Expanding Earth Theory - WTF???

Reality Check said:
If the Earth was covered with deep (kilometers) water until a few hundred million years ago then none of the marine fossils that form in shallow water would exist. They do and so the Earth has not totally covered with deep water until a few hundred million years ago.
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I don't think that's the time scale I saw hypothesized.
Another problem:
Shrinking the Earth increases its density and gravity. So a 50% size about 250 million years ago means that gravity is 4 times greater. But there is no sign of this in the fossil record or in astronomy (e.g. the same mechanism should apply to all of the planets and the stars).
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I agree. This is a serious problem with the theory. On the other hand, there are various theories on how the earth, as well as other planets, developed. Clearly, the earth was once much smaller than it is now. I believe there are some competing theories about how it to be the size it is today.
Another problem:
An expanding Earth means that all of the continents move at the same rate (the rate of expansion). But that is not the case - India has just about raced across the Indian Sea to crash into Asia and form the Himalayas.
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I don't think that is a requirement of this theory.
Another problem:
Have a look at list of supercontinents. Rodinia, Pangaea and Gondwana have plenty of evidence for their existence (some of the others are hypothetical).
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I don't think this theory discounts the existance of all the supercontinents. My recollection (I read about it more than a year ago) was that it had a different explanation for how and why the supercontinent dissembled.

I don't know. At any rate, if the earth is actually expanding, we should soon have sufficiently accurate data over a long enough period of time to determine it conclusively with our instruments. At the time I was reading about it, the expected difference over the period of time data was available was smaller than the margin of error.
 
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Last year on a forum I visit from time to time I bumped into a guy who has spent 25 years “researching” expanding earth stuff. The pseudoscience was jaw dropping. I was going to link the thread but apparently it’s been archived. It would have provided a comprehensive view on this wacky theory. It was a Comic book forum so the guy in question was apparently a fairly close associate of Neal Adams.
 
Beth said:
Actually, I gather there are some professional Ph.D. geologists that are giving the theory some serious consideration. It nicely explains a number of puzzling facts like how come the oldest rock on earth is at the tops of mountains, with evidence of having once been underwater. If the whole earth was covered in water when it was smaller, that fits. The sea floor is the youngest crust, being quite surprizingly young all over. And one geologist claimed to be able to plot a circumpherence around the earth that contained no subduction zones.

Now, I'm not a geologist, so I can't really assess the truth of those claims. Assuming those claims are correct, it certainly makes the theory more appealing.
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I agree that this theory is not widely accepted in geology but it is certainly not as ridiculous as some suggest.

"This book is a new approach in the development of global tectonics. It deals with a new variant of the Earth's expansion concept: the model of 'eduction', i.e. of lifting up the mantel material onto the Earth's surface in the active margins of oceans and non-closed character of the mantle currents. The author developed a thorough and comprehensive scientific scenario of tectonic evolution of the Earth using the idea of its radius increase. The most significant and interesting part of the book is a critical analysis of the history of development of plate tectonics. Another remarkable part of the book is the explanation of existing seismicity --- its specific and geographical distribution from the point of view of tectonic evolution of the lithosphere.

This book should serve as a trigger for a critical review of contemporary tectonic concepts."

Global Eduction Tectonics of the Expanding Earth By Yu. V. Chudinov
http://www.brill.nl/product_id10725.htm
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nimzo
 
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JEROME DA GNOME said:
arthwollipot said:
Plate tectonics. Why? Are you going to go all postmodern about geology as well?
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How does plate tectonics explain the young sea floor in comparison to the old continents?
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So I see that the answer is "yes".

Those rocks are older because it takes more time to get pushed up that high. Crustal material is made on the sea floor (as well as a few other places such as Iceland).
 
arthwollipot said:
So I see that the answer is "yes".

Those rocks are older because it takes more time to get pushed up that high. Crustal material is made on the sea floor (as well as a few other places such as Iceland).
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You have not answered why the vast sea floor (70% of the surface of the Earth?) is so young.

:gnome:
 
JEROME DA GNOME said:
Where does this new sea floor come from?

Expanding earth?

Remember we are talking about 70% of the surface of the Earth.
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No, Jerome. Like I said, new rock is made on the sea floor. The moving continental plates allow fresh magma to circulate up through the gaps, where it cools and becomes new seafloor.

Is this going to be another black hole thing with you? Are you genuinely interested in learning what mainstream science says about geology?
 
arthwollipot said:
No, Jerome. Like I said, new rock is made on the sea floor. The moving continental plates allow fresh magma to circulate up through the gaps, where it cools and becomes new seafloor.

Is this going to be another black hole thing with you? Are you genuinely interested in learning what mainstream science says about geology?
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If new seafloor is constantly being created - and I'm not aware of any disagreement on that point - where is all the old crust going? I'm aware of a number of well established places where the seafloor is spreading and magma wells up and creates new crust. I'm also aware of a few established subduction zones where crust is being recycled into the magma. But are they equal or is it possible that more creation of new crust is going on than subduction of old crust? That's harder to establish and it's not at all clear to me which is the case.
 
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gdnp said:
Just to throw a little factoid into the debate, the question of "where did all the water come from?" is relatively minor. A simple calculation:

Diameter of the earth at the equator:7926 miles
Average ocean depth: roughly 2.5 miles

Ratio: 3170 to 1

In other words, if the earth was a ball 12 inches in diameter, the average depth of the ocean would be about 1/10th of a millimeter.

So the question of "where did all the water come from?" is relatively minor compared to " where did all the size come from?".
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Well.... not quite, if the earth was a ball about 12 inches in diameter (about .3m) then the entire earth (in this particular scenario) would be covered in about 100 mL of water. Thats probably enough to make an ice cube or two. The question remains as to where the other 1.37x10^21 liters of water came from.

So, because this theory gets my blood boiling a little, I'm going to do some maths.

The amount of land covering the earth is about 148,940,000 square km,
in the video, this guy showed that the entire earth was covered by land at some point, very little was covered by water. For the sake of this thread, I'll assume that there were no oceans. The radius of the earth is about 6371 km, assuming that the entire planet was at one point covered by land means that the surface area of land currently would be the surface area of the entire planet, at some point. Meaning that the radius of the earth would have been about 3443 km, about half of what it is now. I'm blatantly ignoring the problem as to where the water came from, because... well... I think if I tried to figure that one out, my brain would leave my cranium in disgust.

Assuming that large mounds of dirt haven't been shoveled onto this planet by aliens, that means that the same amount of mass was crammed into a sphere of six times less volume than it is now. This would mean the soil would have been too compact for things to grow in it. Gravity would also be seriously affected in this scenario, the acceleration due to gravity would go from 9.8 m/s/s to about 36 m/s/s. Not to mention that most sane biologists who wear their pants on their legs, rather than on their head, say that life began in the water, and evolved from there... kinda hard when the entire surface of the planet is covered in land.

The dinosaurs and marsupials this guy mentioned wouldn't have been wandering between Antarctica, Australia and Africa probably because they would have been imaginary.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
A few? There's subduction zones all over the world.
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Well, yes, they are scattered all around globe, as are the rifts where the seafloor is spreading apart. The question remains are they equal or is it possible that more creation of new crust is going on than subduction of old crust?

arthwollipot said:
And what's more, the crust that isn't being subducted is being pushed up into mountains. Mount Everest is getting two inches taller every year. That is why rocks found on mountaintops are older than rocks found on the seafloor. It takes a long time to push up a mountain.
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It's true that some mantal is rising and mountains are getting taller, but I don't think that the uplift is a reasonable explanation for where the additional crust is going unless you accept the expanding earth hypothesis. Taller mountains increase the diameter of the earth so I think that supports the hypothesis of the expanding earth more than the static earth scenario.

Uncle Vanya said:
Well.... not quite, if the earth was a ball about 12 inches in diameter (about .3m) then the entire earth (in this particular scenario) would be covered in about 100 mL of water. Thats probably enough to make an ice cube or two. The question remains as to where the other 1.37x10^21 liters of water came from.

So, because this theory gets my blood boiling a little, I'm going to do some maths.
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I'm not sure why this theory gets your blood boiling. I find it intriguing. As nimzov said, "this theory is not widely accepted in geology but it is certainly not as ridiculous as some suggest". It does have some legimate geological scholars supporting it. Apparently Mercury is shrinking http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7489557.stm, so the size of planets in our solar system is not necessarily static.

In the end, as I noted before, we will soon be able to test whether or not the earth is expanding via direct measurement. That should settle it.

Incidently, the reason the video doesn't show the smaller earth covered in water is to visually show the way the continents fit together on a smaller globe.
 
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Just curious Jerome.

Do you enjoy living in a self made world where your version of physics, politics, biology and reality is not accepted by anyone except perhaps those with schizotypal personality disorder and schizophrenics?
 
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