A new insight into the driving mechanism for plate tectonics—the relationship between tectonic processes and the circumferential tensile forces associated with a rotating planet—

　Mantle convection currents are the currently accepted driving force for plate tectonics that have ripped apart the continents and created oceans. Because of these actions, continental collisions and ocean closures have resulted. Our paper challenges the conventional concept and provides an alternate, mathematically justified drive mechanism. The pull-push motions of such convection currents in the upper mantle are here concluded to be too weak to be the driving mechanism.
　Our proposal for such global scale forces concerns the effect of an offset centre of mass of the Earth that results in rotational wobbling. Kepler’s laws of planetary motion demonstrate the rotational behavior of the Earth to be aligned with the Sun on the outward and inward motions of the elliptical orbit. The unbalanced rotation on a fixed gravitational axis results in circumferential stresses on the outer Earth’s rim that is more than strong enough to pull the continental plates apart. The proposed unbalanced rotational stress force equation is shown to be sufficient to drive the cyclic breakup and reassembly of the continental plates, as well as the generation of new oceanic crust and subduction zones. Mantle convection currents are here demonstrated to have a passive rather than active role in the plate movements.