Review of "A Unified Theory of Earth
Expansion,
Pacific Evacuation, and Orogenesis"
An essay in Theophrastus'
Contributions to Advanced Studies in Geology, (pages
61-73). Athens, Greece, January 1996. The present “Reflections and Summary”
were edited slightly in 1999 and 2016. The complete original article can be
found in libraries.
Since I have I have begun publishing the
website <kwluckert.com> in April 1997, I have been noticing that not many
of the detractors have actually taken the time to examine ocean floor data
themselves. Few have seen my "Expansion Tectonics" video program, and
fewer still have found my essay, "A Unified Theory of Earth
Expansion...." Most critics seemed to think that the problem of Earth
expansion can be explained away academically, with a few traditional theories of
physics. Some use chemistry and others place their hopes in mathematical
equations.
To help remedy this state of affairs, back
then, I have added a page that featured the first script for my 1996 video
program. A serious browser could so at least avoid having to guess about what I
might or might not have said about "Expansion Tectonics." To provide
still more background, for dialogue, I also added reflections on the Athens
article. For a time, the Athens publication was used to serve as one of my mile
posts along the way.
The article, "A Unified
Theory...," was actually written in 1994 after the California earth-quake
-- for my personal inventory. I suspected that my theory of Earth expansion,
which had lain dormant since 1979, just could help seismologists take more
meaningful measurements and, possibly, lead to more meaningful predictions of
continental seismic events. Magmatic movements are creeping outward from under
the middle of continental plates -- they are not coming from the ocean side by
way of convection currents or processes of subduction as many are claiming. The
1994 essay was published in Theophrastus'
Contributions…, on January 1996.
While searching for fresh data in support
of Earth expansion, in 1994, I chanced upon the 1988 UNESCO Geological World
Atlas, with its nearly complete evolutionary ocean floor chronology. We owe
this great step forward to an extensive drilling program that included the
Glomar Challenger ship and other such equipment. I then checked out a number of
expansion models that have appeared since my 1979 publication, including one by
Klaus Vogel which Professor Kempp had hailed as the
most likely correct one. At that moment I was still fully prepared to change my
perspective and all my conclusions. But to my own surprise, the conclusion
which I had reached independently in 1979 endured:
The tip of South
America was torn from the bight of Australia and Antarctica. It was evacuated
from the eastern Pacific – these conclusions worked better than any of the
alternatives. None of the others, in my judgement, solved the puzzle of ocean
floor chronology; and all conclusions, henceforth, needed to harmonize with
magnetically registered ocean floor chronology. Evacuating and turning the full
length of the Antarctic Plate out of the eastern Pacific, including its
triangular patch of old ocean floor that now points north into the southwestern
Indian Ocean, seemed like an impossibility at first. But repeated measurements
of post-Paleocene ocean-expansion, between the Ninety-East-Ridge and the Tonga
Islands, and from there to South America and to a point in the South Atlantic
to which South America temporarily had been pushed, did yield an opening large
enough for Antarctica to have twisted through. Not much twisting needed to
occur, anyhow. It was simply that the Pacific and Southern Ocean crust was
breaking open, was spreading and was softened. It was being mended with hot mafic
materials. The evidence to me, in 1994, appeared to be at least thirteen-fold:
1.
At various stages of expansion, and
up to the present, the overall shape of the Pacific (as it appears contoured by
the Rim of Fire) reflects the figure "9" of the continent of
Antarctica.
2.
I noted the south-eastward drift of
older ocean floors, into the softened “wake” of the departing Antarctic plate.
To this observation I like to add the notion of Australia's initial north-eastward
push after it had snapped loose from the tip of South America --“northeastward”
at the other side of the globe.
3.
According to P. Isaacson, a million
cubic kilometers of micaceous sand were deposited during the Devonian Period in
Bolivia, Peru, and northern Argentine, from a continental source where we now
find the deep Pacific Ocean. My source for this information was S. Warren
Carey. Rather ambiguously, Carey has filled the gap in the eastern Pacific with
"Antarctica and Australia." To this day some Earth expansionists, on
their reduced terrella models, have attempted to push
Antarctica eastward across the Indian Ocean, as close as possible toward South
America; Australia was thereby pushed northward to make room for Antarctica.
This might have been a reasonable solution before we had ocean floor
chronology; but as it now stands, Australia would have had to drift from its
assigned northern position across the oldest patch of Jurassic ocean floor
without ever disturbing it. This requires more faith in creation-magic than I
am willing to entertain.
4.
West of Sumatra, along the
Ninety-East-Ridge, there is evidence of longitudinal stretching during the
Paleocene -- and then evidence of a break.
5.
Australia, with the Indonesian
subcontinent in tow, was twisted northeastward upon its viscous magma stem,
during the Eocene, into a lower density area that was left in the wake of the
southward drifting Antarctic Plate. I wrote about such hypothetical magma stems
long before I saw some of them on images generated by global seismic
tomography. With the new evidence in hand I am inclined to modify the words
"Australia was twisted" to "Australia was twisted off.”
6.
The Antarctic Plate, consisting of
Antarctica and an angular patch of Jurassic/Cretaceous ocean floor, were twisted
counter-clockwise, down past the New Zealand/Australian crust. General Earth
expansion and quick softening of the mantle, in the southern hemisphere, appear
to have suctioned the Antarctic Plate southward. (Note: I have modified my description of Antarctica’s mode of twisting and
travel twice -- first for my Urbino Video, and again for my 2016 book and the
present website.)
7.
The tip of the Antarctic Plate, now
extending beyond the Kerguelen and Crozet islands, shows evidence of having
been torn during the Paleocene and the Eocene. This may have happened during
its breakaway from the Gulf of Alaska, and then during its scrape past the
Australian/New Zealand plate. While it is interesting to contemplate, this
point carries now less weight for me than some of the others -- unless it
inspires someone to do comparative geology on these islands and along the coast
of Alaska. That would be exciting and would help clarify.
8.
Approaching from the (south)west,
the Antarctic Plate has dozed into existence the Scotia Ridge, out of the tip
of South America. When later it retreated, it left behind the Sandwich Islands.
In the process it jarred open the south Sandwich Trench. Based primarily on the
logic of ocean floor chronology, I wrote these words in 1994, and I animated
this process in the spring of 1996 for video. Only at the October GSA
convention, in Denver, did I find the US Geological Survey map which vindicates
my interpretation. At the tip of South America, there is an only place on Earth
where a small continental collision (an impact) seems to have taken place -- and
no mountain range was formed as a result of this collision.
9.
The entire angular plate of the
Jurassic/Cretaceous ocean floor -- perhaps I should have been more careful and
also mention "Paleocene" as I initially intended -- which reaches
from Antarctica beyond the Kerguelen and Crozet islands, corresponds precisely
to the patch of young ocean floor which, by my method of globe reduction, has begun
taking shape west of North America during the Cretaceous. This solution
occurred to me while contemplating one of my terrella
models. The Antarctic Plate fits nicely into the Eocene-to-Present eastern
Pacific -- that is, after the expansion factor for this period and the
surroundings is subtracted. Here lies the key to Pacific evacuation. But there
is more.
10. Jurassic remnants that once were joined with the northeastern edge of
the Jurassic Pacific are still trapped between Cretaceous ocean floor and the
continent of Antarctica. This arrangement, I think, is the clincher to my
argument. All three pairs of Jurassic deep ocean floor can thereby be reunited
on a reduced terrella model. All Jurassic patches of
ocean floor fit well into the chronology to where they could have originated in
the various oceans.
11. However, along the back of Antarctica one does find a significant
patch of Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene floor. It cannot have formed there if
my theory is to be valid. Fortunately, its original association with contours
northwest, at the other side of the present spreading rift, is obvious. The
later spreading rift, apparently, has cut away this patch from similar older
floors that now are on the other side.
12. I have explained deep coastal trenches everywhere as tensile features
-- and by this assertion I reject their association with ocean floor
subduction; I reject the process of ocean floor subduction itself, along with
the implied hypothetical convection currents in the mantle.
13. An additional piece of evidence, of which I was aware when I wrote but
which I forgot to mention, is a small patch of detached Paleocene ocean floor
in the Atlantic, east of the West Indies ridge. This is the only irregularity
in the chronological symmetry of the Atlantic. Surrounded on all sides by
Eocene floor, this Paleocene patch clearly has been pinched off during the
Eocene when, as a result of Antarctica's partition from the East Pacific, South
America was pushed eastward for a while. This event also appears to have bent
the West Indies ridge northward.
My "Three Perspectives on Mountain
Formation," in the Athens essay, essentially are those that are given in
the video script. I have never taken the time to check what other expansionists
and makers of terrella models have written on that
subject. The general process of mountain formation, which I have described
within the framework of Expansion Tectonics, seems to me to be common sense. I
would indeed be very surprised if it turned out that I was the first to say
these things.
My primary innovation pertains to
identifying some of the sequences in which the deep oceans were formed. The
process of their formation, evident from ocean floor chronology, does in the
final analysis demonstrate Earth expansion. The main differences between the
expansion sequence that I present, and the solutions presented by others,
appear to have resulted from the fact that these others are still laboring
under the influence of Wegener’s Atlantic-centered Pangaea model. This and
subsequent models were constructed essentially on the basis of continental
contours. Like everyone else, I too have constructed my first terrella model primarily based on continental contours, in
1979. But I did so free of Wegener’s influence. Therefore, even back then my
end result looked different than the conclusions of other expansionists. Today
the new ocean floor chronology supports my 1979 placement of Antarctica and
Australia upon a reduced globe, together with my theory of Pacific Evacuation.