maps shows spreading ridges, not fault lines. They’re not the same thing. In order to be having this debate, you should damn well know that. And faultlines aren’t all spreading. Faultlines are either strike-slip, normal or reverse - and there’s plenty of each type. And large-scale faulting causes mountains, which are, surprise, surprise, located around areas of high earthquake activity and subduction (like the Himalayas)! As one plate goes down, the other goes up a bit, and there you have mountains.

This is why EE is not taken seriously. This is why subduction is taught in our schools.

Because plate tectonics has evidence backing it up, while an expanding earth does not. Just like creationism has no evidence backing it up, and evolution does. It’s simple. PT is science, EE is not. Get it?

Like I said before, I only care about the truth.

Then science will never prove anything to you, because science doesn’t deal with truth, it deals with fact. And fact is based on evidence proving something beyond reasonable doubt. Like plate tectonics and subduction has been.

Again, you haven’t given any evidence to back EE, you’ve just shown your lack of knowledge of modern geology. You haven’t committed to believing the most reasonable explanation, you’ve committed to not making your mind up because some baseless speculation hasn’t been disproved to your liking.

You said you don’t care one way or another? Then why bother entering into a debate with a geologist? Don’t raise any more objections about PT with me until you actually understand it and put in some time to actually research the topic. If you can’t be bothered doing that, I can’t be bothered dissuading you from Neal’s idiocy.

You are right, my comment was a bit uncalled for. We can discuss things civily regardless of our differences in Theory.

As far as evidence, it is kind of hard to come up with evidence since pretty much everything is tailored to sturdying up subduction.

Anyway, things pop up here or there, but not with much fanfare, just little tidbits here or there. Majority of things become forgotten, since as you say they challenge the establishment.

Take a look at this. Let me know if you ever read about it in any published Journal. As far as I can tell, this came and went since it challenges the standard.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23225938/

Madagascar broke off over 200 million years ago.

Will that ever be further researched? Probably not. It will go away with barely a whimper.

Now, also understand, I have a willingness to be wrong. I don’t care if the Earth is expanding or not, quite frankly. I am only interested in the Truth.

Subduction doesn’t sit right with me.

Here is some history on it, how I have learned it. If anything I say is wrong, please correct me.

Some guys were sitting around and noticed that the continents all appeared to be able to fit together. They called this finished puzzle Pangea. I know that isn’t how it actually happened, but you know what I mean.

The only problem was, they did a 2D puzzle of a 3D world. They never tried to fit the Pacific side of continents together as well, which do fit.

I think it was Wegener, but he or someone else published a book based on Pangea and came up with the idea of Continental Drift (see, most theories start out as personal ideas with little to no evidence). When he first introduced his theory, he was mocked. Kind of like how EE guys are mocked today. I know how he must have felt.

It wasn’t until Atlantic spreading was observed in the 50’s that the idea took off.

At this point, an expanding Earth was not outside of possibilities. It was considered. The only problem was, where was this extra material coming from causing this expansion?

Since they couldn’t figure it out, they tried to come up with alternative theories.

Harry Hess made up (as in make-believe) and proposed Subduction. It gave them an easy out since there is no need to explain expansion which couldn’t (and still can’t, this is key) be explained.

Wikipedia sum’s up Hess’ proposal quite nicely:

Hess’ ideas neatly explained why the Earth does not get bigger with sea floor spreading, why there is so little sediment accumulation on the ocean floor, and why oceanic rocks are much younger than continental rocks.

Continental Drift and Expanding Earth work and appear, hand in hand.

The only difference between the two, is subduction. There is still, to this day, no irrefutable evidence of Subduction actually taking place. Sure, there are places we assume it might be.

Take a look at the NGDC poster I listed earlier. Take a good, hard, long look at it.

There is more than enough evidence that just about every single faultline in existence, is and has been spreading for the last 20+ million years.

One guys idea, subduction, has caused this whole mess. And the only reason it became a popular theory was because no one then, nor today, can explain how the Earth just might be expanding.

So it stuck.

This is why EE is not taken seriously. This is why subduction is taught in our schools.

We don’t know. This is what frightens us. There is nothing in current Physics that can properly explain this. Sure people have ideas, it doesn’t make what they believe true.

And just to be clear, I am not a rebel against any establishment.

I don’t believe in the JFK Conspiracy.

I don’t believe Roswell was a UFO Crash.

I don’t believe in Bigfoot.

I don’t believe people who follow any establishment are sheeple.

Like I said before, I only care about the truth. If the Earth isn’t expanding, so be it. I don’t care. I am more than willing to accept that. If I am wrong, no big deal. I will get over that as soon as what is true presents itself.

- Yet the evidence gathered by the geological sciences thus far supports plate tectonics and not an expanding earth. Is the evidence wrong too, or is everyone just clueless on interpretation? It has to be one or the other in order to twist modern science to support an baseless, anti-intellectual hypothesis like Neal’s.

“Also, by mentioning Scientific Consensus regarding Pangea, I snickered a bit more. It is just a consensus, that doesn’t mean it is the truth. It is just an agreement of the majority.”
- The scientific consensus is an agreement of the majority based on the evidence we currently have at hand. That’s the best anyone can do. What are you after? Absolute certainty? If anyone tells you there’s absolute certainty about anything they’re lying.

“It is just the most popular model right now so that is what is taught. It doesn’t make it right.”
- It’s also supported by the evidence. But far be it from me to actually insist an expanding-earth supporter learn the science they’re disregarding.

Science is a process of evaluation of evidence in order to reach a system model deemed the most statistically likely. If your presumptions are wrong to start with, your evidence will not make sense. If your model is defective, your evidence won’t fit. If your methods are faulty, your answer will contradict the evidence.

Over the past 50 years, plate tectonics has gained support from actual scientists doing actual scientific research. The mountains of evidence in support of plate tectonics rival those in support of evolution. Neal and the expanding earth crowd haven’t submitted original, unique or new evidence to the field in the last 40 years and fail to offer any evidence beyond the old “it looks that way to me”, otherwise known as the logical fallacy of personal incredulity.

Think my statement was pompous? Think my facts are wrong? Good for you. But I don’t see you offering evidence to support an expanding earth beyond the logical fallacy I just just described. All I see is someone who’s obsessed with rebellion against an establishment of any kind, reveling in poorly-constructed complaints.

I’m done with being polite to people like you. Put up some solid evidence for your side of the argument that isn’t based on personal incredulity, or fuck off.

If you take a look at this map from National Geophysical Data Center:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/image/crustageposter.jpg

The extra Earth that Neal uses to fill in the Pacific can be found on that Map just to the right of Australia.

I am not sure why the NGDC doesn’t age that portion on their map, since the majority of that area is under water.

Yorrike:

I just had to snicker at this comment of yours:

What I’ve been detailing is real science, but why should you take the words and explanations of a university educated geologist and geochemist over those of a comic book artist? Well, don’t. Go to the link in the sidebar, follow all of the references, check this out for yourself. That’s science. If you can show conclusively that I’m wrong, by all means tell me.

Aside from the comment being overly pompous in and of itself, if what is currently known is wrong, than what you were taught is wrong no matter how much effort you put into trying to prove it to be right.

That is what is meant by the saying “The Sins of the Father were passed to the Son”. It is believing what one was taught (regardless of accuracy), and that teaching being passed on as truth, regardless if it is or not.

Also, by mentioning Scientific Consensus regarding Pangea, I snickered a bit more. It is just a consensus, that doesn’t mean it is the truth. It is just an agreement of the majority.

It is just the most popular model right now so that is what is taught. It doesn’t make it right.

Specifically, he shows about 8300 miles of coastline (5300 from Australia and 3000 from Antarctica) “matching perfectly” to about 17,000 miles of coastline from Asia and the Americas. Case closed. He’s scaling the continents to fit the theory.

If you want to test this for yourself. Have a look at Neal’s video. Observe which specific points on the coasts of Australia and Antarctica meet with which specific points on the coasts of Asia and the Americas. Then go to Google Earth and use the measuring tool to calculate the length of coastlines that are supposed to match.

Neal is scaling the continents on a sphere that is simultaneously shrinking and spinning, so the scaling is difficult to perceive, but it is definitely happening. The continents DO NOT fit perfectly together as is the claim.

I challenge Neal, or anyone else, to produce an animation on a non-spinning globe, that shows Australia and Antarctica fitting together perfectly with Asia and the Americas WITHOUT scaling the continents to make them fit. Go ahead and shrink the globe but keep the camera centered on the Pacific where we can all see exactly what’s going on.

Doing these measurements put the final nail in the coffin for me, I hope it helps you to do the same.