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stretch marks

26 June 2015
Geology

TimCullen is no respecter of settled science and the big wigs that pontificate – and the academics that prevaricate (but some of his alternative views are quite startling) – for example at https://malagabay.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/palaeomagnetism-logic-reversals/ … he is his usual irascible self when he says, 'the scientific literature is littered with hypothetical magnetic poles, hypothetical geomagnetic poles, hypothetical geodynamics, hypothetical magnetic reversals and very little of scientific substance. Theoretically, magnetic reversals are as credible as Enid Blyton and the brothers Grimm …'

We get the message he is not impressed by the idea of magnetic reversals and migrating magnetic poles and he plays around with the idea solar exposure might cause magnetic anomalies on the Earth. However, when it comes to those so called magnetic stripes on the ocean floor, so beloved of uniformitarians as evidence of Plate Tectonics, he has prepared some dynamite. He goes on to say they are the stretch marks of an inflating earth.

This is an interesting idea as magnetic reversals have been used by some Velikovskians to claim the earth has flipped over – and partial reversals represent occasions when the earth wobbled wildly on its axis but failed to completely turn over. From a mainstream perspective both ideas are equally whacky – but then again, the mainstream idea these reversals too a long time to achieve (uniformitarian change is mysteriously a slow process) rather than quickly, it itself quite whacky when you think about it. It does also seem mainstream was rather eager to pounce on the magnetic stripes (without them being fully researched and catalogued) as a supporting crutch for the uniformitarian progress by gradualism and the integration of the Milankovitch model into a preconceived model (all tied up with no loose ends – or so it seemed at the time). The stretch marks were quickly assimilated as evidence of continental drift (which went on to evolve into Plate Tectonics). Cullen's conclusion is therefore a matter of taste – rather than fact. Are magnetic stripes to be seen as evidence of the Atlantic widening as a result of the Americas pulling away from Europe and Africa, or are they evidence of the earth expanding (and splitting at the seams). He provides an interesting analogy as we now know they are not stripes that exist all the way, up and down, across the whole sea floor, but instead are patchy and a less impressive pattern. Hence, he is right to catalogue them as magnetic anomalies – and lightning (as well as other things such as volcanism) is capable of magnetising rocks. Whenever earth's surface is fractured, or cracked as a result of expansion, or simply by tectonic fault lines with an origin in electro-magnetic activity, the edges of the cracks will naturally form opposite polarities (because that is the way nature works as it does not allow them to be positive poles without a negative counterpart).

This would also make a good subject for the forum.

 

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