Surge Tectonics

Abstract

Surge tectonics is a new hypothesis quite unlike previously proposed hypotheses, although many of its component parts are based on ideas long known. We believe the hypothesis provides a comprehensive and internally consistent explanation of all tectonic phenomena without the necessity of making unsupported assumptions or ad hoc explanations. We have found nothing that surge tectonics cannot explain in a simpler way than other tectonic hypotheses. Surge tectonics draws on well-known physical laws, especially those related to Newton’s laws of motion and gravity. Fluid dynamics plays an important role in surge tectonics. (For more information on the laws we utilize, those mentioned in the text are defined in the Appendix; those wishing more detail are referred to two standard physics textbooks by Sears et al. [1974] and Blatt [1983]. An excellent state-of-the-art fluid-dynamics text is that by Tritton [1988]).