Plate Tectonics And Continental Drift., And I thought I knew all about it... Options

[lunk]

Plate tectonics and continental drift have been taught to me from a very early age.
I frequently found myself staring at geological formations, wondering how on earth, they were formed.
It sort of made sense, and what I didn't understand, I figured that it had all been studied, and some expert had already figured it all out, and there was no point in exploring the subject any further.
Now, I have recently discovered that there were other theories floating around:

http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/lau...98/EARTHEXP.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Warren_Carey

Now there are stories, of the Earth being only 6000 years old,
and a huge flood that covered the world, and predictions of a firery future...
However, I find little, outside a few human scribbles,
to support these stories.

But, I do see a grain of truth in the demonstration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJzic3kk4_g

Proof that the Earth has become larger.
...and that's about all.

imo, lunk

[lunk]

U shaped valleys and V shaped valleys,
formed by glaciers and rivers?

The glaciers went over the harder rock and chewed away at the softer rock, leaving wide U shaped valleys. Rivers cut paths in a V shape, through mountains that were pushed up by massive subducting plates.

That's what I was taught about the origination of valleys.

Using the same logic, one could conclude that water shaped the glass you are drinking from, or the ice trays in your freezer were formed by the ice.

Water is a liquid and will flow to the lowest point. Glaciers behave like rivers and flow downhill, too. Pour water into a dry valley, and you will get a river at the lowest point of that valley.

Here is a new way of looking at valleys.

As the Earth grows, the upper crust must re-curve, this causes the older crust to "wrinkle" in places. This causes mountains and V shaped valleys at the same time, the Earth is getting bigger, so even these wrinkled areas stretch apart in places, forming U shaped valleys, flattened at the base. U shaped valleys are tectonic spread areas (rift valleys), relatively new crustal growth. Water or snow accumulate at the lowest point and erode and round off the rough ledges at the edges of these spreads.
Where there are spreads with little erosion; the edges of these valleys tend to be stepped, like stairs. A good example of this is the Grand Canyon. This is a tectonic spread area, where the Earths' growth has pulled apart the upper crust. As there has been no glaciation there, the edges of the Grand Canyon take on the appearance of stairs. If glaciation had been present there, after the rift had spread, we would see a classic U shaped valley.

That's right, the Grand Canyon was not formed by water,
it is a rifting of the Earth, a tectonic spread area.
The water just flows to the lowest point, and rounds out the rough edges that are left when solid rock is ripped apart.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=U...mp;t=p&z=10

(edit) punctuation!

This post has been edited by lunk: May 17 2008, 01:58 PM