Neal Adams - growing planets

Great Debates
1

Please post how Neal’s theories can be tested via the scientific method - realistic tests that would prove/disprove the theories.

If the planets are hollow, then their mass must be different than we imagine and/or gravity behaves differently. If the planets have different mass than we thought shouldn’t we see incoherent differences in gravity, for example, on the moon (the astronauts could have weight differently than predicted).

Although Neal Adams theory is inarguably incomplete thus far, so are the central dogmas.

P.S. “Growing Planets” is sometimes touchy with sensitive people, so lets try to keep the comments intellectually engaging an to the point.

2

It would be helpful, if you want this thread to go anywhere, to provide some context, preferably a link, explaining who Neal Adams is and what you’re talking about.

3

Are you talking about this?

I’m sure a geologist like Una Persson will be along presently.

4

Sorry - and I don’t think I can edit parents posts…

Here is Neal Adams root science page: http://www.nealadams.com/morescience.html
Here is an podcast interview (you’ll probably have to skip through): http://www.theskepticsguide.org/skepticsguide/podcastinfo.asp?pid=52
…And there are lots of other things you can find - most of which are sensationalist accusations of crackpotism.

He believes that a model of expanding or growing planets better explains the long-held theories of continental movement, subduction, mountain creation, and many other details.

5

When I saw the name Neal Adams my first thought was of course, “my favorite comic artist!” I was right.

Nothing substantive to add though. It seems to me if the earth were growing scientists would have no reason to deny something so obvious.

6

[QUOTE=human_extinction]
Please post how Neal’s theories can be tested via the scientific method - realistic tests that would prove/disprove the theories.

If the planets are hollow, then their mass must be different than we imagine and/or gravity behaves differently.
[/QUOTE]
We already have techniques that let us “see” the interior of the planet down to the core, by analyzing both earthquake shockwaves and manmade shockwaves. Rather like CAT scanning the Earth. No hollow spaces. And, there’s no materiel that could support that much weight, anyway.

7

[QUOTE=human_extinction]
Please post how Neal’s theories can be tested via the scientific method - realistic tests that would prove/disprove the theories.

If the planets are hollow, then their mass must be different than we imagine and/or gravity behaves differently. If the planets have different mass than we thought shouldn’t we see incoherent differences in gravity, for example, on the moon (the astronauts could have weight differently than predicted).

Although Neal Adams theory is inarguably incomplete thus far, so are the central dogmas.

P.S. “Growing Planets” is sometimes touchy with sensitive people, so lets try to keep the comments intellectually engaging an to the point.
[/QUOTE]

I must have missed the hollow part. I saw it more as:

  1. Earth is a molten ball of rock
  2. It starts cooling from the outside in. This means that the outside will be solid while the inside is liquid
  3. The liquid expands cracking the shell, kind of like eggs will sometimes do while hard-boiling them
  4. I guess the now exposed liquid becomes flash-frozen and doesn’t fill in the cracks.
8

[QUOTE=human_extinction]
Please post how Neal’s theories can be tested via the scientific method - realistic tests that would prove/disprove the theories.

If the planets are hollow, then their mass must be different than we imagine and/or gravity behaves differently. If the planets have different mass than we thought shouldn’t we see incoherent differences in gravity, for example, on the moon (the astronauts could have weight differently than predicted).
[/QUOTE]

You’ve answered your own question, have you not? If what Adams is proposing is true, then we should see phenomena we’re not seeing; the Earth’s gravity should not be as great as it is AND the force of gravity should be constantly declining as measured on the Earth’s surface, gravity would vary from place to place by a measurable amount, and as Der Trihs has pointed out, open spaces or spaces of unusually little density would show up in sonographs and such.

The central problem with Mr. Adams’s theories, though, is that he is basing his theory on how things look when you animate them with Flash. I don’t mean to denigrate what he’s saying, but his thesis for why the continents fit together is, taken at face value, not any more compelling than continental drift. He’s not really saying much more than “I don’t get continental drift, but look; if I make the Earth expand like a balloon, and move the continents a certain way, I can make it look like Pangea.” The more you dig in to it (ha ha) the less compelling it seems. Forget his Flash animation of how the continents fit together and considering the basic physics, it’s simply not possible for a planet like Earth to expand the way he describes it; gravity is just too overhelming a force to allow it. Gravity will inevitably force a planet like Earth to form as dense a ball as its component materials, and time, will allow.

The force of gravity isn’t some mystery that Mr. Adams’s theory pokes a hole in. We know how powerful it is; it’s not like we’re relying just on the Earth’s gravity to tell us how it works, we have other planets, stars, asteroids and such to go by in terms of measuring its effect, and it’s just not possible for a mass as large as the Earth to expand like this. It simply cannot be.

We had a terrific thread last year on “what would the Earth be like if it was shaped like a cube?” (Answer; Six sides that could never communicate with each other, all the water pooled in six central seas, you’d be walking uphill whenever you walked away from the centers, and the eight corners would be mountains hundreds of times taller than Everest.) By at its core the question was fantasy, because a mass as large as Earth CANNOT be a cube. If you could magically make it a cube with the snap of your fingers, it would immediately, and quite violently, collapse back into a sphere as dense as its matter could collapse into.

Mr. Adams isn’t proposing a cubical planet, but he IS proposing a planet that defies gravity for no reason he can explain (or even bother to propose.) Mr. Adams’s idea is just not compatible with the existence of gravity.

9

[QUOTE=Saint Cad]
I must have missed the hollow part. I saw it more as:

  1. Earth is a molten ball of rock
  2. It starts cooling from the outside in. This means that the outside will be solid while the inside is liquid
  3. The liquid expands cracking the shell, kind of like eggs will sometimes do while hard-boiling them
  4. I guess the now exposed liquid becomes flash-frozen and doesn’t fill in the cracks.
    [/QUOTE]
    I’ve spent part of this afternoon listening to his interview with Art Bell on Youtube. If I understand him correctly, he seems to think the earth & planets formed more or less the accepted way, but the earth was originally 1/4 its current size, with 1/4 its current gravity. There’s something he calls “pre-matter” which may or may not be dark matter - Adams is fond of saying he “doesn’t know” - and this pre-matter is constantly forming inside the planet’s core (as well as everywhere else too I guess). The pre-matter starts out as hydrogen, and just as the stars convert hydrogen into other elements, so too do these elements form inside the earth. Along with gases and pressure, the earth becomes a sort of expanding hollow geode.

Make of that what you will.

10

His explanation for mountain building does not match what we see on modern continents. Let’s assume that the Earth is expanding and the continents are in lateral tension in deep layers and lateral compression in the surface layers because the magma below them is getting ‘flatter’. One of Adams’ videos shows wrinkles forming in North America - the Rockies and Appalachians - while the Midwest remains flat. He specifically states that the middle of a continent will remain flat, without giving any explanation, although you would expect that the compressive force would be greatest there.

Anyway, if you look at South America, it is much longer N-S than it is E-W. On an expanding globe, the greatest strain would come from the flattening of the N-S curvature. So the mountains that form should tend to run east-west to relieve the compression. The Andes mountains rather spoil that, by running the wrong direction and lying right at the edge of the continent, where if anything there should be a lot of radial cracks spreading out.

11

I listened to the Skeptic’s interview segment.

Really, the nicest thing I can say is Neal Adams is a fairly smart guy, he genuinely likes to think, and he asks interesting questions. If I were a teacher, I’d probably enjoy him as a student. But, he needs to quit at the asking questions part and learn to think a bit more critically before somewhat arrogantly proposing his own theories to essentially rewrite physics and explain everything. He claims he studies all the sciences and feels this gives him a perspective which too-specified scientists lack, while also admitting he doesn’t study the sciences too closely, as in “doing the actual math.”

He’s got a friendly, perhaps even charismatic voice. He put me to sleep earlier this afternoon. :slight_smile: I’m glad he’s proposing a “scientific” theory and not trying to start a religion.

12

[QUOTE=human_extinction]

He believes that a model of expanding or growing planets better explains the long-held theories of continental movement, subduction, mountain creation, and many other details.
[/QUOTE]

How? I mean, specifically, how does it explain it *better *than the current theory of Plate Tectonics, which AFAIK doesn’t have any holes that need a “new” theory to explain.

I am a geologist by training.

13

I’ve mentioned this before - in connection with a hypothesis of this type, but not necessarily this particular example - there seem to be a number of people out there with highly unconventional views about geology - I came across one guy who called himself ‘Novagaea’ - his position was that at some point during human history, the Earth’s core had burst out of (what is now) the Pacific Ocean, to become the moon - the remainder of the Earth then inflated like a balloon (filled with superheated plasma) - during the process of inflation, the oceans were formed (beforehand, the land masses fitted together seamlessly to cover the entire, smaller Earth) - also during this process, the Earth’s crust delaminated, supposedly resulting in similar/matching geographic features appearing in different places on the globe.

All backed up with photos of the matching terrain features, and a picture of a big ball of plasticene - comprising the shapes of the landmasses, peeled off the surface of a globe and smooshed together to completely and seamlessly cover a smaller sphere.

Possibly the most entertaining deluded nutcase I ever had the pleasure of talking to.

14

First of all, let’s all bear in mind that the “Expanding earth” thoery is not new; it was first put forward when Neal Adams was in high school. I don’t know if Adams has claimed to have come up with the idea himself so I’m not accusing him of stealing other people’s work, but this is nothing new. He’s just picking up an old idea that was discarded about forty years ago, though he’s added some wacky made-up physics. His position on gravity is especially fascinating; he says it doesn’t exist, and claims magnetism keeps things in orbit. Why it is that non-metallic things seem to be equally affected, I can’t really explain.

[QUOTE=Mangetout]
I’ve mentioned this before - in connection with a hypothesis of this type, but not necessarily this particular example - there seem to be a number of people out there with highly unconventional views about geology
[/QUOTE]

The explanation for how the Earth got to be the way it is is a fairly recent one, actually. It wasn’t until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that serious scientists started really examining continental drift as an explanation for why things are the way they are, and plate tectonics weren’t worked out until after the Second World War. Within our lifetimes there were highly qualified, intelligent geologists who thought continental drift was bunk. Our understanding of the Earth’s interior is indirect to say the least. So we’re still a bit early on the process, and it’s understandable that there’s some weird theories out there (although I admit that the Moom exploding out of the Earth after the evolution of humans, an event that would doubtlessly kill all multicellular life on the planet, is weirder than most.)

As funny as this is, it reflects a problem with Adams’s expanding Earth theory; if the Earth was all one big land mass before, where was all the water?

Maybe I’m just stupid, but my limited understanding of geology is such that the amount of surface water our planet has is not some recent development, and has been relatively consistent for at least a billion years. I don’t understand why the water would be underneath the Earth but then well up to the surface during such a dramatic expansion. Either gravity works or it doesn’t.

15

[QUOTE=RickJay]
As funny as this is, it reflects a problem with Adams’s expanding Earth theory; if the Earth was all one big land mass before, where was all the water?
[/QUOTE]
I’m not sure if Novagaea ever covered that in any detail, but it’s worth noting that the amount of surface water on the earth doesn’t add up to a very large volume, compared to the Earth itself - if the Earth were the size of a basketball, the water, collected together, would be about the size of a large marble - so there’s plenty of scope for crackpots to say it was tucked away somewhere.

16

Like a vapor canopy. :slight_smile:

17

[QUOTE=RickJay]
First of all, let’s all bear in mind that the “Expanding earth” thoery is not new; it was first put forward when Neal Adams was in high school. I don’t know if Adams has claimed to have come up with the idea himself so I’m not accusing him of stealing other people’s work, but this is nothing new.
[/QUOTE]
No, Adams’ personal cause célèbre is some Australian geologist who proposed the idea 40 years ago. The other meanie scientists shot his theory out of the water and Adams feels he failed because he wasn’t sufficiently conversant in the other sciences. A failing Adams is now working to correct.

As for where the water came from, I think it has to do with the mysterious way the universe is continually making new matter; hydrogen and oxygen combine and, um, it gets on the surface.

18

[QUOTE=human_extinction]
Sorry - and I don’t think I can edit parents posts…

[/QUOTE]

What’s a Freudian slip? It’s when you say one thing and mean your mother. :wink:

Carry on…

19

[QUOTE=levdrakon]
No, Adams’ personal cause célèbre is some Australian geologist who proposed the idea 40 years ago. The other meanie scientists shot his theory out of the water and Adams feels he failed because he wasn’t sufficiently conversant in the other sciences. A failing Adams is now working to correct.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t mean to beat up on Adams, who may be a very nice man and certainly would not be the first person to get a little too vocal about areas in which he’s not exceptionally qualified to speak on… but this is pretty much the definition of pseudoscience; “I have already decided how the universe works, and now I’m going to go learn some sciency words so I can argue it better.”

It’s actually an excellent object lesson in what constitutes good science and what does not.

20

One of the videos that I watched showed a positron turning into a proton via interaction with 919 (918? 917? whatever) particles of prematter. That should be an easily testable phenomenon, since positrons can be produced routinely.

He also claims that prematter particles are undetectable because they do not participate in elecrtomagnetic interactions, except when they are ‘weakly attracted’ to positrons (but not, apparently, electrons). But if they are attracted to positrons, they must interact electromagnetically, no matter how weakly, and we should be able to see their effects. Gravity is a pretty weak force, after all, nearly unmeasurable on the scale of single atoms, but quite evident when enough are gathered in one place.