1

. Four trenches lie beyond this area shown in Figure 79: the Peru-Chile Trench, the Middle America Trench, the South Sandwich Trench, and the Puerto Rico Trench. (The latter may simply be a submarine canyon.)

Why are a few trenches not in the concentrated trench region in the western Pacific? After studying this entire chapter, especially “Magma Production and Movement” on page 147, you will see that major faulting (shearing) deep inside the earth would not always have been under the western Pacific. On rare occasions it would have occurred elsewhere, such as along continent-plate boundaries where the Peru-Chile Trench and the Middle America Trench are today.

2

. “It is perhaps especially remarkable that some material was recovered from the depths exceeding 7000 m in the trenches, even right down to the bottom of the Philippine Trench. ... plant remnants, making them fossils [that are] rather surprising in the deep sea.” Anton F. Bruun, “General Introduction to the Reports and List of Deep-Sea Stations,” Galathea Report: Scientific Results of the Danish Deep-Sea Expedition Round the World 1950–1952, editors Anton F. Bruun, Sv. Greve, and R. Spärck (Copenhagen: Nordlundes Bogtrykkeri, 1957), p. 15.

3

. Robert L. Fisher and Roger Revelle, “The Trenches of the Pacific,” Continents Adrift (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1972), p. 15.

4

. Gordon A. Macdonald et al., Volcanoes in the Sea, 2nd edition (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983), p. 330.

5

. Fisher and Revelle, p. 12.

6

. “... seismic waves passing beneath continents traveled faster than those passing beneath ocean basins.” Richard A. Kerr, “The Continental Plates Are Getting Thicker,” Science, Vol. 232, 23 May 1986, pp. 933–934.

“Seismic models of global-scale lateral heterogeneity in the mantle show systematic differences below continents and oceans that are too large to be purely thermal in origin.” Alessandro M. Forte et al., “Continent-Ocean Chemical Heterogeneity in the Mantle Based on Seismic Tomography,” Science, Vol. 268, 21 April 1995, p. 386.

7

. “... earthquakes do indeed serve to make the Earth more compact, thus decreasing its moment of inertia and, because they leave total angular momentum unchanged, increasing the rotation speed and thus decreasing the length of the day, which is what would be expected.” John Maddox, “Earthquakes and the Earth’s Rotation,” Nature, Vol. 332, 3 March 1988, p. 11.

While each major earthquake suddenly causes the earth to spin slightly faster, continuous tidal effects steadily slow the earth’s spin. The latter effect, detected by atomic clocks, dominates over long time periods.  [See pages 426–429.]

“Meanwhile, the questions remain of why the effect of earthquakes on the Earth’s rotation should have the effect of predominantly decreasing the polar moment of inertia ...”  Ibid.

Answer: Gravity always tries to squeeze the earth into a more spherical, compact shape. During the early stages of the global flood, the fountains of the great deep redistributed massive amounts of rock, making the earth less spherical. Toward the end of the flood, gravity suddenly shifted material within the inner earth, caused rapid continental drift, and formed earth’s three major oceans: the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Sporadic shifts in mass are now less intense, because each shift since the flood has reduced the imbalances and made the earth more nearly spherical. We call these shifts “earthquakes” and “plate movements.”

Today, aftershocks follow each major earthquake, as the inner earth adjusts locally to the earthquake’s sudden redistribution of mass near the fault. Likewise, today’s earthquakes are simply aftershocks resulting from the major shift of mass during the flood.

8

. “The available seismic data show that the primary stress field results from more or less horizontal tension—at right angles to the axis of the trench—at most depths.” William F. Tanner, “Deep-Sea Trenches and the Compression Assumption,” The American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, Vol. 57, No. 11 November 1973, p. 2195.

9

. Maya Tolstoy et al., “Breathing of the Seafloor: Tidal Correlations of Seismicity at Axial Volcano,” Geology, Vol. 30, No. 6, June 2002, pp. 503–506.

“... tidal effects on earthquakes were not accepted until recently. ... The records showed high seismic activity at or just after low tide. The earthquake frequency nearly doubled at the lowest tides ...” Junzo Kasahara, “Tides, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes,” Science, Vol. 297, 19 July 2002, pp. 348–349.

10

. “Our main conclusion is that abyssal-hill-like topography may result from continuous stretching of a brittle layer.” W. Roger Buck and Alexei N. B. Poliakov, “Abyssal Hills Formed by Stretching Oceanic Lithosphere,” Nature, Vol. 392, 19 March 1998, p. 275.

11

. “Here we present support for a response of the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon to forcing from explosive volcanism ... The results imply roughly a doubling of the probability of an El Niño event occurring in the winter following a volcanic eruption.” J. Brad Adams et al., “Proxy Evidence for an El Niño-Like Response to Volcanic Forcing,” Nature, Vol. 426, 20 November 2003, p. 274.

12

. S. P. Kelley and J-A. Wartho, “Rapid Kimberlite Ascent and the Significance of Ar-Ar Ages in Xenolith Phlogopites,” Science, Vol. 289, 28 July 2000, pp. 609–611.

Sylvie Demouchy et al., “Rapid Magma Ascent Recorded by Water Diffusion Profiles in Mantle Olivine,” Geology, Vol. 34, June 2006, pp. 429–432.

13

. Jesse F. Lawrence and Michael E. Wysession, “Seismic Evidence for Subducted-Transported Water in the Lower Mantle,” Earth’s Deep Water Cycle, editors Steven Jacobsen and Suzan van der Lee (Washington, D.C.: American Geophysical Union Monograph, 2006), pp. 251–261.

14

. Satoru Urakawa et al., “Anomalous Compression of Basaltic Magma,” Research Frontiers 2006, pp. 113–114. Also available at www.spring8.or.jp/pdf/en/res_fro/06/113-114.pdf.

“The basaltic magma could not ascend from a position deeper than 200 km in the Earth’s interior.” Ibid., p. 114.

These 2006 experimental results, by themselves, should kill the idea that the mantle as a whole circulates as a convecting fluid. We all need to integrate these results into our thinking and eliminate scenarios that conflict.

For this reason, Prediction 8 made on page 131 of the 7th edition has been removed. It said “Precise measurements of the center of the western Pacific floor will show it is rising relative to sea level and the center of the earth, because plates are still shifting.” No information, either way, has come to my attention concerning the truth or falsity of that 2001 prediction. Based on the 2006 results of Urakawa et al., it is hard to say what should be happening to the center of the western Pacific floor. Had information come forward before now on the truth or falsity of my prediction, it would not have been removed.

15

. A concentrated load on the surface of a thick solid (such as the earth) produces stresses inside the solid. Those stresses spread out roughly in proportion to their depth below the surface.

16

. Rocks deep inside the earth are under high and fairly uniform compressive stresses. As explained on page 147, such solids, if they fail (break), will fail by shearing. At each point inside the earth, the maximum shearing stress occurs on a plane oriented 45° to the planes of principal stress. The principal stresses produced by the rising of the Atlantic floor and the downward pull on the Pacific plate are approximately vertical and horizontal. Therefore, maximum shearing stress—and Benioff zones—will occur at about a 45° angle to the horizontal. For more information, consult any introductory textbook on strength of materials; look for the subject of “Mohr’s Circle.”

One can also conclude that the principal stresses that produced Benioff zones had to be applied suddenly. Had they been applied over a period of years, slow deformations, called creep, would have removed the shearing stresses.

17

. Based on the following, the preflood mantle probably had a more uniform density. Movements within the mantle during and soon after the flood would have generated much heat and melting. Denser elements (such as nickel and iron) would have settled gravitationally, releasing even more heat which, in turn, melted other parts of the mantle, allowing more gravitational settling. This would explain why (a) temperatures inside the earth increase with depth, (b) the earth has a core, (c) the outer core is a liquid while the inner core is a solid, (d) denser elements are concentrated nearer the center of the earth, (e) the inner core spins faster than the rest of the earth, (f) many early cultures thought the earth had a 360-day year (Endnote 22), and (g) earth’s density almost doubles as one passes down through the core-mantle boundary. [See the yellow cells in Table 31 on page 445.]

Evolutionists say that the earth formed by meteoritic bombardment. While meteoritic bombardment might explain (a)–(d) above, it is contradicted by (e)–(g).

Also, meteoritic bombardment would melt the entire earth several times over.

The kinetic energy (~5 x 10³⁸ ergs) released in the largest impacts (1.5 x 10²⁷ g at  9 km/sec) would be several times greater than that required to melt the entire Earth.  George W. Wetherill, “Occurrence of Giant Impacts during the Growth of the Terrestrial Planets,” Science, Vol. 228, 17 May 1985, p. 879.

Had that occurred, we would not find dense, nonreactive elements such as gold at the earth’s surface. But we do. Besides, granite rocks have never melted. [See “Geothermal Heat” on page 110.] A molten earth, after billions of years of cooling, would not produce the temperature patterns we see inside the earth. [See “Rapid Cooling” on page 38.] Meteoritic bombardment would also add too much xenon to the earth’s atmosphere. [See “Molten Earth?” on page 27 and page 82.] And finally, meteoritic bombardment presupposes the prior existence of meteoroids, whose origin, as currently taught, has many problems. [See pages –318.] Belief in a once-molten earth has led many to believe that the earth is billions of years old.

18

. “Two deep holes, drilled on opposite sides of Eniwetok Atoll, reached the basement below the cap of Recent to Eocene limestone at depths of 4,610 and 4,158 feet.” Seymour O. Schlanger, Subsurface Geology of Eniwetok Atoll, Geological Survey Professional Paper 260–BB (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1963), p. 991.

Harry S. Ladd, “Drilling of Eniwetok Atoll, Marshall Islands,” American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, Vol. 37, October 1953, pp. 2257–2280.

19

. See “Volcanic Gases” on page 225.

20

. We sometimes see this on a small scale when the soil below a concrete slab settles or becomes more compact. Without support, the slab cracks vertically, and one side of the slab settles below the other. If the slab were also compressed horizontally, as was the subsiding Pacific hydroplate, the crack would depart from the vertical, at angles comparable to those of Benioff zones. Sediments blanketing the crack would take the shape of a trench.

21

. “The presence of continental-type crust in the oceans where oceanic crust might be expected has been recognized from seismic information by a number of authors.” J. M. Dickins et al., “Past Distribution of Oceans and Continents,” New Concepts in Global Tectonics, editors S. Chatterjee and N. Hotton III (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1992), p. 193.

“Much sialic [continental or granitic] material appears beneath the oceans and we remain skeptical as to the distinction between what is designated continental and oceanic crust. We are surprised and concerned for the objectivity and honesty of science that such data can be overlooked or ignored.”  Dickins et al., p. 198.

“Miller (1970), on the basis of structural trends of pre-Mesozoic orogens [folded and faulted mountains], concluded a former sialic (continental) [granitelike] crust, which has now disappeared, was present west of the present coast of Chile.”  Ibid., p. 195.

“Possible presence of continental crust under the ocean has been postulated by Bullin (1980) and Orlenok (1983). They stated the idea that ‘the oceanic crust is thin and graniteless’ is a mistake.” D. R. Choi et al., “Paleoland, Crustal Structure, and Composition under the Northwestern Pacific Ocean,” New Concepts in Global Tectonics, editors S. Chatterjee and N.  Hotton III (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1992), p. 187.

The unusual seismic characteristics of this layer in the northwestern Pacific have been noted earlier and called “Oceanic Layer 3.” Drilling has not been deep enough to penetrate it.

“This 6.5- to 6.8-km/s layer [west of Sumatra] may be either lower continental (granitic) crust or thickened oceanic layer 3. ... Although the 6.5- to 6.8-km/s velocity is high for lower continental (granitic) crust, the large thickness of this layer suggests that it is continental crust, ...” R. M. Kieckhefer et al., “Seismic Refraction Studies of the Sunda Trench and Forearc Basin,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 85, No. B2, 10 February 1980, pp. 863, 873.

“The presence of continental crust in the northwestern Pacific casts doubt over the validity of the use of magnetic anomalies for determination of spreading age and rate ... These anomalies are located within the area of continental crust. They appear to coincide with the major fracture patterns accompanied with intrusives ...” Choi et al., p. 188.

“This provides unequivocal evidence of continental crust in Elan Bank. ... The garnet-biotite gneiss, in particular, indicates continental crust at this south Indian Ocean location.” Shipboard Scientific Party, “Leg 183 Summary, Kerguelen Plateau-Broken Ridge: A Large Igneous Province,” Proceedings, Ocean Drilling Program, Initial Reports, 183, editors M. F. Coffin, et al. (College Station, Texas: ODP, 2000), pp. 1–101.

Three other papers describing this expedition’s amazing discoveries of traces of continental crust are in the Journal of Petrology, Vol. 43, No. 7, July 2002, pp. 1105-1139.

“Continental basement is known to outcrop at the base of the Rama ridge, the Lucipara ridge (site 304) and the Tukang Besi ridge (site 301).” [These ridges, between Australia and Asia, are typically two or more miles below sea level.] Christian Honthaas et al., “A Neogene Back-Arc Origin for the Banda Sea Basins: Geochemical and Geochronological Constraints from the Banda Ridges (East Indonesia),” Tectonophysics, Vol. 298, 10 December 1998, p. 311.

“Bathymetry and seismic profiles suggest that continental crust forms the floor of the trenches all the way around the bend from Timor to Seram ...” Robert McCaffrey, “Active Tectonics of the Eastern Sunda and Banda Arcs,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 93, No. B12, 10 December 1988, pp. 15, 177.

22

. When the flood began, the year likely had 360 days.

Velikovsky showed—from the writings of the Persians, Egyptians, Chinese, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Incas, Hebrews, Greeks, Hindus, Romans, Aztecs, Mayas, and Peruvians—that a 360-day calendar prevailed in much of the ancient world. [See Immanuel Velikovsky, “The Year of 360 Days,” in Worlds in Collision (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1950), pp. 330–359.]

Velikovsky thought that our 365-day year resulted from a disruption of earth’s orbit by gravitational encounters with Venus and Mars. Those promoting this idea could have shown its feasibility with a computer simulation. They have not. Besides, Carl Sagan demolished Velikovsky’s explanation in “An Analysis of Worlds in Collision.” [See Scientists Confront Velikovsky, editor Donald Goldsmith (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 41–104.]

Early Egyptians assumed a 360-day year, until they realized that the Nile was flooding later and later each year according to that calendar. Because Egypt’s earliest settlers probably would not have adopted a 360-day year while in Egypt, they presumably brought that outdated understanding with them. [See J. Norman Lockyer, The Dawn of Astronomy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press, 1964), pp. 243–248.]

Babylonian astronomers, thousands of years ago, divided a circle into 360 degrees. Why did they choose 360, instead of something easier such as 100 or 1,000? Probably because a year had 360 days before the flood—one degree for each day of the year. This would have been the average daily motion of the Sun among the stars, a relatively easy measurement.

If so, either earth’s spin rate or its orbital period around the Sun increased during the flood. Increasing earth’s orbital period requires a large, unknown energy source; increasing the spin rate does not.  Therefore, the spin rate probably increased.

See paragraph 6 on page 367 for an insight from the most detailed record of a year in very ancient times.

23

. Xiaodong Song and Paul G. Richards, “Seismological Evidence for Differential Rotation of the Earth’s Inner Core,” Nature, Vol. 382, 18 July 1996, pp. 221–224.

“Two years ago, a pair of seismologists discovered evidence that the inner core is dancing to its own beat, spinning measurably faster than the rest of the planet. ... Since then, two other studies have bolstered the concept of an independently rotating inner core ...” Richard Monastersky, “The Globe Inside Our Planet: Earth’s Inner Core Is Turning Out To Be an Alien World,” Science News, Vol. 154, 25 July 1998, p. 58.

John E. Vidale et al., “Slow Differential Rotation of the Earth’s Inner Core Indicated by Temporal Changes in Scattering,” Nature, Vol. 405, 25 May 2000, pp. 445–447.

“Our results confirm that Earth’s inner core is rotating faster than the mantle and crust at about 0.3° to 0.5° per year.” Jian Zhang et al., “Inner Core Differential Motion Confirmed by Earthquake Waveform Doublets,” Science, Vol. 309, 26 August 2005, p. 1357.

The inner core’s spin should be slowing relative to the rest of the earth—but very slowly, because the resisting outer core is a liquid and the inner core is so massive.

The slower the inner core spins, the less this decelerating torque becomes. So, after about 5,000 years, it is not surprising that this effect can be measured. However, if the inner core formed billions of years ago, no effect would be seen.

24

. “... strong evidence that seismic waves traveling through the inner core along the axis of the magnetic poles complete their trip through Earth about four seconds more quickly than do waves traveling from one side of the equator to the other.” Susan Kruglinski, “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” Discover, June 2007, p. 55.

25

. Jeff Hecht, “The Giant Crystal at the Heart of the Earth,” New Scientist, 22 January 1994, p. 17.

“In the mid-1980s, scientists from Harvard University first noticed an unusual feature of Earth’s core: Seismic waves tended to travel fastest when they paralleled Earth’s axis of rotation. Their speed dropped by as much as 3 percent when the waves moved perpendicular to the rotation axis. The seismologists who discovered this asymmetry explained it by suggesting that the iron crystals in the core point toward the poles and thus transmit seismic waves fastest when they travel that way. This pattern may develop from the way Earth’s magnetic field orients the crystals that solidify on the surface of the inner core.” Richard Monastersky, “Earth’s Core Out of Kilter,” Science News, Vol. 145, 16 April, 1994, p. 250.

Jeroen Tromp, “Support for Anisotropy of the Earth’s Inner Core from Free Oscillations,” Nature, Vol. 366, 16 December 1993, pp. 678–681.

26

. The earth’s spin makes the earth slightly nonspherical. Taking the earth’s nonsphericity explicitly into account would not alter any conclusions in this chapter.

27

. “... the tendency of earthquakes [is] to make the Earth rounder, and to pull in mass toward the centre of the Earth.” B. Fong Chao and Richard S. Gross, “Changes in the Earth’s Rotation and Low-Degree Gravitational Field Induced by Earthquakes,” Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 91, 1987, p. 569.

“Why do earthquakes strive towards a rounder Earth? [Gravity strives for a rounder earth. Gravity also drives earthquakes.] Or, conversely, does the Earth’s non-sphericity have any influence on the earthquake mechanism?” Ibid., p. 594.  [It has everything to do with earthquakes and shifting continental plates. The next question one should ask is, “What caused the nonsphericity?” Answer: The flood.]

28

. Earth’s preflood magnetic field could easily have been less than one hundredth of today’s magnetic field. Here’s why.

Our atmosphere substantially shields earth’s surface from solar and cosmic rays. At sea level, the atmosphere provides about the same shielding as 3 feet of lead. Some of the preflood atmosphere was expelled by the fountains of the great deep. Therefore, atmospheric shielding before the flood would have been somewhat greater than today.

Earth’s magnetic field provides some shielding from charged particles, except near the magnetic poles. Although the moon has no atmosphere, astronauts on the moon were shielded from harmful radiation by their space suits and the moon’s weak magnetic field, which is less than one hundredth that of the earth. Astronauts were on the moon in 1969, when solar radiation was at its 11-year solar maximum.

29

. Within the inner earth, high-pressure friction heated the walls of thousands of sliding faults. Minerals with the lowest melting temperatures in those walls melted. Therefore, the melt’s temperature was relatively low compared to the melting temperature of magnetite. As magnetite fell toward the center of the earth, pressures increased, phase changes occurred, and the magnetite’s melting temperature increased. Magnetite is stable at pressures of 75 GPa and temperatures of 2,000 K. [See Surendra Saxena et al., “Formation of Iron Hydride and High-Magnetite at High Pressure and Temperature,” Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, Vol. 146, August 2004, pp. 313–317.]

30

. On 22 April 2007, Rod Nance, an electrical engineer, suggested to me that the earth’s magnetic field somehow originates in the inner core, not the outer core, as I and most others had commonly believed. Nance was very familiar with the problems associated with the view that a geodynamo, operating in the outer core, produced the earth’s magnetic field. Evolutionists have tried in vain to patch up those problems for decades. Once my focus shifted from the outer core to the inner core, I saw how the gravitational settling resulting from the melting of the inner earth produced earth’s magnetic field. [See “Melting the Inner Earth” on page 443.]

31

. Saxena et al. observed a high-pressure phase of magnetite forming as follows:
                4H₂O ---> 4H₂ + 2O₂
                3Fe + 2O₂ ---> Fe₃O₄ (high-pressure magnetite)
In their experiments, as a hydrated mineral (brucite) was heated, the water on the left side of the first equation was released.

Water molecules locked in mantle minerals were probably released in a similar way as the inner earth melted. [See “Water in the Upper Mantle” on page 152.] Oxygen then combined with iron at high pressure and temperature to produce huge amounts of magnetite with high melting temperatures. The magnetite then settled onto the inner core to form the earth’s gigantic magnetic field.

32

. Calculations are sometimes put forth in an attempt to show that plumes can rise through the mantle. Usually assumed are unrealistically low values for the mantle’s viscosity and density or unrealistically high values for the plume’s initial temperature and volume. These claims take the position, “We know flood basalts came from the outer core, so here is how it must have happened.” Others, looking at the physics involved and using the most reasonable numbers, admit they don’t understand how enormous volumes of flood basalts could rise through the mantle. My calculations show that the volume of a magma plume rising buoyantly or melting its way up from the core-mantle boundary would initially have to exceed the earth’s volume for just one drop of magma to reach the earth’s surface. Others, cited below, have reached similar conclusions.

“A simple calculation shows that if ascent is governed by Stoke’s law, then the great viscosity of the lithosphere (about 10²⁵ poise, if it is viscous at all) ensures that the ascent velocity will be about ten thousand times smaller than that necessary to prevent solidification. A successful ascent could be made only by unrealistically large bodies of magma.” Bruce D. Marsh, “Island-Arc Volcanism,” Earth’s History, Structure and Materials, editor Brian J. Skinner (Los Altos, California: William Kaufman, Inc., 1980), p. 108.

“The question of where the magma comes from and how it is generated are the most speculative in all of volcanology.” Gordon A. Macdonald, Volcanoes (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1972), p. 399.

“All the evidence that has been used so far to support the plume model—geochemical, petrological, thermal, topographic—is equivocal at best, if indeed not contrary. The plume idea is ad hoc, artificial, unnecessary, inadequate, and in some cases even self-defeating, and should be abandoned.” H. C. Sheth, “Flood Basalts and Large Igneous Provinces from Deep Mantle Plumes: Fact, Fiction, and Fallacy,” Tectonophysics, Vol. 311, 30 September, 1999, p. 23.

“Deep narrow thermal plumes are unnecessary and are precluded by uplift and subsidence data. The locations and volumes of ‘midplate’ volcanism appear to be controlled by lithospheric architecture, stress and cracks.”  Don L. Anderson, “The Thermal State of the Upper Mantle; No Role for Mantle Plumes,” Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 27, No. 22, 15 November 2000, p. 3623.

33

. “The plume hypothesis survived largely as a belief system and had to be extensively modified to account for unexpected observations.”  G. R. Foulger and J. H. Natland, “Is ‘Hotspot’ Volcanism a Consequence of Plate Tectonics?” Science, Vol. 300, 9 May 2003, p. 921.

“The textbook explanation for intraplate volcanism by fixed hot spots is either entirely wrong or insufficient to explain these phenomena.”  Anthony A. P. Koppers and Hubert Staudigel, “Asynchronous Bends in Pacific Seamount Trails: A Case for Extensional Volcanism?” Science, Vol. 307, 11 February 2005, p. 906.

34

. Ian McDougall claimed scientific support for this idea in 1964. [See Ian McDougall, “Potassium-Argon Ages from Lavas of the Hawaiian Islands,” Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 75, February 1964, pp. 107–128.] He dated volcanoes on seven Hawaiian islands and said that without exception they increased in age from northwest to southeast, just as would happen if the Pacific plate drifted toward the northwest at 10–15 cm/year. Why then do other volcanic chains show no such age-distance relationship? [See William R. Corliss, Inner Earth (Glen Arm, Maryland: The Sourcebook Project, 1991), p. 28.]

McDougall did not subject his samples to blind testing, a standard procedure for any critical test in which an investigator’s biases could influence the results, knowingly or unknowingly. While geologists hardly ever consider blind testing, which is intended to ensure accuracy and objectivity, it is standard practice for critical tests within the applied sciences, such as medicine and engineering. (Blind testing is explained on page 92.)  Someone should conduct a blind test to check McDougall’s results.

“At the present time insufficient information is available on the ages of volcanoes within these chains to fully test this [hotspot] theory; however, what is known of the ages generally does not support a simple hot spot origin. It has been fairly well established that the age progression associated with hot spot volcanism is not present in either the Line Islands or the Marshall Islands.”  Macdonald et al., Volcanoes in the Sea, p. 343.

35

. “It seems that we must abandon the convenient concept of fixed hotspots as reference points for past plate motions.” Ulrich Christensen, “Fixed Hotspots Gone with the Wind,” Nature, Vol. 391, 19 February 1998, p. 740.

“It was later shown, however, that the Pacific hotspots move relative to those in the Atlantic at rates of 1–2 cm yr^-1. This is less than the speed of fast-moving plates (10 cm yr^-1), but enough to make the hotspot frame of reference suspect.” Ibid., p. 739.

36

. “The two most difficult observations to explain in terms of hotspots are the lack of subsidence since the cessation of active volcanism 30–25 million years ago and the northeast orientation of the [Bermuda] rise, which is nearly at right angles to the predicted motion of the North American plate.” Randall M. Richardson, “Bermuda Stretches a Point,” Nature, Vol. 350, 25 April 1991, p. 655.

37

. “Furthermore, a plate that drifts slowly with respect to the plume source should be more easily penetrated than one that quickly sweeps past it, allowing little time for transfer of heat and melt.” Marcia McNutt, “Deep Causes of Hotspots,” Nature, Vol. 346, 23 August 1990, pp. 701–702.

38

. Don L. Anderson, “Hotspots, Basalts, and the Evolution of the Mantle,” Science, Vol. 213, 3 July 1981, pp. 82–89.

39

. “We find that guyot [tablemount] heights generally increase with the age of the lithosphere upon which they were emplaced, although there is a large amount of scatter.” Jacqueline Caplan-Auerbach et al., “Origin of Intraplate Volcanoes from Guyot Heights and Oceanic Paleodepth,” Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 105, No. B2, 10 February 2000, p. 2679.

40

. Magma in contact with liquid water quickly solidifies. Therefore, a volcanic cone growing under water will, in general, be steeper, because the magma rapidly solidifies, so can’t flow downhill.

Being under water also gives that rock a buoyancy, which helps submarine volcanoes grow taller. To demonstrate this effect, support a large rock under water with one hand. Notice how the pressure on your hand increases as you slowly lift the rock out of the water.

41

. Harry Hammond Hess, “Drowned Ancient Islands of the Pacific Basin,” American Journal of Science, Vol. 244, No. 11, November 1946, pp. 779–781, 790.

42

. Most corals feed on photosynthesizing algae and therefore must live within the top 160 feet of the ocean.

43

. Ariel A. Roth, “Coral Reef Growth,” Origins, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1979, pp. 88–95.

44

. Hess, p. 784.

45

. “It is quite common to find groups of guyots in a relatively small area with flat tops varying several hundred fathoms from one to another among the group.” Hess, p. 777.

46

. “It is rather surprising that the normal guyots [tablemounts] are swept clean since water currents at such depths as these are thought to be slight.” Hess, p. 778.

47

. J. R. Heirtzler et al., “A Visit to the New England Seamounts,” Earth’s History, Structure and Materials, editor Brian J. Skinner (Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1980), pp. 153–159.

48

. See Endnote 6, page 370.

49

. Several minor but hard-to-estimate factors have been omitted. In 1987, I estimated the depth of the subterranean floor at 10 miles based on other hard-to-estimate factors. One key factor was the depth of rock that must be eroded an average of about 400 miles on either side of the 46,000-mile-long Mid-Oceanic Ridge to produce all of earth’s sedimentary rock. That width was itself estimated from the globe on page 113, after making other estimates of how much the compression event shortened and thickened hydroplates.

50

. These data, converted from metric to English units with no loss in precision, are from H. U. Sverdrup et al., The Oceans: Their Physics, Chemistry, and General Biology (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1942), p. 15.

51

. In about 1972, I met J. Tuzo Wilson, one of the founders of the plate tectonic theory and the author of the hotspot hypothesis. Wilson stated his belief that plates are driven by drag from a circulating mantle. I explained that plates would move steadily if that were the case, not irregularly as happens today. In Iceland, astride the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, such movements could be easily measured with a laser beam and interferometer. Tourists would flock to see an instrument register continuous continental movement before their eyes. Wilson seemed slightly irritated and said, “Everyone talks about making those measurements, but no one does.” Wilson then said he had been considering a new mechanism that might move plates. If the Mid-Oceanic Ridge rose, plates would move away from the ridge crest by gravity sliding on a semi-molten mantle. He thought that a few feet of elevation might set plates in motion—very slowly, of course.

Many years later, and with a debt of gratitude, I see that this is similar in several respects to the hydroplate theory: plates sliding downhill, away from a rising Mid-Atlantic Ridge. However, Wilson’s slowly sliding plates would not have the energy or momentum needed to form mountains. His explanation also raises more questions than it answers. Why can we not detect the Mid-Atlantic Ridge rising today? (Iceland, while seismically active, is not rising out of the water and does not have a central rift.) If other portions of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge were rising, their rise would stop continental movement. Wilson was proposing a cause that might produce a known effect, which is legitimate. However, he had no independent evidence of that cause, and his explanation solved no other problems. The hydroplate theory explains past and present plate movements and solves all 25 major mysteries listed on page 106.

52

. “The types of rock found on [western Pacific] islands help to determine the edge of the Pacific basin. The andesite line has on its ocean [eastern] side rocks composed primarily of basalt, whereas on the other [western] side they are principally andesite. This has been viewed as the dividing line between oceanic and continental crusts.” [emphasis in original] L. Don Leet and Sheldon Judson, Physical Geology, 4th edition (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), p. 420.

53

. “The oceanic crust has been generated almost entirely by outpourings of mafic [basaltic] lavas.”  Nicholas M. Short, Planetary Geology (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1975), p. 98.

“The present ocean basins are characterized by the large-scale outpouring of basalt.”  Dickins et al., p. 197.

“Therefore, all the basalts recovered by DSDP [Deep Sea Drilling Project] in the northwestern Pacific are considered to be sills or lavas that are not necessarily indicative of real oceanic crust. Similar conclusions have also been reached by several authors [references given].” Choi et al., p. 187.

54

. “There is a vast need for future Oceanic Drilling Program initiatives to drill below the base of the basaltic ocean floor crust to confirm the real composition of what is currently designated oceanic crust.”  Dickins et al., p. 198.

55

. When heated, granite can be deformed, even extruded, under great pressure.

56

. Bradford Clement et al., “Neotectonics: Watching the Earth Move,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 96, No. 25, 7 December 1999, p. 14205.

Philip England and Peter Molnar, “Active Deformation of Asia,” Science, Vol. 278, 24 October 1997, pp. 647–650.

57

. Richard G. Gordon and Seth Stein, “Global Tectonics and Space Geodesy,” Science, Vol. 256, 17 April 1992, pp. 333–341.

58

. “... the deepest quakes should be confined to a thin layer at the center of a descending slab—and the Bolivian quake was just too big [several times too big] to fit.” Richard A. Kerr, “Biggest Deep Quakes May Need Help,” Science, Vol. 267, 20 January 1995, pp. 329–330.

“The problem is that large deep earthquakes seem to have occurred on faults larger than expected from the competing [plate tectonic] models of the process causing deep earthquakes.”  Seth Stein, “Deep Earthquakes: A Fault Too Big?” Science, Vol. 268, 7 April 1995, p. 49.

59

. Myron J. Block, “Surface Tension as the Cause of Benard Cells and Surface Deformation in a Liquid Film,” Nature, Vol. 178, 22 September 1956, pp. 650–651.

60

. Viscosity is a measure of flow resistance. Water has a lower viscosity than syrup. Syrup has a lower viscosity than warm tar. Warm tar has a lower viscosity than cold tar. Air has very low viscosity. Rock, having very high viscosity, will flow only if it is highly compressed in all directions and pressure differences within it are extreme.

61

. H. W. Menard, “The Deep-Ocean Floor,” Scientific American, Vol. 221, September 1969, pp. 126–142.

62

. “Cloos and Saunders et al. have shown that large oceanic plateaus cannot be subducted. Such thick plateaus resist subduction, jam the trench and accrete to the arc.” Sheth, p. 16.

“It is disturbing that the proposed, exceedingly large differential movements between continents and ocean basins (especially where much unconsolidated sediment is involved) are not obvious. ... The present simple continental-margin model diagrammed with essentially rigid slabs does not relate well to observational data, and its value as a framework for interpreting observed structures of the continental margin is diminished by the large gap between theory and observation.” Roland von Huene, “Structure of the Continental Margin and Tectonism at the Eastern Aleutian Trench,” Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 83, December 1972, p. 3625.

“... slippage of the oceanic crust beneath an overlying trench fill is unsupported by observational as well as theoretical data ...” D. W. Scholl, “Peru-Chile Trench Sediments and Sea-floor Spreading,” Geological Society of America Bulletin, Vol. 81, 1970, pp. 1339–1360.

A. A. Meyerhoff and Howard A. Meyerhoff, “The New Global Tectonics: Major Inconsistencies,” The American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, Vol. 56, No. 2, February 1972, pp. 269–336.

Warren Hamilton, Tectonics of the Indonesian Region, Geological Survey Professional Paper 1078 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), pp. 305–306.

V. Ye. Khain, “Plate Tectonics: Achievements and Unsolved Problems,” International Geology Review, Vol. 27, No. 1, January 1985, p. 5.

63

. Klaus Regenauer-Lieb et al., “The Initiation of Subduction: Criticality by Addition of Water?” Science, Vol. 294, 19 October 2001, p. 578.

These authors propose that ocean water may have “softened” the earth’s crust, breaking it along a narrow band all around the earth.

Just by adding water, we obtain a narrow faultlike zone for lithosphere separation. ... but a sound quantitative description does not exist. Ibid., p. 580.

64

. Why are cliffs on earth never higher than 5 miles? Granite has a crushing strength of about 2.11 × 10⁸ newtons/meter² and weighs about 26,400 newtons/meter³. Dividing the first by the second gives 8,000 meters (or 5 miles)—the maximum height before the granite at the base of the cliff is crushed by the load above. If the entire cliff face were under water, the cliff could be about 60% higher.

65

. Fisher and Revelle, p. 15.

66

. A. V. Chekunov et al., “Difficulties of Plate Tectonics and Possible Alternative Mechanisms,” Critical Aspects of the Plate Tectonics Theory, Vol. II, editor A. Barto-Kyriakidis (Athens, Greece: Theophrastus Publishing & Proprietary Co., 1990), pp. 397–433.

67

. In 1986, Robert S. Dietz, one of the founders of the plate tectonic theory, privately explained this problem to me. With a smile, he declined my suggestion that he publish that fact.

68

. “But between 28° and 33°S the subducted Nazca plate appears to be anomalously buoyant, as it levels out at about 100 km depth and extends nearly horizontally under the continent.”  John R. Booker et al., “Low Electrical Resistivity Associated with Plunging of the Nazca Flat Slab beneath Argentina,” Nature, Vol. 429, 27 May 2004, p. 400.

69

. Peter Molnar, “Continental Tectonics in the Aftermath of Plate Tectonics,” Nature, Vol. 335, 8 September 1988, p. 133.

70

. Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, “The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses,” Journal of Geology, Vol. 5, 1897, pp. 837–848. This famous paper was also reprinted in Journal of Geology, Vol. 31, 1931, pp. 155–165 and in A Source Book in Geology: 1400–1900, editors Kirtley F. Mather and Shirley L. Mason (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 604–630.