[Spycrab]

This came to mind recently. How does the flat earth cover tides and plate tectonics? In the RE world it is all nice and neat. The moon exerts a weak gravitational pull (like everything does) that pulls the water on earth as it orbits. It doesn't pull the land because it's too rigid to noticeably bend. The plates move from internal convection currents and magma coming up at plate boundaries to harden into more crust, to be pushed to a continent and go back down to melt. The continents are moved on the ocean floor on these conveyor belts. In flat earth, though, isn't the moon suspended opposite the sun? The pull (if any) would only cause one tide. How do tectonics work on a flat earth? Core heat relies on mass compressing it down and a spin to churn it. There's no spin and considerably less mass. While we're at it, how does the Coriolis effect work on a flat, stationary earth? Excited to hear a response...

[williamthegeologist]

Hi, to be honest in round earth theory, it's not really the convection that moves the continents like a conveyor belt, (it does contribute a little bit) but the main forces are mainly 2 (there are others, but mainly these 2).
1: Like you said heat rises from the D region, and because of isostasy, the ocean bed rises when it is heated, creating a slope from the mid oceanic ridge to the edge of the oceanic crust. thus "falling" away from the mid oceanic crust.
2: Subduction. Subduction is caused because old oceanic crust is denser than new oceanic crust (newer oceanic crust is closer to the ridge, thus hotter) when it gets to dense (approximately 200 million years old) it essentially subjects beneath the continental crust.