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The Earth is expanding?

My brother sent me this mind-blowing video explaining how the accepted plate tectonics (continental drift) theory is all wrong. The video argues that the earth is in fact expanding. In other words, the continents are not moving around like sheets of ice in the ocean, rather they’re being pushed apart by an expanding earth and unlike in continental drift theory, there is no subduction of plates into the mantle only a gradually increasing planetary surface.

It sounds crazy, but Neal Adams makes a pretty good visual case for it. I’m skeptical because if this theory were true it would change everything. Although, it could answer an earlier entry where I wondered why gigantism seems so common in prehistory and yet not so common today. If the earth were smaller, more like Mars, animals would be able to grow to enormous size due to lighter local gravity. At the risk of sounding like an idiot, this is the same reason Mars has mountains and canyons that are miles high and deep. It’s easier for things to stand out higher when gravity is less of a burden. Although, if the mass of the smaller earth and the larger earth is the same, the gravity should be the same as well, correct?

For there to be greater local gravity over time the earth would have to either increase in mass due to some unknown phenomenon or matter would have to accrete from outer space, maybe as a result of cataclysmic meteor strikes or comet impacts. Also, if you view the video, you’ll see that there is little ocean in their visualization. Does this mean the oceans were much deeper in the past or that there was less water? Assuming their theory is valid, could the additional mass and additional water be accounted for by the impact of a giant icey comet? I don’t have the answers, but I’d like to see a refutation of the expanding earth theory.

Of course, Wikipedia has a good article explaining everything including my puzzlement at dinosaur size:

The primary objection to Expanding Earth Theory centered around the lack of a accepted process by which the Earth’s radius could increase. This issue, along with the rise of the theory of Subduction, caused the scientific community to dismiss the geological evidence Carey and others presented. The evidence for continental matching even on the Pacific facing sides became irrelevant, as did the claims that a smaller sized and lower gravity Earth facilitated the growth of dinosaurs to their relatively enormous size.

Here’s a question, if everything in the universe were increasing in size at the same rate, how would we know? This is Adams’ basic thesis, that the entire universe is growing:

Adams believes his theory presents a more concise and comprehensive reading of available scientific evidence which indicates the universe is growing, not exploding or merely expanding. Along with other Expanding Earth researchers and enthusiasts, he utilizes the internet to encourage discussions of it and disseminates his theory to the scientific community and wider audiences.

Crazy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Religion/philosophy, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 8 Comments

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    except his theory is completely blown out of the water by vast amounts of evidence that subduction does indeed occur...but if you read Adams' writings, he simply and conveniently dismisses subduction without any discussion.

    it's a quirky and entertaining 'theory' that does have some history, but was left behind decades ago after real data and information addressed it

    the fact that his illustrations and animations are pleasing to the eye (which they are) should not be mistaken for science
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    Brian, good point. I was more mesmerized by the video than by the science behind it, definitely.
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    He's such a great artist...it'd be great if he made these illustrations with current ideas and reconstructions of paleogeography.

    I blogged about Neal recently here

    love this blog, by the way...just came across it randomly
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    Thank you, Brian. I am glad you have stopped by.
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    Regarding Expanding Earth and water:

    I was also puzzled about the miraculous appearance of water in the video and in other theories of expanding earth. Then one day I seemed to recall that the bible said that the earth was first covered by water. I also recalled that scientist said all life initially resided in the ocean! Well ... it seems clear now to me that there is were the water came from. It was always here! The land was a result of inflation of the globe. When that happened, there wasn't enough water to cover the whole globe anymore, so dry land surfaced. The shallows, where most creatures resided comfortably, and fossilized after death, are now way up in the top of mountains, where you can find shell fish fossils today.

    I'm no scientist, so I can't (and wouldn't even try) to prove this. But, it seems that this answers the question of where the water came from more clearly then the theory that comets deposited it. That is just silly. There's just too much water here. Besides, analysis of comet water indicate that it is not the same as earth's (different isotope makeup), so it couldn't have come from them.
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    On the Expanding Earth Theory,

    Up until around the 1950s and 1960s, The Expanding Earth Theory was a contender. When the theory of plate tectonics was pretty much validated by the discovery of the reversals of the Earth's magnetic field, the E.E Theory was discarded. By examining the newly created oceanic crust on either side of the spreading centers, it was found that their magnetic imprint was a mirror image on either side of the spreading centers. You can think of them as stripes that are parallel to the spreading center, each stripe corresponding to the duration of a particular magnetic (north/south or south/north) polarity.
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    Magnetic Reversal doesn't explain water content.

    So, the field reverses once in a while. That doesn't prove that the earth wasn't expanding. The reversal just happened when the expansion was in progress, drawing apart the 'plates' at that time.

    Still, the question of WHERE DID THE WATER COME FROM is not being addressed. Quit ducking out.
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    I find this theory to be very interesting. I was wondering about the water situation myself, and I've been thinking about it and think I may have an answer, so I've decided to throw in my 2 cents and provide some possibility:

    "Where did the water come from?"

    Well, I recall watching a TV show about the Dinosaurs, and they explained that the reason why Dinosaurs, insects, etc., where so much larger back then was because there was more Oxygen (i.e. "Air") at that time.

    Remember these facts:

    "Air", is 2 parts Oxygen, 1 part Hydrogen, represented as o2.
    "Water" is 2 parts Hydrogen, 1 part Oxygen, represented as h2o.
    "Ozone", is 3 parts Oxygen, represented as o3.

    Matter cannot be created, nor destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.

    I tell you these for a reason.

    Let's say you have 30,000 molecules of "Air", consisting of 20,000 molecules of Oxygen, and 10,000 molecules of Hydrogen, and no "ozone".

    Out of those 30,000 molecules, you could take 10,000 molecules of Hydrogen, and add 5,000 molecules of Oxygen and get "water" (h2o). You would then have 15,000 remaining Oxygen molecules, which could then be formed into "Ozone" (o3) which would leave no usable "air" (o2).

    Starting to see what I'm getting at?

    I propose that the "Air" was gradually converted to "water", possibly due to greater gravitational forces being applied to the atmosphere due to the expansion of the planet's surface. The creation of "Water" and "Ozone" would have reduced the amount of Oxygen in the atmosphere, whilst creating surface water. This explains both: A) how there was more oxygen in the age of dinosaurs, and B) where the water in the oceans came from in the expanding earth theory.

    One scary implication of this theory is this: If as the Earth expands, "air" is converted to "Water" and "Ozone", that means that "air" is still being converted to "water" and "ozone" which means that gradually the supply of usable oxygen is decreasing, thus meaning life could one day face extinction due to suffocation.
 

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