CompuServe Messages

Jon >> Maybe I can save you a bit of time. I'm sitting here looking at a relief map of the ocean floors, almost certainly done from satellite radar scans combined with penetrating sonar scans. It shows that the vast majority of ocean floor consists of continental rises, slopes, shelves, plateau, ridges, fracture zones, and submerged mountain ranges. "Abyssal plains" cover a very small fraction of the total ocean floor, certainly no more than 10% and probably around 5% or so. << The point here is that the Rise begins with a very fractured and craggy beginning and as we move away from the rise the floor gets smoother in comparison to the rise. This is in spite of the fact that divergence and convergence are occuring. That is the plate is focusing into an area like the pacific basin or diverging as it is on the opposite side of the pacific rise and all other areas on the outside of the Rise arcs. In the converging areas the basin should get more fractured and craggy and warped as it converges yet it gets smoother, in comparison to the rise. The volcanic islands were built on top of the crust and cannot be used to absorb the converging plate material. Also in areas where the plate is wrapping around the Tonga Trench area. There is not near enough features on the basin floor to account for the motions of the crust.