CompuServe Messages

Transform Faults Help

    15-Dec-94 20:27:51
Sb: Transform Faults Help
Fm: Kamron Kirkconnell 73740,2246
To: All
The ocean basins tell a story but has the story been misinterpreted? The mid ocean rise's are balanced in between most of the continents. Oddly not the case in the pacific. The Rise feature appears like it was initially started in a linear formation then later broken and shifted at the transform faults. The transform faults that shear the rise at different intervals must run extremely deep, cutting completley through the Lithosphere to allow the shifting yet they mysteriously disappear hundreds or thousands of miles out from the rise. The fact that the rise is cleanly sheared by the transform faults makes their formation by convection currents in the asthenosphere very unlikely. Why would the currents be in linear planes instead of cells like we see in the air and sun. Why wouldn't the convection currents even out the sheared appearance as it forms new ocean basin. I also seams like that if there were convection currents in the asthenosphere they would flow up the sides of the continent and be sinking in the middle area between the continents. Kamron