Kermit wrote:

Please explain what you mean by spin-symmetry. Do you think the Earth
is round because it spins? What other shape would it be?

Oblate?

and expansion are opposite sides of the same
deformational coin.

Please explain in what way expansion is the opposite of spin.

Word games? (Seconds out)

They are an
all-in-one triumvirate: the Earth is not flat, it is round;

Yes. Gravity pulls anything bigger than a small asteroid into a sphere.

the Earth is not the centre of the universe,

Well, it is, but no more than anywhere else.

it spins on its axis and orbits the sun;

Yes. And we have pretty good explanations for it, too.

And do you have a good explanation for how the crust breaks up by
pushing the mantle down? Because it floats on it, maybe?

From http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/unanswered.html

From seismic and other geophysical evidence and laboratory experiments,

My daughter and I were watching the movie "The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen", and we watched a racing convertible, open top. A vampire
lept out of the car and raced up a nearby building. Then Tom Sawyer
jumped out of the car and landed on his feet (the car was going about
40 km/hr). We both looked at each other and said "No way!"

The vampire wasn't a problem, we had suspended our disbelief and
vampires do that sort of thing. But humans don't jump out of a racing
car (no matter how heroically) and land on their feet. It is so counter
to knowledge and experience of inertia that it was conceptually
jarring.

So too are your claims for an expanding Earth.

There. Is. No. Evidence.

The evidence is, ....(now, let me see, ..how shall I put it, so that
you will understand the vantage of your position..) ....that boats do
not break up as a result of setting the sea in motion when they set
sail - an analogue straight from the annals of floatation, density,
subducting slabs and convection, and one more relevant to the
discussion than your vampires, heros and racing cars.

(You can take
this, er, ... 'plate tectonics' a bit too far you know. Gone the
crumpling crust by plate collision might be, ..but you still have the
problem of what sets the subduction in motion, if it is not the
'pushing down' of the mantle by the overriding plate. Get out of that
one.

From seismic and other geophysical evidence and laboratory experiments,

Convection is a fact. 'Mountain belts by
crustal crumpling' is a fact. So is slab-pull/ ridge push. 'Facts'
that there is (in fact) no trouble demolishing.

So... why don't you?

I have. present (perfect).

What's so hard about
demolishing something as 'nonsensical' as Earth expansion from the
geological 'facts'?

We have. And there is no traditional, rational, or scientific reason to
stick with geology while doing so.

You hear that, ..all you geologists? This guy's saying you're
irrelevant.

I say you're irrelevant too because you can't think of a
way to falsify the stupidest, most irrational, bunny-in-a-cloud,
vampire of a theory you're ever likely to come across (next to the
Earth being round and spinning having anything to do with its
deformation), and you're not worth your salt, but he's saying, even if
you did some up with something, you'd still be irrelevant.

We're both
saying you're irrelevant, .. And you're opting for the lower of the
common denominators, and prefer to be on *his* side? ( Corr, ..talk
about being mugs for punishment! )

But from what I've seen, the
geologists have done this. In how many scientific traditions do you
wish to be seen as a loon?

You're quite a clever guy Kermit, ..you should be sliding buttons with
that John Harshman piece-of-knotted-string, who recently awarded
himself an abacus upgrade.

This boils down to a question of evidence. Do we have any evidence for
Earth expansion? What is the theory of earth expansison? IF the earth had
been expanding, what would we expect to see?

A big increase in size from what it used to be.

But your saying doesn't make it so. Please offer *evidence.

The ocean floors. Intruding the crust. It's as simple as that. Unless
of course you posit that there used to be an imaginary one the same
size that has been totally destroyed just before we happened to start
noticing.

A justifiable assumption? Yes? To make the other
assumptions work?

Like the epicycles astronomers used to assume in
order to keep the geocentric universe, in order to avoid thinking the
unthinkable, to make possible the impossible.

In essence it's that simple. But plate tectonics says, "This is
obviously impossible. We accept the bit about continental crust
fitting back together, but therefore it must mean that there existed an
earlier ocean floor which has been completely destroyed

Not completely, but partially.

Which 'part' *has* been destroyed then?

to make way for
the present one. And how has it been destroyed? In a fit of 'reason'
Plate Tectonics says, "The continental crust pushed it down, just
before the one we see came into being".

Not just before - simultaneously. It goes down here as it comes up
there? Easy!

Is that right? Like, "Hey presto !" . Even Stuart there is arguing
for some leeway, some time delay, .. Do you accept that the ridges
increase along their length as well as across them? Come on, ..have a
go at that one.

You have a most peculiar way of phrasing your strawmen - rather like
the creationists' misrepresentation of evolutionary science.

That in a nutshell is the extent of Plate Tectonics' 'reason'.
However it is dressed up, that's it. That's the support for "the
greatest achievement of the latter half of the twentieth century ...
next to space travel" - the continental crust/ lithosphere pushes the
ocean crust/ mantle lithosphere down.

'scuse me while I laugh. I seem to be the only one. How come? Is
this the nonsensical 'reason' that real scientists hold dear?

No; to hear scientific reason one must listen to (or read) actual
scientists, not your strangely mutated misrepresentations.

So what are they saying causes the plate to subduct where it does?

What is the genetic source? The Heat in the melted mantle? The one
that's solid on seismically short timescales?

I think the most reasonable approach for anyone with a desire to show that
the Earth has been expanding would be to tell us where the additional matter
came from. Such amounts of foreign matter somehow ought to be detectable.

The most reasonable approach is to consolidate what we can see at the
surface, ..before delving into concepts of the Earth's interior and
what we cannot see.

And we do not see expansion; neither current, nor past, nor elsewhere.

And we can see into the interior - some. What we see supports
mainstream geology.

And what *do you see? No more/less than the squiggles a pen makes on a
piece of paper as the earth shakes a pendulum. And you call that
"seeing" into the interior? ( And it doesn't *support* mainstream
geology, ..it *defines* mainstream geology. See? Get your hierarchy
of 'evidence' right.)

I'm not asking anyone to falsify a hypothesis or a
theory, I'm asking them what geological features that we can see at the
Earth's surface negate the *observation* that the Earth's crust has
been dilated by the ocean floors, to the extent of doubling its size
(radius). Can the crust be fitted back together for example, ..yes it
can?

Not across the Pacific.

Of course it does. Retrofits on transforms and Western Pacific
back-arc spreading closes the Pacific.

Are there any zones of differential elevation preserved?

What does this mean?

It means: "How are mountains, plateaus, pediments, and platforms
related, ..and how are they preserved through geological time?" How do
you calim invalidity of evidence when you don't even understand what
the evidence is?

Yes
there is. Is the Earth slowing? Yes it is, (etc etc.,)

Tidal friction from the moon (and to a small degree, the Sun).

You forgot the ocean, rubbing along on its bottom. ("subducting slabs
driving convection", ..rubbing the other way, no doubt also have an
effect.)

The question of where mass comes from is certainly one to address, but
after the empirical geological facts have been put in their right
place. In not including structures that describe the symmetry of spin

WTF is this supposed to mean? What would be less symmetrical if the
Earth did not spin?

The structures describing plate tectonics. (And it means TF that
Plate Tectonicists don't even recognise it.) (So you're not the only
one not cognisant of the evidence.)

(or their relationship to the roundness of the planet)

Are you saying that spin makes the planet round?
Yes or no?

No. Are you? ( What is this? Some kind of mental torture?)

Plate Tectonics
omits the first order structural characteristics of the planet.

You would have a hard enough time communicating if you used words like
everyone else did.

I really don't know for the life of me what else I would use. (Though
there's a lot of pictures on my site, which helps...) Hmmm, ..

Not
bad, eh, ..for the "jewel in the crown of the Earth sciences"

Still haven't said anything.

A lot more than you

In short, present the theory of Earth expansion, don't ask for refutation.
It is like ID: It makes no predictions, thus being unfalsifiable.

It makes a lot of predictions actually - particularly about the way
Plate Tectonics will be dumped. Unceremoniously, ..to include spin in
the lexicon of global tectonics. And that the uptake of expansion is
inevitable ("follows axiomatically"). That will be a lot slower, but
talking about it here will make it easier next time it happens around.

Are you being disingenuous, or did you not understand what he was
saying? He wasn't talking about human behavior; he was talking about
geology and physics - if you have an hypothesis, describe it, including
predictions of scientific fact that you would expect us to find. Also,
describe how it could be falsified.

I've described on my site all the geological features that an expanding
Earth (since the Mesozoic) would predict, as well as how they would
differ from the features identified by Plate Tectonics. Each page
description has been posted in sci.geo.geology for comment also, with
not one single reply. I have posted many times asking for comment on
the inanities of Plate Tectonics, with virtually no return comment
there either, other than the perverse inanities that anonymity
encourages.

As far as geological predictions go, we're dealing with geological
time, which makes a lot of 'testing' difficult if not impossible.

Like paleontological time - make predictions on what will be found.
Your ideas, if they were true, would have consequences.

They most certainly would, which is why I'm looking for falsification.
Some are, for example:-
1. Correlation of the bone beds of Antarctica with Alaska and China

2. Revisiting the conundrums of animal migration in respect of
continental movement.

3. (As I said before) Incorporation spin into the dynamics of global
tectonics

4. Closing the back-arc basins of the Western Pacific as detailed on
my site and

5. Closing ('scissoring shut' about the Caribbean Pivot) the Western
seaboard of North and South America, i.e. correlation of the two
terrains.

6 Recognition that mountain belts are simply eroded plateaus and that
'crustal crumpling' (which in virtually every case predates uplift, has
nothing to do with 'colliding plates',

7. Recognising that crustal 'crumpling' (of the table-cloth' sort) and
overthrusts are due to gravitational collapse of these 'plateau
edifices'.

8. Spreading ridges will be recognised as spreading along their length
as well as across them (in part by recognising the stepped offsets of
the terminations of transform faults and in part by the homogeneous
spreading of the upper mantle (e.g. Australia from India, India from
Africa, ..)

9. The lexicon of 'subduction' will be replaced by the lexicon of
'overriding', and the dynamics of 'convection' will be replaced by the
dynamics of spin (oh, did I already say that? Well, there are many
different ways of expressing the same thing, ..but they will all point
in the direction (once these predictions are verified) of:-

6. The Earth is getting bigger.

That's ten easy steps for you. As you say, there are many
consequences. Earth Expansion will press the 'reset' button on
geology.

Evolutionary science predicted that transitional fossils between whales
and terrestrial ancestors would be found, and they were.

One
thing which is predictable, and which is happening already, is that
Plate Tectonics is modifyuing it's position to allow an unspecified
amount of expansion and contraction to accommodate any possible
challenge to its "Getting bigger / smaller is impossible" mantra.

If I thought you were onto something, a statement this dense would
discourage me terribly.

Would it? I'm glad to hear it because it was Stuart Weinstein said so
a few posts back in reply to JT regarding the "Hey Presto"
'simultaneity of ridge growth and subduction'. Not me. Blame him for
your discouragement. But be careful, ..George will back him to the
hilt (so to speak). You could be in BiiiIIg trouble, ..and told to
read a book.