The Earth is Growing?

Discussion in 'Pseudoscience Archive' started by moementum7, Nov 9, 2007.

  1. moementum7 ~^~You First~^~ Registered Senior Member

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    This is purely for entertainment viewing only, but I must admit, it does awnser alot more questions than the current accepted theory of geographical ideas do, but also raises a few more.:shrug:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjgidAICoQI
     
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  3. cat2only Registered Senior Member

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    Earth is growing because many metric tons a space dust enter Earths Atmosphere every year. Very little mass escapes Earth gravity well and so Earth grows. Why doesn't this video mention this?
     
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  5. oreodont I am God Registered Senior Member

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    Nobody would be able to figure it out except as an 'educated guestimation'. Too many variables and all the measurements would be subject to a wide range of error. The major unknown is conversion of matter to energy. Most of the heat generated by the Earth is radioactive...conversion of heavy elements into energy and thus a loss of mass. But, as pointed out, some meteoritic dust accumulates each year. The amount isn't known....but every so often hen a biggie asteroid hits the Earth that ammount of accumulation might be more than offset by matter being blown out of Earth's gravitational pull (depends on type of comet, angle, etc.). Regardless, any increase or decrease in the size of the Earth would be in infitestimal non-measurable amounts....for all intents and purposes ZILCH.
     
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  7. Killian_1_4 Registered Senior Member

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    Thats the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard.
     
  8. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Correction - I've seen some pretty good estimates from NASA on the amounts and it certainly isn't "non-measurable amounts." It's on the order of several millions of tons each and every year. But you are still correct in saying that in comparison to the mass of the Earth it's very insignificant.
     
  9. moementum7 ~^~You First~^~ Registered Senior Member

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    Wow, 3 balanced responses...more than I thought.
    Figured most of the board had turned into responses like Killians.

    Thanks for the feedback.
    P.S. And yes I can even appreciate yours Killian

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  10. P. BOOM! Registered Senior Member

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    P. Boom!

    I just found an expanding earth proponent over at youtube, I invited him over to these forums.
     
  11. Squeak22 4th Level Human Registered Senior Member

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    If the earth was "expanding", gravity would be either be reduced as the world got bigger, since you are further away from the center of gravity of the world, or increased, because somehow the mass of the planet is increased.

    Either way, from the muscle and bone structure of humans and animals in the fossil records, no such increase or reduction of gravity is apparent.

    On a side note, you can go to California and see the tectonic plate shifting for yourself, there are a couple highways and rail beds that have had to be rebuilt because the plates are moving.
     
  12. Hipparchia Registered Senior Member

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    What about the giant flying insects in the Pennsylvanian that would be unable to get airborne today?

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  13. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Due to the thicker atmosphere then.
    More oxygen, warmer..
     
  14. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    To tell you the truth, the Earth's Expansion to me actually makes sense not so much because of the Tectonic animation in the video but because theory would suggest at first the release of Hydrogen from the planets surface (from cooling) which in turn would be the building point of our atmosphere. One by one chemicals rise from inside and find their way to the surface to be further cooled, as these chemicals rise they might do so similar to bubbles in a Newtonian liquid. While the Newtonian liquid is the same mass the bubbles generate a greater volume by undermining it's density.

    Of course this can be identified if you look at Pumas stone from Volcanoes.
     
  15. Reiku Banned Banned

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    This is the most intelligent reaply i have read all day.
     
  16. matthyaouw Registered Senior Member

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    Watch just off New Zealand at about 1:45 on the vid. Where does he pull that giant island from? Same place as the rest of his ideas I'd bet.

    It's also rather telling that he manages to eliminate all of the submerged continental shelf in his animations, even though they are geologically part of the continents and should be present from the beginning in an expanding earth scenario.
     
  17. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    Anyone who has looked at a globe of the Earth and pondered the shapes must have noticed the way the land-masses all fit together. I remember doing so at the age of eight or nine (well over fifty years ago). It was some time before I was to hear the name of Prof Warren Carey (Google him!) who was to become the great advocate of an Expaning Earth theory.

    Neal Adams has made a score of videos apart from the one referenced by moementum7. These cover not only Expanding Earth, but also Expanding Mars, Expanding Europa and Expanding Ganymede.

    Here's where you can see the best of the lot.

    I take issue with Adams on various details of his theories. He has tried to educate himself in physics and produced explanations which I regard as without validity.

    On the face of it, if there was a half-decent explanation of just exactly what was causing the Earth to expand, then the disappearance of animals as massive as the Jurassic theropods as gravity increased, the shapes of the land-masses, the age of the ocean floors, and a whole lot more, would all make tremendous sense.

    Trouble is: people have a psychological block against believing in Expanding Earth - however strong the circumstantial evidence - because they do not have an explanation of the HOW. This is a failure of human psychology: an inability to accept that scientific knowledge is not limitless, and there's a whole lot of things we don't know yet. On balance, the sensible thing seems to be to shake free of hidebound psychological chains and accept the evidence of ones eyes.
     
  18. matthyaouw Registered Senior Member

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    No, the trouble is that there is no evidence for an expanding earth and there is plenty of evidence against. I've never seen any physical measurements that prove the earth is expanding apart from minor input through extraterrestrial material. The ages of ocean floors and the shapes of the landmasses are both perfectly well explained by plate tectonics, as are, ophiolite suites and accreted terranes. If the earth expanded as the video shows with no subduction, we shouldn't expect any ophiolite suites or accreted terranes at all, and yet we see them predating the supposed first continental movements and first oceanic crust.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2007
  19. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    It is one thing to disagree, but to begin with this sort of statement only indicates a willful blindness.

    Aspects of the geological evidence have been debated at great length as can readily be discovered by Googling "expanding earth", etc. Some of the most intelligent and informed discussion can be found at bautforum.

    I do not have a strong belief in any specific explanation of the HOW of expansion, but consider this. Until a few years ago, neutrinos were undetected "dark matter". Until quite recently, they were considered to be without mass. Now we know that they do have a very small mass. Squillions of these tiny particles, theorized to be remnants of the big bang, others to be created by fusion in the Sun, pass through the Earth (and through each of us) every second. Just a few get stopped by collision -- that's how they have now been detected. Across the thousands of kilometers of the Earth's core, billions get stopped. Their mass is added to that of the planet.

    Neutrinos are responsible for only a fraction of the increase in the Earth's mass, but neutrinos account for only (let's say) five percent of dark matter. If we begin to think of "dark matter" as matter which reacts with "normal" matter with extreme rarity (rather than not at all) we can readily see how occasional collisions with types of particle yet to be detected in the laboratory can also increment the Earth's mass -- albeit with great slowness.

    Suppose then that the Earth's internal mass and size increase by .0001% every thousand years (the exact fraction does not matter). It creates enormous forces which force apart the structure of the surface of the planet. Surely this is a vastly more believable scenario than that the continental plates slither around in the way described by plate tectonics. It is one thing to state that the Earth's crust is thin and fragile relative to the planet's size, but it ain't exactly floating -- and whether or not there is a liquid core, the Earth is very solid for a very long way down!
     
  20. matthyaouw Registered Senior Member

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    Ok, replace "there is no evidence" with "I have seen no evidence" and lets move on.

    You have dodged my point about there being evidence of tectonic movement and of the presence of oceanic crust. What produced ancient ophiolite suites and moved them to their current position if oceanic crust only dates back to the opening of the Atlantic?

    I'm not sure what your objections to mainstream models of plate movements are, but the fact is that actual measurements can be made of the direction and speed of plate movements, and these measurements conform to the directions of movement expected based on observations made at plate boundaries and hotspot island chains.

    We can agree partially here. The crust does not float and the earth is indeed solid for a very long way down. There does seem to be some good evidence for a liquid (outer) core though- shear waves cannot travel through a fluid, which is why we get the S-wave shadow zone observed on seismographs after earthquakes.
     
  21. Laika Space Bitch Registered Senior Member

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    I just watched that video and found it very entertaining. I particularly liked the non sequitur introduced at the very end where the conventional theory of plate tectonics is somehow put on the same level as extreme geocentrism.

    Matthyaow, your point about ophiolites is an excellent one (and one I didn't think of myself). I think another fatal flaw in the expansion theory is the fact that plates have actually been imaged in the process of subduction - by seismic tomography and by earthquake first motion studies. Combine this with actual real-time measurement of plate motion (see the Nasa site), accretionary prisms on continental margins, and the actual, real-life existence of mountain ranges formed by folding and thrusting, and Neal Adams's position appears quite untenable.
     
  22. River Ape Valued Senior Member

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    I have "dodged" your point on the grounds of not wanting, at great length, to run through arguments and counter-arguments which (as I suggested) can be found elsewhere on the Internet. Googling "expanding earth ophiolites" will present you with several sites putting forward the Expanding Earth case.

    I wonder if you think the moon Europa has expanded -- per the visual evidence presented in this Neal Adams video. Check out also the Adams' videos for Mars and Ganymede.

    I wonder if moementum7 thinks that theorizing that Europa has expanded is "pseudoscience"?
     
  23. Laika Space Bitch Registered Senior Member

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    River Ape, the evidence in that movie does not show that Europa has expanded. It shows that some areas of the moon have undergone lateral extension. I don't think there's any controversy about that at all. The only part of the movie that indicates global expansion is when the narrator (Neal Adams?) hints at subduction then dismisses it as a joke - he gives no reason for his dismissal. Also, the narrator says that he believes "this is ongoing eruptive silicate growth from the moon's inside." Why he thinks that silicates are being extruded he doesn't say. Is there spectral evidence for this assertion? The scientific consensus is that the surface of Europa is water ice.
     

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