The theory is that tectonics can not account for the geological features currently observed on earth - including the “fact” that all continents of the world fit together nearly perfectly if placed on a smaller globe. The theory puts forth the idea that the earth was originally smaller, with the surface nearly all land mass, and that it has been slowly expanding over the last couple of billion years. They also present evidence regarding the relative ages of different areas on the globe -using the fact that under the pacific oceans there are wide stretches of new crust and even stress lines from the “stretching” of the earths surface.
There are some obvious major questions that are not sufficiently covered, such a where the heck all the water in our oceans came from. (This person theorizes that the water was created from processes occurring in the earth’s core.)
There are comments to the video that talk about how we can tell from fossils of plant life that gravity has not changed and therefore this theory is bunk. But if the earth has been expanding with the same mass (or with some addition of mass as a result of converting energy to matter in the core), how much would gravity change? The distance from the center of gravity of the earth would have changed. So how great of a change would that be exactly? Let’s say the radius of the earth has increased by half but retains the same mass. What would the gravity be like on the surface in each state?
The theory is also put forth in other videos posted that all planets and moons behave this way. Is this idea really that far out there? Some stars behave in this manner, right? They begin as extremely dense matter and then grow, creating more complex atoms in the process, which clump together and form planets. Why shouldn’t planets behave similarly? The theory puts forth that the moon is expanding as well and that the gravity of the earth has caused the huge “seas” on the moon to be nearly exclusively on the side that faces the earth.
The whole thing is presented in a semi-paranoid manner with some serious quackery on the side. I think they are extrapolating a lot of things that are meritless and clouding the issue. The video also suggests that scientists are ignoring the evidence for this theory because it jeopardizes our entire undertsanding of physics. But does it really? I don’t see a problem as long as mass and energy are conserved. I can’t see any other major problems fitting this theory into our current understanding of physics. In other words, if enough data were gathered to prove that this theory is better than tectonic theory, I would have no problem admitting “we were wrong” and I don’t think any self-respecting scientist would when presented with sufficient evidence.
I’d really like to hear what people think of this theory, and what evidence could disprove it or give it strength.
Well other than the fact that it would defy everything we know of chemistry, physics, and geology I guess it’s possible.
We understand plate tectonics fairly well. New crust is created by the upwelling of magma which spread apart existing plates. At the same time pieces of crust subside under other pieces returning an equivalent mass to a molten state. You can look at Iceland as an example of the former and the ring of fire as evidence for the latter.
This is almost always a surefire sign of quackery, and always a surefire sign of ignorance of science. Something that “jeopardizes our entire understanding of physics” would, if held up under peer review, make its author rich and famous along with landing him or her in the history books. Einstein jeopardized our entire understanding of physics. Ask yourself what scientist would not want to be the next Einstein.
The continents do fit together pretty well on the Atlantic side, which is evidence for the notion that they did once fit together on that side. Which is, indeed, a significant part of plate tectonics. But they don’t really fit together very well at all on the Pacific side, so there’s no reason to suppose that they did (at least, not any time in the geologically recent past, and not at the same time that they fit together on the Atlantic).
Then there’s the question of how it would be expanding. The current density of the Earth is about the same as that of iron, and the composition of the asteroid belt (formed from the same raw materials as the Earth) shows that iron is a very common thing for big solid objects in the Solar System to be made of. So it’s reasonable to conclude that the Earth, or at least most of its innards, is made of iron. But what was it made of back when it was smaller? It would have to be something much more dense, and you just can’t compress iron that much. Even gold or osmium wouldn’t be dense enough to account for the size change you’d need to make the continents cover the surface, and that’d still leave the question of how it turned into the iron we have now. Or if it was some exotic form of matter more dense than any element, then why don’t we see any of that exotic substance in the asteroids?
As for the gravity, the gravitational field is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. So if the Earth expanded by a factor of 1.5, gravity would decrease by a factor of 1/(1.5[sup]2[/sup]), or be less than half of what it was before.
I wouldn’t mind some specifics. I’m interested in the hard facts that prove this theory to be wrong.
There’s one explanation on this site: http://athome.web.cern.ch/athome/emc2/how.html
I’m not making any claims as to how this would be occuring in the earth’s core. But it is possible under current physics theory.
Agree completely, which is why I mention it. If you go to the guy’s website he goes way off on tangents about new types of particles that are invisible to us, etc. I can’t swallow that, but what I was thinking is what if he is right about only one thing - the expansion of the earth. I am curious to know what specific laws of physics would totally refute only that part of the theory.
Thank you, Chronos, for the gravity calcs. College is a vague memory as it is, let alone physics class. I can’t remember that far back.
As to the mechanism of the expansion, I guess I had some vague idea about a core that resembled the core of a neutron star, like one gigantic molecule, only much, much smaller. Or perhaps some gravitational field effect, warping space. Or something.
Well, when plants photosynthesize, they are locking in some energy which adds to the total mass of the planet.
Which brings us to an even more shocking conclusion about carbon-release levels, far more shocking than even AGW: if we continue to burn deposited fossil fuels, we will literally BE BURNING THE MASS OF THE EARTH AWAY! SAVE THE PLANET!
The problem with the energy-mass conversion is that if that energy is somehow stored inside the Earth, it’s already part of the mass. It’s not so much that energy can be converted to mass and vice-versa, as that mass is one kind of energy. Specifically, if you look at the amount of energy in a system, it depends on the reference frame you’re in. If there’s a reference frame where the energy is minimized, then whatever energy is left in that frame is the mass. And as long as you’re looking at a closed system, this amount actually can’t be changed (so mass is still conserved). For instance, if you have an electron and a positron that gently nudge together and annihilate, the resulting two photons, looked at together, still have a total mass equal to the mass of the electron plus the positron. Each individual photon has zero mass, but if you look at them separately, it’s no longer a closed system.
I’ve encountered a guy on a different board who believes something like this. He went by the handle ‘Novagaea’ and his hypothesis was something like this:
-At some point within the history of mankind, Earth was transformed from a small body with fully tesellating continents into the form we now see
-This cataclysmic event occurred as the Earth’s core was expelled (through what is today the Pacific Ocean) to become the moon
-The inside of the Earth became a seething mass of superheated plasma; the crust is just a thin bubble of rock floating on top of it
-As the earth expanded to its current size, the crust delaminated and the layers slipped over each other like the petals of an opening tulip - and for this reason, there are numerous geological features that are exact duplicates of each other (each one having originally been a separate layer in the same feature)
They do not start as extremely dense matter and then grow to form planets, they start as faint clouds the size of solar systems, made mostly of hydrogen, the smallest atoms possible, and then shrink. The planets are the little bits that don’t get sucked into the forming star.
A star continues to lose mass over its entire lifetime, both in the form of direct conversion to energy through fusion and gas escaping as solar wind. Many stars do expand tremendously near the end of their lifetime, but they are not gaining mass when they do so. To apply a simile, they are puffing up like marshmallows in a microwave, because they are then fully cooked. So this expansion comes at the cost of an equal amount of density.
I also came across a guy who (if I understood him correctly, which is by no means certain) believed that gravity was caused by the earth expanding at an ever-increasing rate - the acceleration of the earth’s crust outwards was what caused the apparent downward gravitational force.
Actually, there is a hypothetical model very similar to that often presented in educational materials to illustrate certain aspects of gravity, relativity, and the way we perceive the universe. Your guy probably saw it somewhere and mistakenly took it literally.
The Earth’s crust is accelerating outwards, but that doesn’t mean it’s expanding. When you can understand how those two statements can be simultaneously true, Grasshopper, you will understand the curvature of space.
Okay. Let’s go with the idea, proposed by some (but unproven), that there is a variety of black hole that has an “exit” someplace: that at the point of singularity, spacetime is torn in such a way as to produce a tunnel, with an egress point located elsewhere. Matter/energy flowing into the black hole is compressed by gravity, fed into the tunnel, and spewed out into spacetime at the exit.
Who’s to say we don’t have such an exit at the center of our planet? Maybe these exit points function as gravitational “hooks,” convenient places about which the largest planetoids tend to accumulate, since they are already swelling with material being funneled from the corresponding source singularity. Or, alternatively, perhaps once a growing planetoid gets to a certain size, it acquires enough gravitational energy to “punch through” the fabric of spacetime and provide an exit point for a black hole somewhere, and thus moves into a new phase of slow expansion, receiving material from the “other side.” Maybe black holes that don’t have exit points eventually explode, and the fact that we’re providing one means our sister singularity has been stabilized.
Anyway, to Chronos’s point, this means it is not a closed system. It’s more like a funnel.
</crackpot speculation>
(I don’t believe any of this for a minute. Just an idea that leaped to mind.)
So, your maintaining that the Earth expanded for billions of years, and then stopped dead at precisely the same moment of time that humans became able to measure its size with accuracy?
