This is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, 8th Edition (2008), by Dr. Walt Brown. It is designed to be read online.
Copyright © 1995–2008, Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
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Evidence Requiring an Explanation
The Ring of Fire. What accounts for this most volcanically violent and seismically active region on earth, and why does it surround all but the southern side of the Pacific basin?
1. 
HP: The ring of fire marks where the Pacific plate sheared as deep runaway melting and contraction began. This happened at the start of the continental drift phase. Months earlier, the rupture fractured that plate’s southern boundary, so it did not experience violent shearing.
2. 
PT: Subducting plates mark most of the ring of fire. [Table 4 on page 161 gives 15 reasons why plates have not subducted.] The southern Pacific is complex.
Gravity Anomalies. The greatest mass deficiencies on earth exist under trenches, even after adjusting for the shape of trenches.
3. HP: As the Atlantic floor rose, material far below it had to rise as well. Material on the opposite side of the earth, below what are now trenches in the western Pacific, was pulled down (toward the rising Atlantic), creating this mass deficiency below trenches.
4. PT: If plates were subducting into the mantle, mass would continually be added and compacted under trenches. Therefore, excess gravity should be measured under trenches. Just the opposite is found.
Core-Mantle Boundary. The density of material just below the core-mantle boundary is almost twice that directly above the boundary. Gravitational settling and the compressibility of magma presumably account for this major discontinuity within the earth, but the heat released by gravitational settling would have melted much of the earth. [See pages 446–449.] How can this be explained?
5. HP: The heat released by gravitational settling was released primarily in the core. Except for flood basalts and earthquakes, the rest of the earth’s surface has been relatively unaffected by this heat. The outer earth was never molten.
6. PT: The early earth was molten for hundreds of millions of years, because it formed by meteoritic bombardment. In that liquid state, gravitational settling occurred within the earth. Over billions of years, the earth cooled. [Some problems with this position are explained at “Molten Earth?” on page 27.]
Flood Basalts. Almost unbelievable amounts of melted basalt rapidly spilled out onto the (solid) earth’s surface, especially in and surrounding the western Pacific. How did this happen, and why was it so rapid?
7. HP: Magma outpourings resulted from the following chain of events:
- the bulging of the chamber floor in what was to become the Mid-Atlantic Ridge,
- the runaway faulting (shearing) and frictional heat production deep in the earth,
- the instantaneous contraction of magma produced below the crossover depth,
- the resulting subsidence of the Pacific plate, and
- the accelerating of hydroplates away from the rapidly rising Atlantic floor and toward the subsiding Pacific.
This explanation answers all the questions raised on page 112 in the “Volcanoes and Lava” discussion. Because these deep faults often intersect the earth’s surface as linear features, we have many linear island chains, but with different orientations.
8. PT: As explained in “Magma Production and Movement” on page 149, below the crossover depth, magma is too dense to rise. Even if a hot plume of magma could slowly rise through the entire mantle, the plume would lose heat to colder, overlying rock. This heat loss would exceed the excess heat in the plume. Calculations show that hot plumes cannot rise from the outer core and produce flood basalts.33 Nor will current processes open cracks in the mantle so a plume can rise. Confining pressures under the crust are simply too great.
An old, now discredited,34 idea used in popularizing plate tectonics was that fixed “hotspots” exist inside the earth. Supposedly, plumes of hot, melted rock continually rise from the earth’s core upward through the mantle. Over millions of years, as a plate somehow slid over a hotspot, the plate melted along a line and produced volcanoes and flood basalts.
The Hawaiian Islands were considered the best example of this.35 Not explained were the long chains of submarine volcanoes that intersected the Hawaiian chain—some at large angles. It is now recognized that if hotspots exist, they must move.36 Other volcanic chains, such as the Bermuda Rise, are almost perpendicular to the claimed movements of their plates.37
If the mantle circulates enough to move a plate, why is a hotspot’s plume in that moving mantle fixed? If a chain of volcanoes means its plate is drifting, does an isolated volcano mean that its plate is not drifting? Faster moving plates should have fewer volcanic cones “burned” through them than slower plates. Just the opposite is the case.38 Also, the chemistry of rocks comprising these “hotspot” chains indicates that the magma originated from the upper mantle, not the lower mantle boundary as claimed by plate tectonics.39 Endnote 33 explains the most compelling objection to the hotspot idea—the absence of a physical mechanism.
Water in the Upper Mantle. What concentrated so much water 500–750 miles below eastern Asia and parts of western North America?
9. 
HP: Rapid melting of the inner earth released large amounts of the sparsely distributed water locked within minerals. That water rose because of its low density. Most spilled into the Pacific basin along with flood basalts, but some water was, and still is, trapped under continental regions bordering the Pacific Ocean.
10. PT: Subducting plates carried ocean water down into the mantle where it was released under eastern Asia and western North America. [Table 4 on page 161 gives 15 reasons why plates have not subducted.]
Seamounts and Tablemounts. Why are 40,000 seamounts (undersea volcanoes) on the floor of the Pacific Ocean? Tablemounts show that either sea level rose by 3,000–6,000 feet or the ocean floor dropped by 3,000–6,000 feet—or some combination of both. How could this have happened?
11. HP: See “The Origin of Tablemounts” on page 155.
12. PT: Seamounts are thought to form when a plume of molten material erupts onto the ocean floor from (a) the earth’s core or (b) a subducting plate. Item 6 above explains the problems with (a). Table 4 on page 161 summarizes 15 problems with (b).
Even if plate tectonics could explain seamounts, why did their elevations change enough to form tablemounts? The leading hypothesis is that as ocean floors age, they cool, shrink, and sink deeper. As volcanic islands sink, wave action flattens them. Those favoring the plate tectonics explanation admit that the heights of tablemounts and their supposed ages are not completely consistent with this hypothesis.40
Stretched Oceanic Ridges. The topography along oceanic ridges is best explained by stretching the ocean floors in two perpendicular directions. How could that happen?
13. HP: As the Atlantic floor and Mid-Oceanic Ridge rose, they stretched in all directions, for the same reason an expanding balloon stretches in all directions.
14. PT: Plate tectonics describes this stretching as seafloor spreading—movement of the ocean floor away from the ridge. However, seafloor spreading would occur in only one direction—perpendicular to the ridge. [See Figure 85 on page 151.]
Plate tectonics proposes three possible means for moving plates: push, pull, or drag. Each has problems.
Push. If material rising from below the ridge is somehow pushing ocean crust away from the ridge, ocean crust would be compressed by the push, not stretched.
Pull. If crust is being pulled away from the ridge, what is the pulling force? Some believe that plates are pulled down under trenches. However, rocks are weak in tension, so they can be pulled very little without breaking. Even if this were not a problem, many evenly spaced cracks (flank rifts) lie parallel to the ridge axis. Once the first crack begins, it should grow and eventually break the plate completely. The plate should be pulled apart and not have parallel, multiple cracks as seen at flank rifts. (Reasons will soon be given why plates cannot subduct.)
Drag.52 If the mantle is circulating below the ocean floor and dragging the underside of the ocean crust away from the ridge, that drag would not stretch the ocean crust. For example, drag acts on a block of wood drifting in a stream. The wood is not stretched.
Consequently, plate tectonic theory can point to no force that will stretch oceanic ridges in even one direction, let alone two.
Scattered Volcanoes. On the western Pacific floor are 40,000 volcanoes taller than 1 kilometer. They lie among trenches, not on only one side of trenches.
15. HP: The rising of the Atlantic floor not only caused the subsidence that formed the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but it also depressed, cracked, and distorted the entire western Pacific. Frictional melting produced large volumes of magma that spilled out on top of the Pacific plate. Some of that magma formed volcanoes.
Geologists refer to a line running down the west central Pacific as the “andesite line.” It has this name because eruptive rocks west of it are primarily andesite, whereas rocks to the east are primarily basalt. Andesite contains minerals such as hornblende and biotite that are present in granite, but not in basalt. These minerals come from the granite plate several miles below the Pacific Ocean. The andesite line “has been viewed as the dividing line between oceanic and continental crusts.”53
16. PT: If subducting plates generate magma that forms volcanoes, then volcanoes should lie on the side of the trench above the descending plate. [See Figure 85 on page 151.] Actually, most volcanoes in the western Pacific lie on the opposite side of trenches. Also, most volcanoes in the western Pacific are interior to a plate—contradicting plate tectonics, which says volcanoes should usually form near plate boundaries.
Continental Material under Ocean Floor. Some granitic, or continental, rock is found under the floors of the western Pacific and southern Indian Oceans.22
17. HP: Basalt, not granite, lies below sediments that continually fall onto the floors of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. However, the basalt recovered by deep-sea drilling is not oceanic crust. Instead, it is basalt that once flowed as a liquid onto the ocean floor,54 just as much of western Siberia is paved with basaltic lava flows. A granite hydroplate, about 10 miles thick, must lie a few miles under the lava flows coating the western Pacific floor. This has not yet been verified, because drilling into the Pacific and Indian Ocean floors seldom exceeds a mile in depth. Current drilling, typically only 0.11 mile deep, penetrates primarily ooze and other sediments that have settled onto the ocean floor in the last several thousand years.55 Nevertheless, some continental material has been discovered, to the surprise of most geologists.22
PREDICTION 6: A 10-mile-thick granite layer (a hydroplate) will be found a few miles under the Pacific floor and inside the ring of fire.
18. PT: The presence of continental material (primarily granite) under the ocean floor, especially near the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, contradicts the plate tectonic theory, which says the ocean floor forms from melted basalt rising at oceanic ridges. No one has been able to demonstrate that granite can form from a melt, even though students are taught that granite is an igneous material—meaning “formed from a melt.”56 [See “Geothermal Heat” on page 112.]
Images of Earth’s Interior. Seismic tomography should be able to show if plates do or do not subduct.
19. HP: Table 4 on page 161 gives 15 reasons why plates have not subducted. Each reason is a strong case against plate tectonics, which requires subduction.
20. PT: Great efforts have been made, using seismic tomography, to discover cold, subducting plates inside the mantle, specifically along Benioff zones. The results are ambiguous. Most studies find little that could be interpreted as a three-dimensional, subducting plate. Sometimes, scientific journals will identify a two-dimensional linear feature beneath a trench, not a three-dimensional plate. However, similar linear features are also found far from trenches, and each linear feature could be a fault.
Fast Seismic Waves. The upper mantle is denser beneath continents than beneath oceans.
21. HP: After the continental-drift phase, the crushed, thickened, buckled, and sediment-laden continents slowly settled into the mantle, compressing the mantle more than normal. Consequently, seismic waves travel faster under continents.
22. PT: Why should seismic waves travel faster under continents if the mantle has been circulating and mixing for hundreds of millions of years? Mantle properties should be fairly uniform.
Fossils in Trenches. Fossils of shallow-water plants are found in trenches. How did they get there?
23. HP: Fossilization requires special conditions. It should be no surprise that the global flood, which fossilized trillions of animals worldwide, did so in places that later became ocean trenches. Rapid burial, necessary to form and preserve fossils, was quickly followed by the subsidence of the Pacific plate and the downward buckling of trenches.
PREDICTION 7: Fossils of land animals, not just shallow-water plant fossils, will be found in and near trenches.
24. PT: Because plants float and quickly disintegrate, they should not be buried and preserved in one of the deepest parts of the Pacific Ocean.
Earthquake Driving Force. Most earthquake energy is released under trenches, often along sloping planes called Benioff zones. However, some earthquakes occur far below the centers of plates, and some small earthquakes in the Pacific tend to occur at low tide.9
25. HP: The entire mantle is being compressed and laterally displaced, generally toward the Pacific. [See “Magma Production and Movement” on page 149. This is why earthquakes sometimes occur far below plate interiors—at such large depths and pressures that cracks should not open up. This mantle flow is naturally greatest at low tides and under the Pacific. This is why earthquakes on the Pacific floor tend to occur at low tides.
26. PT: Viscous drag acting on the bottom of a plate would apply only a constant force, just as a river’s current applies a constant force on an anchored boat. However, whatever force drives earthquakes must increase with time, because we measure nearby rock stretching weeks and months before an earthquake, much as a rubber band stretches before it snaps. Obviously, that force is not restricted to plate boundaries as plate tectonics claims, because powerful earthquakes sometimes occur hundreds of miles below the center of plates. Clearly, material sometimes moves far beneath plate interiors.
Is mantle material circulating or shifting? If it is circulating, as the plate tectonic theory claims, some energy source must drive the circulation. Adding energy, such as heat, to the mantle would not make the earth more compact or rounder, as happens during all large earthquakes. [See Endnotes 7 and 28.] Besides, billions of years of movement should make the earth about as compact as it could become.
However, shifting, driven by gravity, would make the earth increasingly more compact and round. If the earth’s mass became unbalanced during a global flood about 5,000 years ago—relatively recently—shifts might still be occurring. Indeed, the global positioning system (involving at least 24 earth-orbiting satellites that can measure crustal movements with centimeter precision) shows that, at least in Asia, and perhaps most other places on earth, gravity drives crustal movements generally toward the Pacific.57 [See Figure 86.]
Figure 86: Global Shifts. Each arrow shows the average direction and speed of several years’ worth of shifting at one of about 150 locations worldwide. All measurements were made using the Global Positioning System (GPS), the most accurate of several methods for measuring these movements.
Notice that the arrows point in different directions, although most are toward the Pacific. This shows that material deep in the earth shifts in various directions, but generally toward the Pacific. If the entire mantle were circulating, greater uniformity would be seen in speed and direction. The plate tectonic theory considers the plates, outlined in blue, as rigid, but the variations in the measured movements show that the plates are not rigid.58 For the plates to be moving, pressure differences must exist. Either the pressure around the Pacific is greater than normal or the pressure under the Pacific is less than normal—or both. The hydroplate theory explains why both are true.
Tension Failures. Earthquakes near trenches are primarily due to horizontal tension perpendicular to the trench axis.8
27. HP: Trenches are formed by long, deep faults, not by subduction. Millions of other faults exist, especially on and under the Pacific floor. Movement and friction have melted rock along those faults, lining them with magma. Magma draining into the outer core expands the outer core slightly which, in turn, stretches the fractured mantle horizontally. This sometimes produces tension failures—earthquakes—perpendicular to a trench axis.
28. PT: If plates converge, so that one plate is forced under the other, earthquakes near trenches should be compression failures.
Wide Earthquakes. Some earthquakes beneath trenches rupture very broad regions.
29. HP: Mantle material has shifted over a very broad area, especially in the western Pacific, so some earthquakes should rupture broad regions.
30. PT: Some earthquakes beneath trenches rupture regions much broader than the thickness of any hypothetical subducting plate. Therefore, earthquakes do not seem to be caused by breaks inside subducting plates or by slippage along their surfaces.59
Reasonable Driving Mechanism. Forces should exist to form trenches.
31. HP: After the flood phase, extremely large, unbalanced forces quickly lifted the lightly-loaded portion of the chamber floor that then became the Atlantic floor. Once movement began, frictional heating and gravitational settling produced magma, which then contracted far below the Pacific plate. Subsidence, faulting, and horizontal compression, especially in the western Pacific, formed trenches. All movements and forces were driven by gravity.
Figure 87: Pressure Differences. Only huge pressure differences cause thick, viscous material to flow. Toothpaste, squeezed from a tube, flows out the opening at a velocity that depends not on how great the pressure is, but on the difference between the pressure at the squeeze point and the pressure at the opening. Therefore, squeezing toothpaste inside the sunken Titanic, where pressures are high, or on the Moon, where pressures are low, would be no harder or easier than at your bathroom sink. Because rock is so stiff, or viscous, it flows only under extreme pressure differences, such as existed under the floor of the widening Atlantic. Tiny pressure differences, claimed by plate tectonics, can do little to overcome the strength of crystalline rock, even over billions of years.
32. PT: In a liquid, small forces can produce small movements, which conceivably could become large movements if billions of years were available. [However, large, unbalanced forces are needed for crystalline rock to “flow” at the rate observed. Plate tectonic theory does not explain such forces. Researchers who believe that the mantle circulates like to think of the solid mantle as a liquid. That assumption simplifies their mathematics and removes the need for large unbalanced forces, if millions of years are available.]
Just because heat circulates water simmering in a pan, we cannot presume that heat circulates deep rock. The analogy breaks down, because temperature variations on the water’s surface change its surface tension. This is the dominant force that circulates the water in the pan.60 Rocks do not have a corresponding force. Also, rock’s viscosity61 is 23 orders of magnitude greater than that of water! Therefore, it is doubtful that heat irregularities deep in the mantle could be large enough to circulate the mantle at the required velocities.
If the mantle circulates, adjacent cells must circulate in opposite directions, just as two simple interlocking gears must rotate in opposite directions. Cells circulating in opposite directions under a large plate would tend to cancel each other’s tendency to move the plate, so a large plate would retard mantle circulation. (Worse yet, subducting plates would obstruct mantle circulation.)
Could one circulating cell be under each plate? A large plate, such as the Pacific plate, would need to have a much larger cell width than a plate one-thousandth as large. However, the circulating (or convection) cells we see, such as within the atmosphere or a pan of simmering water, have height-to-width ratios of nearly 1:1, not 1:10 or 100:1, as plate tectonics requires.
Tectonic plates, as hypothesized, vary in thickness. For example, a plate might be 60 miles thick under mountains but only 30 miles thick under oceans. Therefore, dragging a plate with a mountain “on board” would encounter great resistance. If we tried to slide one heavy washboard (or corrugated board) over another, their parallel ridges would interlock and resist movement. Also, if one plate stopped, the resulting “log jam” would stop all plates.
Displaced Material. Large volumes of rock must have been removed to form trenches. Where did it go?
33. HP: The rock removed to form trenches shifted toward the rising Atlantic floor. Also, rock that melts below the crossover depth contracts.
34. PT: Geophysicists have often asked, “Where did that material go?” Plate tectonics has given no answer. A subducting plate, or anything pushed into the mantle, would add, not remove, material under a trench.
Frictional Resistance. To form trenches and move so much rock, great frictional resistance must be overcome.
35. HP: A block placed on an inclined plane will slide downhill if the gravity-related force exceeds the frictional resistance. Likewise, a big pit will be filled in if gravity forces can overcome the frictional resistance and strength of the walls and floor. The deeper and wider the pit, the greater the forces its walls and floor must resist. As with the sliding block, once movement begins, friction decreases, so movement speeds up. Also, the increasing momentum acts to maintain movement. If rock deep inside the earth breaks and slides ever so slightly, friction will melt the sliding surfaces. The magma produced then acts as a lubricant, speeding movement even more.
During the early days of the flood, the upward-jetting water removed the rubble from the rupture’s crumbling, unsupportable walls, so the pit continually widened. Eventually, the floor was so wide it buckled upward, pushed the hydroplates aside, and widened the big pit even more. With less and less weight on the widening floor, it had to rise, and a corresponding depression had to occur over a broader, but shallower, region on the opposite side of the earth. Today, gravity continually tries to squeeze the earth back toward a spherical shape.
36. PT: See the technical note on page 438.
Arcs and Cusps. Some trenches, such as the New Hebrides/South Hebrides Trenches, are “U-shaped” when seen from above or on a map. Other trenches have arcs and cusps. [See Figure 80 on page 145.] What caused those shapes?
37. HP: Visualize a growing partial vacuum inside a sealed metal can, as described on page 150. Its walls will buckle inward in a variety of curved shapes. Likewise, the floor of the western Pacific, as it was “sucked” down toward the rising Atlantic, buckled downward in many curved shapes, as seen from above or on a map. When a hard, spherical shell (such as the earth’s crust or even a ping-pong ball) buckles inward, the deformation pattern is often one of arcs and cusps.
Figure 88: Deforming a Sphere Inward. When the hard, outer shell of a ping-pong ball is depressed on one side, it usually deforms in an arc-and-cusp pattern. Materials always deform in a way that minimizes the energy required.
The earth’s crust is also a hard spherical shell, so it too will deform in an arc-and-cusp pattern if the crust is pulled down. Because many trenches under the western Pacific Ocean have arc-and-cusp shapes, they probably formed by subsidence of the western Pacific floor, not by subduction.
Just as the maximum depression on a ping-pong ball is deeper than the depression at any of its cusps (Figure 88), so the western Pacific was initially deeper than the trench cusps. As the continents sank into the mantle in the centuries after the flood, the western Pacific floor has risen.
38. PT: All portions of a plate cannot slide toward (or away from) the center of an arc without shrinking (or stretching) the width of the plate. If plates could subduct, they could do so only along a straight line.
Concentrated Trenches. What concentrated so many trenches in the western Pacific?
39. HP: The continental-drift phase began when the subterranean floor became unstable and rose in what is now the Atlantic. This immediately lessened the tendency for the subterranean floor to become unstable and rise elsewhere. A corresponding depression had to occur on the opposite side of the earth, especially in the western Pacific.
40. PT: There is no reason plates should prefer to subduct in the western Pacific. Oceanic ridges exist in all oceans, so trenches should be equally dispersed. If rock rises at ridges and subducts at trenches, why is the total ridge length (about 46,000 miles) so much longer than the total trench length (about 15,000 miles)?
Undistorted Layers in Trenches. Sedimentary layers in trenches are usually horizontal and undistorted.
41. HP: Since the flood, the sediments in trenches have settled onto a relatively stationary ocean floor.
42. PT: If subduction occurs at trenches, the overriding plate should scrape off the layered sediments, volcanic cones, and oceanic plateaus riding on the subducting plate. Seismic reflection profiles show that trenches contain horizontal, undistorted layers with no sign of subduction. Nor are scraped-off volcanic cones collecting in trenches. As H. W. Menard stated,
... it would seem that the sediment sliding into the bottom of the trench should be folded into pronounced ridges and valleys. Yet virtually undeformed sediments have been mapped in trenches by David William Scholl and his colleagues at the U.S. Naval Electronics Laboratory Center. Furthermore, the enormous quantity of deep-ocean sediment that has presumably been swept up to the margins of trenches cannot be detected on sub-bottom profiling records.62
Other authorities have made similar observations.63
Initiation. How does a trench start to form?
43. HP: Trenches began to form as the Atlantic floor rose at the beginning of the rapid continental-drift phase. The western Pacific floor then subsided, producing horizontal compression, downward buckling, shearing (faulting), and trenches.
44. PT: For subduction to begin, the earth’s crust must first break—a herculean task for which experts on plate tectonics admit they have no “sound quantitative” explanation.
The initiation of subduction remains one of the unresolved challenges of plate tectonics.64
Next, for a broken plate to subduct, its edge, up to thousands of miles long, must be depressed at least 30 miles, the minimum thickness of these hypothetical plates. Nothing even approaching that large a topographic discontinuity has ever been seen anywhere on earth. Figure 89 explains why this could never happen.
Figure 89: Subducting Plate. Pressure inside the earth increases with depth. So, if one tried to depress a plate 30 miles or more below another plate, tremendous upward pressure from below would quickly prevent that much depression. Consequently, subduction—necessary for plate tectonics—could not begin, even if the plate were colder and, therefore, denser.
From this figure, can you see why no continental cliff can be more than 5 miles high? (No cliff under water could be more than 8 miles high.)65
“Fossil” (Ancient) Trenches. If trenches have been on earth for hundreds of millions of years, many trenches should now be buried. Some should even have been lifted above sea level. Such ancient trenches have never been found.
45. HP: Because the flood was a single, recent event, one should not expect to find ancient trenches.
46. PT: As Fisher and Revelle noted:
Where are the trenches of yesteryear? Are we living in an exceptional geologic era; are the apparently young trenches of the present day unusual formations that have had no counterparts during most of geologic time? Such a speculation would be repugnant to many geologists, because it would be difficult to reconcile with the doctrine that the present is the key to the past. We must continue to search for ancient trenches—on the deep-sea floor, in the marginal shallow water areas and on the continents themselves.66
Other. The following details pertain primarily to one theory or the other.
47. HP: Earth’s extremely large magnetic field formed as a direct consequence of the events that produced the ocean trenches. [See “The Origin of Earth’s Powerful Magnetic Field” on page 151.] This also explains why the crystals in the inner core are oriented in a preferred direction—toward the magnetic poles.26
The plate tectonic theory does not address the origin of the earth’s magnetic field, although for decades schools have taught that it is generated by a geodynamo operating in the earth’s outer core. Most experts will admit that the geodynamo theory has many problems.
48. HP: Chekunov et al. described experiments involving fracturing in small-scale models and discussed temperature and strength variations in the crust and upper mantle. Based on these considerations, they concluded that trenches and Benioff zones imply subsidence rather than subduction.67
49. PT: Ridges and trenches do not always correspond to each other, as they should if plates form at ridges and move toward and disappear under trenches.
50. PT: If, as plate tectonics maintains, material is rising from the mantle at ridges and diving into the mantle at trenches, a contradiction occurs where a ridge and trench intersect.68 This happens at three locations in the eastern Pacific: 50.5°N latitude and 130°W longitude, 20.5°N latitude and 107°W longitude, and 46.3°S latitude and 75.7°W longitude. The same—or even closely spaced—mantle material cannot be going both up and down at the same time.
51. PT: A linear pattern of deep earthquakes that intersects a trench defines a Benioff zone. Most Benioff zones are steeply inclined, but one under a long portion of the west coast of South America is nearly horizontal.69 If these earthquakes occur along the surface of a subducting plate, no portion of the Benioff zone should be nearly horizontal, because the plate is supposedly diving through the mantle. However, consistent with the hydroplate theory, these earthquakes could identify a nearly horizontal fault.
52. PT: Continents, being thick, buoyant, and strong, should prevent subduction. As Molnar stated:
... the buoyancy of thick continental crust keeps it afloat. If continental lithosphere were strong enough to maintain its integrity at a subduction zone, the buoyant continental crust would not only resist being subducted, but the subducting plate would abruptly grind to a halt when the continental “passenger” reached the trench.70