PAPER 9 OF THE LEF SERIES
The Stripes
The leading side of the pear on the floor of the Pacific, and the place where the Moon was formed
Abstract
The North Pacific floor is crossed by long, straight, parallel stripes (Mendocino, Pioneer, Murray, Molokai, Clarion and Clipperton), clearest on maps of the vertical gravity gradient. In the LEF model the Moon was built on the tip of a pear of the Earth's own material, whose base stood on the Pacific near Kiritimati. The pear was gathered back into the Earth after the Moon detached. It leaned back against the rotation, with its tip lagging to the west. We read the stripes as the pear's leading side, stretched while attached and folded into stripes as it was gathered back. The geometry fits in four ways. The stripes are parallels of one tilted equator, as a single rotation about a single axis draws them, and the base of the pear lies 1.6° from that equator. They run from the base eastward. Two bends west of the base are 3,360 km apart, the width of the 3,000-km contact and of the 3,650-km dome above it. Their centre lies about 3,760 km west of the base, where a backward-tilted tip would lie. Inside it lies a mirror image of the Moon's near side, enlarged by 1.37, the Moon's contraction since. With Imbrium at 13.2°N 179.0°E, Serenitatis falls on the Marshall chain. The stripes pass unbroken beneath the volcanic ridges that cross them: they were folded from below rather than cut from above. The ridge chains on either side are read as ridges drawn up as the Moon peeled away.
Keywords: Pacific Ocean; fracture zones; vertical gravity gradient; seafloor structure; Line Islands; Moon; lunar origin
How to cite
Duran, Z. (2026). The Stripes: The leading side of the pear on the floor of the Pacific, and the place where the Moon was formed. Paper 9 of the LEF series. https://lef-model.com/paper09.html