Expanding Earth

Expanding Earth or Growing Earth is a hypothesis asserting that the position and relative movement of continents is at least partially due to the volume of the Earth increasing.

While suggested historically, since the recognition of plate tectonics in the 1970s, scientific consensus has rejected any expansion of the Earth. Conversely, geophysical global cooling was the hypothesis that various features could be explained by the earth contracting.

Contents

Different forms of the hypothesis

There are 3 forms of the expanding earth hypothesis.

  1. Earth's mass has remained constant, and thus the gravitational pull at the surface has decreased over time;
  2. Earth's mass has grown with the volume in such a way that the surface gravity has remained constant;
  3. Earth's gravity at its surface has increased over time, in line with its hypothesized growing mass and volume;

Many of the remaining expanding Earth adherents have been inspired by the ideas of the late Australian geologist S. Warren Carey, who suggested expansion in the 1950s and 60s – prior to the development of the theory of Plate tectonics.[1]

Expansion with constant mass

During the second voyage of HMS Beagle, in 1834–1835 Charles Darwin hypothesized that an expanding earth could explain the elevation of the landmass of South America as shown by mountain building in the Andes and stepped plains featuring raised beaches in Patagonia. Later in 1835 he abandoned this idea, and proposed that as mountains rose, the ocean floor subsided.[2]

In 1889 and 1909 Roberto Mantovani published a hypothesis of earth expansion and continental drift. He assumed that a closed continent covered the entire surface of a smaller earth. Thermal expansion led to volcanic activity, which broke the land mass into smaller continents. These continents drifted away from each other because of further expansion at the rip-zones, where oceans currently lie.[3][4] Although Alfred Wegener noticed some similarities to his own hypothesis of continental drift, he did not mention earth expansion as the cause of drift in Mantovani's hypothesis.[5]

A compromise between earth-expansion and earth-contraction is the "theory of thermal cycles" by Irish physicist John Joly. He assumed that heat flow from radioactive decay inside the Earth surpasses the cooling of the Earth's exterior. Together with British geologist Arthur Holmes, Joly proposed a hypothesis in which the Earth loses its heat by cyclic periods of expansion. In their hypothesis, expansion led to cracks and joints in the Earth's interior, that could fill with magma. This was followed by a cooling phase, where the magma would freeze and become solid rock again, causing the Earth to shrink.[6]

Mass accretion

In 1888 Ivan Osipovich Yarkovsky suggested that some sort of aether is absorbed within the earth and transformed into new chemical elements, forcing the celestial bodies to expand. This was connected with his mechanical explanation of gravitation.[7] Also the theses of Ott Christoph Hilgenberg (1933, 1974)[8][9] and Nikola Tesla[10] were based on absorption and transformation of aether-energy into normal matter.

S. Warren Carey, starting in 1956, proposed some sort of mass increase in the planets and said that a final solution to the problem is only possible in a cosmological perspective in connection with the expansion of the universe.[11]

Decrease of the gravitational constant

Paul Dirac suggested in 1938 that the universal gravitational constant had decreased in the billions of years of its existence. This led German physicist Pascual Jordan to a modification of general relativity and to propose in 1964 that all planets slowly expand. Contrary to most of the other explanations this one was at least within the framework of physics considered as a viable hypothesis. [12]

Measurements of a possible variation of the gravitational constant showed an upper limit for a relative change of 5•10−12, excluding Jordan's idea.[13]

Scientific consensus

Generally, the scientific community finds evidence in support of the Expanding Earth theory to be lacking, and uses the following arguments to dismiss it:

Present day advocates

Australian Geologist James Maxlow has produced a series of twenty-three reconstructions of a smaller Earth suggesting a 99%[21] matching of all the continental boundaries. Italian Geologist Giancarlo Scalera has written several papers[22] in support of evidence for an expanding Earth.

Whole-earth decompression dynamics was proposed in 2005 by J. Marvin Herndon who postulates Earth formation from a Jupiter-sized gas giant by catastrophic loss of its gaseous atmosphere with subsequent decompression and expansion of the rocky remnant planet resulting in decompression cracks at continental margins which are filled in by basalts from mid-ocean ridges.[23]

Another present day advocate of an expanding Earth is comics artist Neal Adams, who suggests the Earth is growing and not merely expanding, and proposes his ideas within a "Growing Earth-Growing Universe" Theory.[24] Adams has made video animations that graphically illustrate his hypothesis, in which new mass is manufactured by a hypothesized electron/positron pair production process within the core of the Earth and all celestial bodies.[25]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Jeff Ogrisseg (2009), "Dogmas may blinker mainstream scientific thinking", The Japan Times, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091122x2.html 
  2. ^ Herbert, Sandra (1991), "Charles Darwin as a prospective geological author", British Journal for the History of Science 24 (2): 159–192 [184–188], doi:10.1017/S0007087400027060, JSTOR 4027165, http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A342&pageseq=26, retrieved 24 October 2008 
  3. ^ Mantovani, R. (1889), "Les fractures de l’écorce terrestre et la théorie de Laplace", Bull. Soc. Sc. Et Arts Réunion: 41–53 
  4. ^ Mantovani, R. (1909), "L’Antarctide", Je m’instruis. La science pour tous 38: 595–597 
  5. ^ Wegener, A. (1929/1966), The Origin of Continents and Oceans, Courier Dover Publications, ISBN 0486617084  See Online version in German.
  6. ^ Hohl, R. (1970), "Geotektonische Hypothesen", Die Entwicklungsgeschichte der Erde. Brockhaus Nachschlagewerk Geologie mit einem ABC der Geologie Bd. 1: 279–321 
  7. ^ Yarkovsky, Ivan Osipovich (1888), Hypothese cinetique de la Gravitation universelle et connexion avec la formation des elements chimiques, Moskau 
  8. ^ Hilgenberg, O.C. (1933), Vom wachsenden Erdball (The Expanding Earth), Berlin: Giessmann & Bartsch, Bibcode 1933QB981.H6....... 
  9. ^ Hilgenberg, O.C. (1974), "Geotektonik, neuartig gesehen", Geotektonische Forschungen 45: 1–194, ISBN 978-3-510-50011-6 
  10. ^ Tesla, N. (1935), Expanding Sun Will Explode Someday Tesla Predicts, New York: New York Herald Tribune, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_York_Herald_Tribune/1935/08/18/Expanding_Sun_Will_Explode_Some_Day_Tesla_Predicts 
  11. ^ Samuel Warren Carey (1988), Theories of the earth and universe: a history of dogma in the earth sciences (illustrated ed.), Stanford University Press, p. 347-350, ISBN 9780804713641, http://books.google.es/books?id=l_0l0KOdHLoC&pg=PA347&lpg=PA347&dq=sam+elton&source=bl&ots=GaxCPuvbKl&sig=uQCezu2rHiSzTeMy6Y1TuiSoR6w&hl=en&ei=x2ToTvTvJMnJhAev_cHcCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=sam%20elton&f=false 
  12. ^ Jordan, P. (1971), The expanding earth: some consequences of Dirac's gravitation hypothesis, Oxford: Pergamon Press 
  13. ^ Born, M. (1964/2003), Die Relativitätstheorie Einsteins (Einstein's theory of relativity), Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-publisher, ISBN 3-540-00470-X 
  14. ^ Wu, X.; X. Collilieux, Z. Altamimi, B. L. A. Vermeersen, R. S. Gross, I. Fukumori (8 July 2011). "Accuracy of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame origin and Earth expansion". Geophysical Research Letters 38: 5 PP.. doi:10.1029/2011GL047450. http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL047450.shtml. Retrieved 17 July 2011. 
  15. ^ Fowler (1990), pp 281 & 320–327; Duff (1993), pp 609–613; Stanley (1999), pp 223–226
  16. ^ Bucher, K. (2005), "Blueschists, eclogites, and decompression assemblages of the Zermatt-Saas ophiolite: High-pressure metamorphism of subducted Tethys lithosphere", American Mineralogist 90: 821, doi:10.2138/am.2005.1718 
  17. ^ Van Der Lee, Suzan; Nolet, Guust (1997), "Seismic image of the subducted trailing fragments of the Farallon plate", Nature 386 (6622): 266, doi:10.1038/386266a0 
  18. ^ McElhinney, M. W., Taylor, S. R., and Stevenson, D. J. (1978), "Limits to the expansion of Earth, Moon, Mars, and Mercury and to changes in the gravitational constant", Nature 271 (5643): 316–321, doi:10.1038/271316a0 
  19. ^ Schmidt, P. W. and Clark, D. A. (1980), The response of palaeomagnetic data to Earth expansion, Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 61: 95–100, 1980, doi:10.1111/j.1365-246X.1980.tb04306.x
  20. ^ Williams, G.E. (2000), "Geological constraints on the Precambrian history of the Earth’s rotation and the moon’s orbit" (PDF), Reviews of Geophysics 38 (1): 37–59, Bibcode 2000RvGeo..38...37W, doi:10.1029/1999RG900016, http://www.eos.ubc.ca/~mjelline/453website/eosc453/E_prints/1999RG900016.pdf 
  21. ^ "Refer to half-way down first paragraph", by James Maxlow
  22. ^ [1]
  23. ^ J. Marvin Herndon, Whole-earth decompression dynamics, Current Science, V. 89, No. 11, 10 Dec. 2005 http://cs-test.ias.ac.in/cs/Downloads/article_39535.pdf
  24. ^ Jeff Ogrisseg (2009), "Top artist draws growing global conclusions", The Japan Times, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091122x3.html 
  25. ^ O'Brien, Jeffrey (March 2001), "Master of the Universe", Wired (9.03), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.03/adams_pr.html, retrieved 2 June 2008 

Bibliography

External links

Historical

Contemporary