The purpose of this chapter is to list
and explore phenomena that are better explained by Ben's Antipodal Impact
Theory than by the current Standard Theory. These phenomena are:
VOLCANISM AT THE SUNDA TRENCH
The Sunda (or Java) Trench, the second
deepest trench in the world, extends from the east at East Timor in Indonesia
all the way up to the border of Bangladesh and Burma. Along the eastern edge of
the trench are the Nicobar and Andaman islands, as well as Sumatra, Java and
the other islands of the Indonesian island chain.
Java and Sumatra have many active
volcanoes, some of which are among the biggest in the world.
The Standard Theory explains the
extreme volcanism in Java and Sumatra as being the result of subduction of the
Australian-Indian plate underneath the neighboring plate.
However, the extreme volcanism stops at
the northern end of Sumatra. The Sunda trench continues for hundreds of miles
to the north, but, suddenly, there are no more big volcanoes as a result of
subduction.
Why is this? Here we have a series of
very strong volcanoes that lead northwest until they culminate at Lake Toba,
the biggest super-volcano in the world. And then the volcano chain just stops.
The Sunda trench goes on, but the volcano chain stops. Why? The Standard Theory
has no answer at all.
Ben's Antipodal Impact Theory has a
clear explanation: The follow-on antipodal hotspot from the Chixculub impact 65
MYA started at East Timor and ran up through (and created) The Indonesian
chain, up through Java and up to the north end of Sumatra. The hotspot is
currently below the northern end of Sumatra at Lake Toba.
The reason that there isn't any
additional extreme volcanism along the Sunda trench beyond northern Sumatra is
because the hotspot hasn't gotten there yet.
Furthermore, if we could zoom ten
million years into the future, we would find that the hotspot's continued
motion would carry it north and west and into and through the Sunda trench!
The hotspot's turn to the west after it
crossed the equator can already be seen on the map. The hotspot is actually
moving in a straight line relative to the mantle, but the speed of the surface
layer is decreasing (at the equator, the surface layer moves at 1,000 miles per
hour, but near the poles it is near zero), causing the hotspot to appear to
move to the northwest, relative to the surface.
The Sunda trench is unrelated to the
hotspot. The Sunda trench was created by the tail of the Indian continent
pulling the surface apart, as it made its tight turn going north.
The Sunda trench is often called a
double trench, because there are two distinct ridges along the trench for much
of its length. It may well be that the eastern edge of the continental blob did
its own pulling apart as it passed by before the tail came by later.
THE SHAPE OF INDIA
The Standard Theory doesn't really
address the shape of India. The best summary of the position of the Standard
Theory would be: "It is what it is."
Ben's Antipodal Impact Theory offers
very clear reasons why India is shaped the way that it is, including the
eastward bend near the bottom, the offset location of Sri Lanka, the
west-to-east slope of the land and the formation of the Western Ghats mountain
range.
Ben's Antipodal Impact Theory sees
India as the tail of a continental "blob with a tail" uplift event. As the
Indian tail moved northward behind the leading blob of the continent, it was
configured as a normal, triangular tail.
However, when the front end of the
continental blob met extreme resistance while running into the Himalayan
Plateau, the energy and momentum from the rest of the continent caused most of
the continent to shear (It might not have sheared. It
might have just continued running under or alongside the Asian Continent while
pivoting.) and pivot to the west, towards an area of less resistance.
The tail followed along with this pivot, but the weaker, lower part of the tail
bent as it moved west (meeting frictional resistance and raising up the Ghats)
and even broke off at the tip (Sri Lanka).
The slope of the land from west-to-east
was caused by the Indian tail moving over the slower-moving hotspot on the
western side during the early days from 65 MYA to 60
MYA.
The westward movement of the Indian
tail is further corroborated in "an Alfred Wegener moment". The upper eastern
edge of India matches almost perfectly with the coast of Burma. They look like
they fit together because, at one time, they did fit together. After they
parted, the silt from the Ganges river helped to fill in the low lying area of
Bangladesh, over millions of years. (Author's note: Alfred Wegener was a famous
German meteorologist turned geologist, who formulated the theory of continental
drift back in 1912, due, in part to the fact that Africa and South America
seemed to fit together. He amassed much other fossil evidence, as well, but was
unable to overcome the lack of a reasonable mechanism for movement of solid
rock. He was vindicated two decades after his death by the discovery of the
mid-ocean ridges and sea floor spreading. Wegener
asserted that centrifugal forces caused the continents to move apart. This lack
of a viable mechanism doomed his theory to obscurity, initially.)
RARE MANTLE PLUMES
The Standard Theory describes the
volcanic eruptions at the Deccan traps and the Siberian traps as being the
result of rare mantle plumes. There is no really solid reason given for their
existence. The best that the Standard Theory can come up with is the idea that
these plumes are some kind of convectional heat relief from the interior.
Ben's Antipodal Impact Theory shows
that the plumes that caused the Deccan traps and the Siberian traps are the
natural result of the relief of kinetic energy pressure at the weakened,
pulverized area that is antipodal to a major cosmic impact.
CONTINENTAL SHELF & BANK
STRUCTURE AND CONTINENTAL UPLIFT
The Standard Theory has little to say
about the reasons why continents have the continental shelf and bank structure
that they do. The Standard Theory just doesn't ask why the continents don't
gently slope down to the bottom of the ocean, forming a "v" shape at the
bottom.
Ben's Antipodal Impact Theory posits
that continents are uplifted several thousand feet when first created. This
would create a naturally steeper slope along the bank. Over time, the slope
would soften, but it would still be significantly steeper than either the
continental shelf or the ocean floor.
A few more words of explanation about
the actual process of continental uplift may be in order. In many ways, the
process of continental uplift is comparable to the process of impact extrusion
(also called trapped extrusion) used in the fastener industry (see Chapter 6).
The process of impact extrusion involves the extrusion of metal at the other
side of the impact, when using an impact header (see Illustration 7-A).
In the case of the impact header, the
cold (room temperature, not heated) mild steel blank is trapped within a
hardened steel die and then hit with a hardened steel punch, using great force.
At the antipode of the impact, the steel blank's metal is forced to "flow" into
the reduced diameter opening at the back of the die, resulting in a steel blank
with an extruded section that has a smaller diameter (NOTE: In industry, this
process is often used to create a shoulder bolt that has a shoulder diameter
that is considerably larger in diameter than the smaller, extruded diameter,
which is usually roll threaded [a process that creates screw threads] later.
Using impact extrusion is a faster, less costly and less wasteful process than
shaving the extra material away. Impact extrusion also provides better
concentric tolerances, as well as keeping the steel grain structure intact).
The process of continental uplift, in
effect, involves trapped extrusion. In the case of the impact header, the steel
blank is trapped within a hardened steel die.
In the case of continental uplift, the
trapping is done by gravity (the weight of the rock of the lithosphere) and the
shear strength of the rock of the lithosphere. The energy of the cosmic impact,
in effect, extrudes a continental "blob with a tail" from the surface of the
Earth, with the liquid mantle acting as an energy transfer mechanism.
CONTINENTAL SHAPES
Why do so many continents look like "a
blob with a tail"? The Standard Theory doesn't even recognize this shape as an
issue.
Yet we can see that continents are
shaped this way. Once we understand the nature of combination continents (i.e.
North America, Antarctica and Eurasia) it is easy to see how the continents
have been created in this same, general shape.
The outstanding exception, Australia,
is easily explained by the uplift of India destroying part of Australia's tail
and scattering the rest of the tail.
However, once we know what we are
looking for, we can see how the Australian tail fits together and how
Australia's Great Dividing Range mountains continue up through New Guinea,
Borneo, the Philippines and even Taiwan.
One of the most satisfying parts of the
Australian puzzle is finding how New Guinea fits right into the Australian Gulf
of Carpentaria, just like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. The Cape York Peninsula
was stretched out like a piece of taffy when New Guinea was forced apart from
Australia 65 MYA by the rise of the Indian continent (see Chapter 8).
Another exception, Eastern Antarctica,
was once part of the Australian "blob" but was sheared from Australia, probably
as a result of the torsional pressure put on Australia during the uplifting of
India 65 MYA. This half of the original Australian "blob" went its own way and
ended up conjoined with Western Antarctica, which is a small continental mass
that was probably created in the event that caused the Triassic extinction
(later investigation leads to the conclusion that the
uplifting of Western Antarctica led to the minor extinction prior to the
Triassic extinction ... see Appendix II for details).
Further examination of
the Australia - Eastern Antarctica connection reveals that this separation was
probably a two stage event. First, the impact object that caused the Permian
extinction 250 MYA provided torsional stress which started the separation and
moved Eastern Antarctica faster to the south than the rest of the old
Australian Continent. Then the Chicxulub impact created the Indian Continent
and drew today's Australia to the north.
PLATE
BOUNDARIES
The boundaries of the Australian Indian
plate are right where Ben's Antipodal Impact Theory would predict that they
would be, in relation to each other. Furthermore, one of the standard models
shows a separate Indian plate (the other doesn't) right where Ben's Antipodal
Impact Theory would predict, based upon the westward shifting and pivoting as
the Indian continent ran into extreme resistance.
The Standard Theory
gives no reason for any of this.
SEASHELLS IN THE HIMALAYAS
Until the advent of the theory of plate
tectonics, geologists had great difficulty in explaining how all the ancient
sea-life fossils were found in the Himalayas. The theory of plate tectonics
allowed them to explain the seeming paradox. The common interpretation of this
theory stated that, as the subcontinent of India approached Asia, it buckled up
the sea floor in front of it and pushed the buckled sea floor into Asia.
However, the Standard Theory does not
agree with itself when examined closely. According to the Standard Theory, as
India and Asia approached each other, the ocean floor should have been
subducting below either the Indian or the Asian plate
that's how the
subduction model works (Oceanic-Continental Convergence, see Chapter 2).
Once the two continental masses ran
into each other (they ran out of subducted sea floor between them), then they
should have pushed each other upwards. There should have been little or no sea
floor involved
And yet there are prolific remnants of
an ancient sea floor all throughout the Himalayas.
Why?
Ben's Antipodal Impact Theory has no
difficulty in explaining the Himalayan seashell paradox. The Indian continent's
"blob" was uplifted virtually entirely from the sea floor. Only the tail of the
Indian continent consisted of land that was not from the sea floor.
When the Indian "blob" smashed into
Asia, it was elevated and compressed, along with the Asian plate. Since the
elevated and compressed land from the Indian "blob" was virtually all composed
of sea floor, it is only natural that the Himalayas would be chock full of the
remains of ancient sea creatures.
See Illustration 7 - A for a graphic depiction of the impact
extrusion process |