This paper looks at the challenges confronting plate tectonics— the ruling paradigm in the earth sciences. The classical model of thin lithospheric plates moving over a global asthenosphere is shown to be implausible. Evidence is presented that appears to contradict continental drift, seafloor spreading, and subduction, as well as the claim that the oceanic crust is relatively young. The proble...

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other. The hypothesis that continents 'drift' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596 and was fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. However, it was not until the development of the theory of plate tectonics in the 1960s, that a sufficient geological explanation of that movement was understood. (This arti...

Introduction. The once popular idea that changes in planetary volume play an important role in terrestrial orogeny and tectonics [ I ,2] was generally discarded with the acceptance of plate tectonics. It is nonetheless likely that the Earth has been steadily cooling over the last 3-4 billion years [e.g., 3,4], and the global contraction that accompanied such cooling would have led to a secular ...