Dear Mr. Znad,

have a look at the Eurasian plate in its westermost part. You have on one side the Atlantic Ocean and another zone opening up along the Rhone-Rhein-Oslo Graben which migh once become another Red Sea.

The eastern part of the African Plate is more complex than described by you. It strarts off during the Late Proterozoic with a tripple junction with the NE Egypt Rift between the African P. and the Paleo-Tethys Ocean, the Jordan valley Rift between the afore-mentioned ocean and the Arabian Plate bounded by strike slip faults towards the NE- and Central Iranian Plates and the Najd Strike Slip Zone which separates the Arabian Plate from the African Plate. It is such a complex plate mosaic at the eastern part that you can either give a simple question like I did for the European reference site or you can end up in another "1000+x chat" such as about the climate change, the RG score exceeding 100 or life lessons learnt which currently dominate the RG forums.

The only positive outlook in your new thread might be that it has the potential to be more (geo)scientific and less politically or morally.

I wish you all the best.

With kind regards

H.G.Dill

Thank you for your answer.

I understand that the question is controversial and one of the weaknesses of the theory of plate tectonics .I also know that the tectonic setting in East Africa as well as the Arabian plate is no less complicated than political setting.

I am not looking for RG score and the question was intended to be a geological dialogue with geological colleagues in the rest of the world.Maybe good ideas for a better understanding of our planet's tectonics may be nominated.

Thanks with best wishes

according to the convection current theory this may mean we have two diverging convection current under each of these edges which in turn push the opposite plate out

thanks Rabee

Thanks for the answer

If there is a push of the two edges meaning there is a compressive stresses on both sides,Therefore, there should be a growth of folds and thrust faults to compensate for this compressive stress.

I have no information about it geology of middle african regions.

Greet Najem

Dear colleague! Unfortunately, the West has gone crazy on plate tectonics.

Dear everybody: Dr. Dill's answer is correct, but I will add something else. The almost motionless African plate does move to the north indeed, but not in an east-west direction. If we assume that Pangea, and Gondwana, breakup during the Jurassic was caused by the action of hot spots under the supercontinent, then those hot spots should be on top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge... But the only one there is the Iceland hotspot, all the others are displaced a bit to the east, such as Azores, Cabo Verde, Tristán da Cunha, Ascension, and other oceanic islands. The explanation is quite simple: the Mid Atlantic Ridge is not just a spreading ridge but a migratory one! It has moved due west, leaving behind the associated hot spots, which means that its spreading rate relative to Africa has doubled, and so the push it exerts on the South American plate has also doubled! Therefore there are no compressive east-west forces acting on the African plate or continent, and the complex rift system in it has a north-south direction. New terms, such as migratory ridges and volcanic arcs, slab retreat and break-off, have being introduced recently in the plate tectonic nomenclature to take care of some "anomalies" in the general tectonic scheme, but the original postulates have, fortunately, remained unchanged!

Regards, Sebastian

Thanks for the helpful answer

my greeting

Plate tectonics has gained its popularity due to its simplicity and harmony. Now this theory gives increasingly complex answers to simple questions of the real structure of the Earth. Plate tectonics has long lost simplicity and harmony. Losing popularity. I apologize to my colleagues, but their explanation of the simple fact that the African Plate is surrounded by almost divergent borders seems to me overly complex, and therefore incorrect according to the Occam principle.

I agree with you that there are events that the theory could not explain or interpret it was vague, for example earthquakes within the continents(intraplate) and the tectonics of Africa, but still the theory of plate tectonics has the power of persuasion, especially in the areas of subduction and the orogenic folds belt and perhaps in the near future develop other theories deal with failures in some aspects of plate tectonics theory.

Many thanks and regards .

Dear Rabee, in my opinion, the basis of this persuasiveness is simply the inertia of thinking. And in order to save plate tectonics new theories will be invented from my head, I have no doubt. Over the past 50 years, plate tectonics has been mainly engaged in this.

Dear Anokhin ,I hope you succeed in creating a new theory

Dear all: it is úseless to engage in a Bizantine discussion about Plate Tectonics!!! The now called “theory of global tectónics” has too many proofs, evidences and models in favor, in fact for all of us geologists (in all fields, from petrology to paleontology !!!) is more like a working framework, than a theory. Obviously a mechanism operating in such grand scales of space and time will take centuries to be totally understood, and new models, concepts and findings will be the rule in the years to come.

I always say to my students: nobody has seen or will ever see a subduction zone, all we have is seísmic evidence, merely a 20 km thick slab of intermediate to deep focus earthquakes called Wadati-Benioff which plunges in a deep trench at some steep angle inside the mantle. And some mechanism then causes the ascent of magma which forms a magmatic arc some 100-200km behind the trench! So, subduction IS just a model, which has worked very well to explain most phenomena ocurring in volcánic arcs, but NOT all of them!

Also, mantle plumes are models, now with deep seismic tomography these raising blobs of hot material, some of the coming from the very base of the mantle can be visualized in a manner that Tuzo Wilson couldn’t ever had imagined!

Regards, Sebastian

Thanks, Rabee, thanks, Sebastian. But the general recognition of a model does not exempt a scientist from the need to think. Can we think together? It is not that difficult. Almost everything is already there. At one time, Morgan, one of the fathers of plate tectonics, prudently created an alternative to it: plume tectonics. If we compare plume tectonics with other tectonic concepts, then it is obvious that it perfectly combines with any tectonic concept (classical geosynclinal, expanding and pulsating Earth, regmagenesis, etc.), except for plate tectonics. Indeed, the idea of ​​mantle jets piercing convective meshes, the idea of ​​"hot chains" too complicate both plate tectonics and plume tectonics, explaining only regional sequences of volcanic ages that are not linked to the global picture. So the question is: are there enough plumes to explain the observed tectonic phenomena? “Long” plumes under the boundaries of the plates, “point plumes” under the “hot spots”. Short spreading (up to 100 km) and short subduction as a process of the same scale of movement with collision and obduction. A periodic change in the intensity of plumes brings the entire system into an oscillatory regime. Isn’t such a picture simpler than the hardly imaginable multi-story convection in a solid?