I mentioned to Stripe a few days ago that I was looking into something that I think is pretty clearly “evidence” regarding Walt Brown’s HPT. I am not going to try to take on HPT in total just yet, since it draws on “evidences” from numerous disciplines. My attention here will be to focus on one specific, but important claim that I see made several times in this thread, in Walt’s book, and in this liquefaction video JR pointed to:
https://youtu.be/lThoaW3EVaE
The specific claim I take issue with is that the alternating patterns of magnetic striping seen in rocks on each side of the mid-Atlantic ridge are simply due to different amounts of magnetization in the rocks, and not to actual reversals of magnetism in the rocks.
Quoting from Walt Brown’s book:
“Magnetic Variations on the Ocean Floor. At a few places along the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, magnetic patterns on one side of the ridge are almost a mirror image of those on the other side. The plate tectonic theory gained wide acceptance in the 1960s when this surprising discovery was misinterpreted.
Some people proposed that these variations were caused by periodic reversals of the earth’s magnetic field, although there is no theoretical understanding of how that could happen.9 Supposedly, as molten material moves away from the ridge (in seafloor spreading) over millions of years, the magma solidifies, and its magnetic material is locked in the orientation of the earth’s magnetic field at the time. Thus, a record of past “flips” of earth’s magnetic field is preserved in rocks at different distances from the ridge.
<Image here in the book>
That explanation is wrong, as detailed magnetic maps clearly show. No compass, shielded from earth’s magnetic field, would reverse direction whenever it crossed an alleged (and misleading) reversed band. However, as one moves across the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, magnetic intensities fluctuate, as shown in Figure 48. Someone merely drew a line through these fluctuations and labeled everything below this average intensity as a “reversal.” There is a false but widespread impression that these slight deviations below the average represent magnetic fields that reversed millions of years ago. Calling these fluctuations reversals causes one to completely miss a more likely explanation. |
The video JR linked to about liquefaction (and I linked to it above) makes almost verbatim the same claim, and so did Stripe in earlier posts.
Walt Brown is no dummy. And for that reason I cannot fathom him actually making such a trivially easy claim to test. I am certainly open to clear and specific data that supports his claim that the stripes in the solidified magma do not correspond to reversed polarity, so if ya got , let’s see it.
A couple of details here:
Walt says:
| “No compass, shielded from earth’s magnetic field, would reverse direction whenever it crossed an alleged (and misleading) reversed band.” |
That may be true. Anytime you are near any of these sea-floor bands, the magnetic field you will measure will be the sum (actually the vector sum – but hopefully we don’t need to get into that level of detail just yet) of the earth's native magnetic field and the rock's innate magnetic field at that point. Which means if the “normal” magnetic field of the earth is 10 units in strength, and the nearby rock has reversed magnetism of 3 units of strength, then a measurement will show the sum of those two (10 <earth> - 3 <rock> = 7 <measured>). In that example, the rock is most definitely of reversed polarity. If it had been of forward polarity, it would have added to the measured magnetic field strength.
More importantly, I can think of at least two major organizations that would like to be corrected if their understanding of the reversed polarity in mid-Atlantic rocks is wrong. One organization is the submarine and anti-submarine forces of all the world’s major military powers. Submarines like to sneak around undetected underwater, and anti-submarine aircraft desperately want to find those subs deep below the ocean surface. 30,000 tons of metal in a submerged tube is something a sensitive magnetometer in a low-flying airplane can register. A sub might be able to “hide” in a region where magnetic fluctuations are the norm. That is not a place where ambiguous “maybe weak normal magnetization, or maybe reversed magnetization – who cares?” is gonna cut it.
Secondly, How about the USGS? A massive organization that is responsible for a vast diversity of geological expertise. Do they say “reversed polarity”? You bet they do, and not by whim, but because they have in a fairly literal sense, gone out and grabbed a lot of the rocks in question, brought them back and taken careful and precise studies of their magnetism, including whether it is forward or reversed.
Now – turnabout is fair play. Posters in this thread who dispute HPT have often been advised to watch some well-done (I know cause I actually intently watched a couple of them) videos explaining HPT. So, I offer a link below which the USGS put out a couple decades ago. It is a well-done 32-minute video focused largely on how PT went from a silly conjecture to a pillar of modern geology. Part of it very specifically details the study of the rocks in the bands along the mid-Atlantic ridge. And … since there has been a little bit of reverence shown to Walt Brown’s academic credentials (PhD in Mechanic Engineering at MIT), pay attention to the fact that one of the fellows (Richard Dole) leading the USGS study was an assistant professor of geology at MIT (not just a student, like Walt, and not in an engineering discipline, like Walt, but in geology).
Anyway – enjoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3Ow9HEHa4s
Comments welcomed (if offered respectfully) (hint, hint, Stripe)
