Plate Techtonics!

[Nyril]

Several years ago (more then one, less then ten thousand) the idea that the Earth was not the center of the Universe was high in the ranks of things we argued about. Neatly behind that would be the age of the Universe, age of the Earth, the Earth goes around the sun, Earth is flat, etc. In time, a number of these ideas were accepted by pretty much everyone. By that I mean that I doubt even YEC will argue the point that the Earth is the center of the Universe and in addition to being flat also has the sun and everything else revolve around it.

On that line of thinking, I'd like to ask what you think of plate tectonics in that regard. It isn't brought up much on these boards, but because it neatly explains how we get fossils and strata on opposite sides of the Ocean all neatly lined up (such as the shore between Africa and South America), I imagine there must be some controversy surrounding it.

So, plate tectonics, is it like the Earth being round, or closer to evolution in terms of the amount of public debate surrounding it?

[YEC]

You seem to have forgotten about Hydroplates..

But first, what is a hydroplate? Before the global flood, considerable water was under earth’s crust. Pressure increases in this subterranean water ruptured that crust, breaking it into plates. The escaping water flooded the earth. Because hydro means water, those plates will be called hydroplates.

to read more...
Click here.

[YEC]

The same site mentioned above ask the following question:
According to plate tectonics, plates move parallel to fracture zones. But fracture zones are not always parallel. Sometimes they are many degrees “out of parallel.” Several fracture zones practically intersect! How then can solid plates be bounded by and move in the direction of these fracture zones?

There's more questions that seem to upset the evo-minded uniformatarians..go check them out.

[YEC]

The site even has this following picture that makes you go...hmmmmm


Figure 47: Buckled Mountains. Textbooks and museums frequently refer to some uplifting force that formed mountains. Can you see that an uplifting force, by itself, could not cause this pattern? Horizontal compression was needed to buckle these sedimentary layers near the Sullivan River in southern British Columbia, Canada. The layers had to have been soft, like wet sand, at the time of compression.  Today, surface rocks are brittle.

[Nyril]

Before the global flood, considerable water was under earth’s crust. Pressure increases in this subterranean water ruptured that crust, breaking it into plates.

Lets just stop this right here. There's a number of problems with that hypothesis. That site I linked addresses your site specifically (it links to it) so there's not a chance it's talking about something else.

The rock that makes up the earth's crust does not float. The water would have been forced to the surface long before Noah's time, or before Adam's time for that matter.

Even a mile deep, the earth is boiling hot, and thus the reservoir of water would be superheated. Further heat would be added by the energy of the water falling from above the atmosphere. As with the vapor canopy model, Noah would have been poached.

The escaping waters would have eroded the sides of the fissures, producing poorly sorted basaltic erosional deposits. These would be concentrated mainly near the fissures, but some would be shot thousands of miles along with the water. Such deposits would be quite noticeable but have never been seen.

Address these before you move on with the hydroplate idea.

According to plate tectonics, plates move parallel to fracture zones. But fracture zones are not always parallel. Sometimes they are many degrees “out of parallel.” Several fracture zones practically intersect! How then can solid plates be bounded by and move in the direction of these fracture zones?

I don't actually understand what you've posted here. Do you mean to say that because every fracture zone is not a perfect straight line plate tectonics is wrong?

Can you see that an uplifting force, by itself, could not cause this pattern? Horizontal compression was needed to buckle these sedimentary layers near the Sullivan River in southern British Columbia, Canada.

Very good. Horizontal compression happens when two or more plates collide, wheres the problem that plate tectonics can't explain?

The layers had to have been soft, like wet sand, at the time of compression. Today, surface rocks are brittle.

Like wet sand? Think again, if the layers were that soft they wouldn't of folded, they would of been mixed nicely by a slightly amount of water. Regardless, simply because the rock is at the surface now, doesn't mean it always was (was that an assumption you made that you're always harassing us for?), under greater temperatures and pressure you can bend rock like superman bending an iron rod.

[YEC]

nyril:Like wet sand? Think again, if the layers were that soft they wouldn't of folded, they would of been mixed nicely by a slightly amount of water. Regardless, simply because the rock is at the surface now, doesn't mean it always was (was that an assumption you made that you're always harassing us for?), under greater temperatures and pressure you can bend rock like superman bending an iron rod.

Do you have any scientific reference to back up your assertion you made above or was it typed in in some sort of ad-hoc moment for you?

Now nyril, you do know that the strata would have gone through an increasing stage of hardness as it hardened...it wasn't like it was some soupy mess when it was folded. (did you ever watch a cement sidewalk dry?)
But you're right nyril, a soupy mess will not fold and leave results as pictured above..NOR will hard brittle rocks. Now that's the

[MagusYanam]

Alright. Nyril does have a valid point. Under high pressures and temperatures and stress, rocks bend and fold quite easily. (Actually, rock has been known to bend and fold over a long stretch of time under one bar of pressure and normal surface temperature - a phenomenon known to people in the field as 'creep' - but we won't go into that.) As shown, this rock formation could have been formed at depth. Just because they're surface rocks now doesn't mean they were always so.

According to plate tectonics, plates move parallel to fracture zones. But fracture zones are not always parallel. Sometimes they are many degrees “out of parallel.” Several fracture zones practically intersect! How then can solid plates be bounded by and move in the direction of these fracture zones?

Go ahead and don't bother reading the last few posts. It's only been said over and over that plates don't always move parallel to each other! There are four types of interactions between plates. They can move apart (Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Surtsey), they can move together (India / Eurasia, Himalaya), one can be forced beneath another (Nazca / South America, Andes) or they can move parallel to each other (San Andreas, California). Given the variety of activity inherent in the tectonic model, fault lines needn't always be parallel (in fact, they seldom are).

the strata would have gone through an increasing stage of hardness as it hardened...it wasn't like it was some soupy mess when it was folded.

One question. Was there anything other than sedimentary rock in these strata? If not, you can throw this argument straight out the window. If this was metamorphic or igneous in origin, the likelihood that the strata were folded at depth under extreme conditions becomes almost 100%.

Also, the entire idea of wet sand hardening into rock over such a short period of time is preposterous. Given the time frame you're thinking of, you wouldn't really end up with rock at all - you would end up with something like brick or adobe at best, just sand at worst. The process of creating sedimentary rock requires deposition and precipitation of cementing material, the latter of which takes more than just a few thousand years. If the wet sand just dried, there would be some cohesion, but it would just wash away the next time it rained (have you ever seen what happens to an adobe house after a rainstorm?)

[Jose]

You seem to have forgotten about Hydroplates..

But first, what is a hydroplate? Before the global flood, considerable water was under earth’s crust. Pressure increases in this subterranean water ruptured that crust, breaking it into plates. The escaping water flooded the earth. Because hydro means water, those plates will be called hydroplates.

to read more...

...go to the thread here that discusses the hydroplate hypothesis (see also otseng's post here and the pages preceeding and following it). Since we already have a thread on this topic, there's no reason to discuss it separately here.

Having said this, I presume that we will discuss it again here, because the other thread asks about the data to support the hydroplate idea. While I have no problem sitting around and thinking up explanations, there comes a time when we need to ask whether those explanations are sound. The Hydroplate Hypothesis is one such explanation. If true, then the predictions that it makes should be met. Are they? Go here to present the evidence.

However, if you believe, as does Kurt Wise of William Jennings Bryan Memorial University, that "scripture trumps interpretations of physical data,"* then say so.

*Smithsonian April 2005 p59

[Jose]

Figure 47: Buckled Mountains. Textbooks and museums frequently refer to some uplifting force that formed mountains. Can you see that an uplifting force, by itself, could not cause this pattern? Horizontal compression was needed to buckle these sedimentary layers near the Sullivan River in southern British Columbia, Canada. The layers had to have been soft, like wet sand, at the time of compression. Today, surface rocks are brittle.

Alright. Nyril does have a valid point. Under high pressures and temperatures and stress, rocks bend and fold quite easily. (Actually, rock has been known to bend and fold over a long stretch of time under one bar of pressure and normal surface temperature - a phenomenon known to people in the field as 'creep' - but we won't go into that.) As shown, this rock formation could have been formed at depth. Just because they're surface rocks now doesn't mean they were always so.

This looks to me like a difference of opinion concerning the evidence. Magus says "rock has been known to bend" and YEC says "layers had to have been soft, like wet sand." It would be very interesting to explore this difference of opinion, because it might get us somewhere.

That is, we all agree that there are lots of exposures that show bent strata. The question is how they came to be bent. Was it slow, continuous pressure that deformed them, much the way gravity deforms glass over many decades, or was it a quick event that occurred when the stuff was still gooey?

Two questions: Magus, Nyril, and John--what evidence can you offer to show that rocks can bend? YEC--what evidence can you offer to show that rocks can never bend, even at high pressure and temperature?

At this point, we have Magus et al presenting the scientific understanding, and YEC saying such a thing simply isn't possible. I think that YEC's view is based upon common sense, and upon processes that humans are able to perceive personally, while the other view is based upon additional information. Am I wrong in this? What additional information is there, for either view?

[John S]

I'm not sure what you mean by a "single area". I presented pictures from 3 different areas. And by no means are the pictures unique. Such illustrations of parallel stratas are abundant.

I apologize, but I've only got the time for a few quick comments. I'll be going out of town and I won't be back until Friday (April 1). So this'll most likely be my last post until then.

Each of the pictures you showed represents rocks from a single geographic area and show rocks that only represent a small portion of Earth's history (the last image you showed is of a single formation). You need to be really careful about making generalizations about the rock record - As an example it wouldn't be appropriate to show a picture of the Rockies, the Alps, and the Himalayas and use those pictures as evidence that Earth is mostly mountains.

Jose also makes a lot of valid points, I can’t really add much to them.

The pictures you presented are pictures of the surface, not a cross-sectional picture. So, they do not quite address my argument. Some better pictures that would address my argument are cross-sectional pictures that show faults/folds between stratas.

The point you appear to be making is that the presence of undeformed sedimentary rocks indicates that plate motions couldn’t have occurred (is this correct?). You’re implying (perhaps not intentionally) that if the conventional view of plate tectonics is correct, then all sedimentary rocks, everywhere, and of all ages, should be deformed. My point is that’s an unrealistic expectation. You don't need a cross section of these pictures for me to make my point. What’s shown in both of those pictures are intensely deformed sedimentary rocks in the eastern US – the deformation is of such a large scale that it’s visible from space. Why are these sedimentary rocks deformed while rocks of the same age in the middle of North America aren’t? It’s because the rocks in the Appalachians were caught up in a collision between two plates, the undeformed rocks weren’t. Using the Himalayas as an example again – the presence of undeformed sediments in the Atlantic Ocean (just to pick an ocean) aren’t evidence that India and Asia aren’t colliding. The undeformed sediments you showed aren’t evidence against plate motion – all they indicate is that plates didn’t collide in those areas during or after the deposition of those sediments.

Some more questions about plate tectonics. When the plates move, where exactly is it moving? Where are the lines of demarcation of the plates?

Fun topic, but I’m going to delay it until I get back if you don’t mind.

I wanted to point out that in the thread "Questions for Uniformitarianists" I've mentioned many different mountain building events (orogenies) that occurred at different times in geologic history in different geographic areas. Those orogonies were caused by the plate collisions.

(From the Q's for U's thread)

I mentioned several different orogenies (mountain building events). I’ll use two of them, the Late Precambrian Grenville orogeny and the Early Paleozoic Antler orogeny as examples.

Again, what would be illustrative are the cross sectional analysis of mountains.

Here is another illustration of the Swiss Alps to demonstrate that gradual compression cannot have occurred while all the layers were being deposited. But, the compression event must've happened after all the sedimentary layers were formed.

Why does it matter if the Alps were formed after these rocks were deposited? Why does that help your case? The rocks that are involved in a collision will be deformed – do you think that conventional plate tectonics indicates that the rocks in the Alps shouldn’t be deformed? I don’t think I’m grasping the point you’re trying to make. If you were to take a series of sedimentary rocks today and compress it (as is happening in many places in the world), those layers would be folded – why would that be evidence that those mountains weren’t formed by compression?

[John S]

Two questions: Magus, Nyril, and John--what evidence can you offer to show that rocks can bend? YEC--what evidence can you offer to show that rocks can never bend, even at high pressure and temperature?

YEC and I had a discussion (of sorts) about this in the "Questions for uniformitarisnists" thread. I'll summarize the points that I made (that were never acknowledged let alone addressed).


The observation that there are acitve folds is pretty strong evidence that rocks can fold.

Piece of evidence (evodense?) #1:

From a post I made on Mar. 18:

Before you try to discount strain rate, you ought to know that there are many active folds in fold and thrust belts around the world. As an example, a M 6.7 earthquake in 1983 and a M 5.5 earthquake in 1985 occurred along a blind thrust fault in central California. The Cenozoic fault, which involves Quaternary through Cretaceous formations, is overlain by a fault-bend anticline. There’s additional evidence that the fold didn’t form in soft sediments. While this folding was occurring, quaternary conglomerates were being deposited. This indicates the rocks those conglomerates were being derived from (which include some of the same Tertiary formations as in the fold) were fully lithified.

Reference:
Namson, J. S., and Davis, T. L., Seismically active fold and thrust belt in the San Joaquin Valley, central California. 1988. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 100, 257-273.

There are many other active folds in California, and there are more in places like Taiwan and China (near the Himalayas). There are many studies that use geodesy (mainly GPS) to measure the rates of deformation in these areas. To use another example from California:

Shortening and thickening of metropolitan Los Angeles measured and inferred by using geodesy. By Donald F. Argus, Michael B. Heflin, Andrea Donnellan, Frank H.Webb, Danan Dong, Kenneth J. Hurst, David C. Jefferson, Gregory A. Lyzenga, Michael M.Watkins, James F. Zumberge, published in 1999 in Geology, v. 27, 703-706.

Piece of evidence #2:

I made this point several times, here's one of them from Feb. 10:

Here's my favorite piece of evidence that folded rocks weren't soft:

Those folds occur in mountains, and while the mountains were being formed (and therefore while the folds were being formed) clasts of rock (like river cobbles) were being eroded from them.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/lewis/#strength

This is a clear indication that the folded rocks were hard. How are you going to erode river cobbles from layers of loose mud and sand?

The conglomerates shown in that picture were formed during the same mountain building event that's shown in YEC's photo (The Sevier Orogeny). There are also synorogenic conglomerates in that part of the world.

I've also mentioned the Canadian Rockies before. This is important because the idea that the folds shown in YECs photo formed at the surface is wrong.

From a post of March 18:

From the Canadian Rockies:

Cook, D. G. , 1973. Structural Style influenced by lithofacies, Rocky Mountain Main Ranges, Alberta-British Columbia. Geological Survey of Canada Bulletin 233, 73p.

One of the folds described there occurs near a place called Ogre Peak in Cambrian rocks. The fold there is 1000+ ft tall. They describe other folds that have amplitudes up to 4,500 ft. The thrust sheets, of which these folds are a part, are 10,000 + ft (~ 3 km) thick. That’s the minimum burial depth.

You can form folds in shallower rocks (take a look at the references I provided about active folds), and you can form some pretty tight folds like chevron folds (shown in several of the pictures in the website you linked to) if you fold a thinly-bedded rock (like the shale-sand sequences mentioned in that same website).

However, as I said at the beginning of this post, most of this discussion is irrelevant since regardless of the depth at which folds form there is evidence that the rocks involved were lithified.

I want to add a little more - YEC's unsupported assertation that conventional geologists attribute the formation of the Canadian Rockies (or any other mountain belt) to purely vertical uplift is wrong (although to be fair this idea was common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries). There are a lot of thrust faults in the Canadian Rockies that have moved horizontally by 10s of kilometers (they also have vertical components of motion, but that's not as important for this discussion). One of these is the much-maligned Lewis thrust that Young Earth Creationists usually just deny exists. I find it odd that YECs mistakenly say geologists attribute mountain building to purely vertical motion, while on the other hand they dismiss evidence of large horizontal motion that geologists have recognized for a very long time (the large thrusts in the Canadian Rockies were recognized in the 1880s).