The Expanding Earth hypothesis.

I have made this a separate post since it is not directly connected to the previous post.

This material is taken from Expanding Earth.org - their front page

Meteorites falling to Earth, large and small, have been known for centuries, but more recent scientific measurements show that an even greater volume of dust and meteorites (hundreds, possibly thousands, of tons) accretes onto Earth's surface every day!

The estimates vary widely (wildly?)—from ~274 to ~55,000 tons per day [Newkirk in Meteor Orbits and Dust, NASA, 1967], but one can imagine the potential volume of accreting extraterrestrial material from the very large number of meteor streams (10 major and 374 minor, of which 154 are the most authentic) reported by Terentjeva [ibid.] She reported “Generally, the existence is accepted of several hundred minor meteor showers with a duration of not less than 3 to 7 days and an average rate not exceeding 2 meteors per hour.”

So, by way of:
reply to post by Arbitrageur

Also, 40 tons a day sounds like a lot of material added to the Earth. But look up the current mass of the Earth, and figure out how much 40 tons a day is for say, a million years.

This would seem to be a huge difference by comparison to your 40T per day - of a possible factor of between 6.8 and 1375

The article referred to is this one

Page 354 seems to be the one with the data and here we find an estimate of 10 power 5 metric tons per year from meteor dust. Now if my maths serves me right (and it not my string point ) that is 100,000 metric tons (Metric ton = 1000Kg or 2,200 lbs avoirdupois). That is a wee biteen more than 40 I feel! (Note at the bottom of the page you can get a PDF version of the pages if you feel a need for some light bedtime reading!)

So the expanding earth people are saying 274 to 55,000 and the article does support 274 (100,000 / 3650.

They go on to say that - in their opinion - this rate was greater in times gone by, however they do not offer specific evidence of this.

The next point

Some scientists may dispute the notion that additional solid matter is created from solar energy by photosynthesis in plants and other living organisms

is something that I have wondered about since I was a lad (Jurassic or thereabouts my children tell me)

You NEVER find archaeological sites directly on the surface - except where the structure is so massive that it has not been buried (yet). This fact always fascinated me and of course does very adequately prove the fact that an amount of material is added to the surface of our planet by the action of plants. Of course this cannot explain all of the increase needed.

Moving on to page 10 on the site referenced above we find this: (Please bear in mind this site is the view of Mr Myers)

Using ages shown in the Grand Canyon walls, it took ~500 Ma to build up only one kilometer of depth, and beneath that are another 25-40 kilometers of older continental crust, so it is easy to arrive at an age of the Earth much greater than the 4.6 billion years now estimated. Age-dating meteorites without any knowledge of their origin has little value because it only provides an age for that specimen.

Personally I am having a problem with this statement from two points of view.

• 500 Ma to build up 1 km? The assumption here is that ALL of this material has been created by meteoritic accretion and takes no account of the fact that, as I understand it, the area was a shallow sea at one stage and thus most of this material is the result of sedimentation. (Or am I being a traditional geologist here?)
  
  
• To reference one kilometre and apply that rate to the whole depth is an fallacious argument as there is no evidence to suggest that accretion rates, if we believe this to be the cause, were constant over the complete period and by the admission of the author he considers that they were not.
  
  

Whilst I am not stating categorically that the Earth is ~4.5 billion years old, there does appear to be considerable evidence to this effect and the explanation given above does nothing to refute it.

Finally for today as I have other things to get on with:

Therefore, the current belief must be nullified and replaced by an entirely new theory of Earth’s creation, one based on a cometary nucleus orbiting the Sun slowly enlarged by gravitational accretion of extraterrestrial matter until it reached spherical shape, at which point gravity could omni-directionally focus total weight of the protoplanet on its exact center.

From this point forward, gravity began to generate immense gravitational pressure that heated and melted originally cold proto-planetary rock to form a molten core that is constantly expanding, thereby creating irresistible tectonic force that fractured the planet’s outer shell and eventually extruded magma, minerals, gases, and H2O from volcanoes, and midocean ridges later, to initiate formation of an atmosphere and hydrosphere.

Source

I leave you with this thought (and I don't actually know if this is correct so maybe someone can verify it or otherwise)

'Gravity' would not have an effect at the centre of a sphere. Logically at the centre of a sphere any gravitational attraction should be outwards towards the mass of the sphere. I understand that there is immense pressure at depth, but his is from the weight of the material above and not solely from the mass of the material causing a gravitational pull. Am I right, or am I right?

Get the brain cells fired up and see what you can come up with.

[edit on 5/6/2010 by PuterMan]

Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Any researcher would have typed Wadati-Benioff zone in Google and immediately found the many articles including the Wiki:

en.wikipedia.org...

So you're not much on research I guess.

OK my friend, no need for the sarcasm. I have been up all night following the fate of my countrymen on the Rachel Corrie.

I don't do well on a lack of sleep and I don't appreciate that sort of comment when I am in a state of mind ready to tear someone's head off. OK?

By the way you might all be interested in taking a look at this Expanding Earth site which I found back in March 2009 during one of my obvious spells of inability to research. (Yes that is sarcasm)

Ah wait a minute there is this one I found in Feb 2009 as well. Secular Acceleration of the Moon

And another link from my non-research Nuclear planet PDF

Also this PDF about Earth Dynamics from a site I can't find now. (Maybe because I don't know how to research?)

I have just found out that this is a direct set of material from James Maxlow, but I cannot find the site anywhere. The original zip file which is in the public domain you can get here and that is better than the PDF as it has all the pictures etc. It is basically the complete site.

Enough. Let us please allow it to rest at that. No bad feeling intended.

[edit on 5/6/2010 by PuterMan]

reply to post by PuterMan


I'm going to have a look at all the links you posted but I'd like to confirm something because I don't really understand your reply to it.

Using ages shown in the Grand Canyon walls, it took ~500 Ma to build up only one kilometer of depth, and beneath that are another 25-40 kilometers of older continental crust, so it is easy to arrive at an age of the Earth much greater than the 4.6 billion years now estimated. Age-dating meteorites without any knowledge of their origin has little value because it only provides an age for that specimen.

With an expanding Earth, is it not a logical result for the bottom layers to be much deeper ?
The same amount of sediment would most definitely create a deeper layer when it falls on to a smaller surface.

reply to post by Sinter Klaas


Absolutely, of course they would be deeper.

My contention is that just because one period put down that amount of material in the given time does not mean it always laid down that amount of material for every period of time.

It is a bit like saying that because 1" or rain fell this month then 1" of rain is going to fall every month for the foreseeable future.

This takes no account of variation, or the fact that my neighbour's sprinkler is also wetting my garden (as in sedimentation in the Grand Canyon model)

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
With an expanding Earth, is it not a logical result for the bottom layers to be much deeper ?
The same amount of sediment would most definitely create a deeper layer when it falls on to a smaller surface.

That's an excellent question Sinter Klaas. Yes it's logical for the bottom layers to be deeper.

A related question is, what makes those deeper sedimentary layers go so deep that they transform into metamorphic rocks, and then come up to the surface? In plate tectonics the forces bringing them to the surface seem more easily explained by things like subduction zones and plate collisions. In an expanding Earth theory, what force would bring these rocks up?

Here's a picture of such a rock that I don't think can be explained by Maxlow's theory:

Source: www.earth.ox.ac.uk...
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c91b00967cf2.jpg[/atsimg]

You can see sedimentary layers that somehow ended up deep enough to become metamorphic (exposed to high temperature and pressure) and then somehow this rock came back to the surface.

In Maxlow's theory, this rock showing sediment lines either wouldn't get deep enough to expose it to metamorphic conditions or if it did, there's no mechanism to bring it to the surface like there is in plate tectonics, unless I'm missing something in his theory.

Originally posted by PuterMan
This material is taken from Expanding Earth.org - their front page

Meteorites falling to Earth, large and small, have been known for centuries, but more recent scientific measurements show that an even greater volume of dust and meteorites (hundreds, possibly thousands, of tons) accretes onto Earth's surface every day!

The estimates vary widely (wildly?)—from ~274 to ~55,000 tons per day [Newkirk in Meteor Orbits and Dust, NASA, 1967], but one can imagine the potential volume of accreting extraterrestrial material from the very large number of meteor streams (10 major and 374 minor, of which 154 are the most authentic) reported by Terentjeva [ibid.] She reported “Generally, the existence is accepted of several hundred minor meteor showers with a duration of not less than 3 to 7 days and an average rate not exceeding 2 meteors per hour.”

Using a 1967 estimate is pretty ridiculous, that's from before man landed on the moon. We've collected much better information since then.

I agree the amounts were higher than 40 tons a day falling to Earth in the past but some of those extremely high measurements can be ruled out by the measurements of the thickness of regolith on the moon. It's reasonable to think that if the Earth is getting bombarded then to a lesser extent, so is the moon. And while it's hard to measure what's hit the Earth because it's so dynamic, the moon is very static so it's much easier to measure what impacted it.

I actually ran across this research looking at arguments from young Earth creationists who claimed that the moon would have extremely thick regolith deposits if the Earth were billions of years old as scientists claimed. Well we can measure the regolith thickness and see that it's not that thick. Even the young Earth creationists admit that. So since it's not that thick, the Earth couldn't have had that much debris hitting it without the moon getting hit by more also.

Here is an article based on space based measurements:

web.ukonline.co.uk...

And on Earth based measurements:

40 tons a day is 1.326^10 grams per year

Inflate that by a factor of 11.3 to account for higher deposit rates in the past (Ceplecha, 1996) and you get 1.5^11 grams/yr

What effect does that have on the Earth's mass?

Consequential Effect on the Earth

the Earth's total mass increases by one tenth of one millionth, or one one-hundred-thousandth of a percent, over the entire 4.5 billion years

So as I said, Earth's mass has increased, but not much. And even if you want to raise the estimate by another tenfold, all you've done is gone from a tenth of a millionth to a millionth increase.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Hi

I don't discard the possibility of a unified theory. Apparently both theories are flawed.

PuterMan talked about why expansion and subduction can't coexist.

The only thing that restricts this merger is continental drift isn't it ?

IMO, expanding would be extremely slow this time and age but the further you go back in time the more the Earth expands. Not because it is gaining more mass but because it was smaller. Just like the sediment layers of the grand canyon also show deeper layers the further you go back in time.

reply to post by Arbitrageur

Using a 1967 estimate is pretty ridiculous, that's from before man landed on the moon. We've collected much better information since then.

Yes I would agree that the 1967 figures are perhaps a little past their sell by date, but incidentally they are not that far out in the sense that the figures published by Love, S. G. and Brownlee, D. E. in their 1994 paper 'A Direct Measurement of the Terrestrial Mass Accretion Rate of Cosmic Dust' gives a rate of about 110 metric toms per day for sub-millimetre particles +/- 55 tons.

Since 1967 paper was including larger sizes I can get a rough correlation between the two. Close enough for Jazz as they say. The 'papers' that you quoted do not even mention the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data, indeed it is a little difficult to see where exactly they did get their data.

So as I said, Earth's mass has increased, but not much. And even if you want to raise the estimate by another tenfold, all you've done is gone from a tenth of a millionth to a millionth increase.

Originally all I was remarking upon was that the figure of 40 tons appeared to be incorrect, and still does even by more modern NASA measurements, but as you say the significance of this is not a major impact on the theory.

Originally posted by Sinter Klaas
reply to post by Arbitrageur

 

Apparently both theories are flawed.

That would seem to be the case indeed.

PuterMan talked about why expansion and subduction can't coexist.

No, actually the Maxlow theory states that, but other theories, or versions I should say, allow a possibility of a little of both.

With respect to metamorphic rocks as mentioned by Arbitrageur, the theory is actually not connected to either subduction or expansion theories in the sense that it is not excluded from one because it is in the other.

Theories of orogenics were around long before plate tectonics were ever dreamt of and of course both plate and expansion tectonics have their explanations for the building of mountains (orogeny). Metamorphic rocks to not have to be forced down deep - or I should say as deep as subduction dictates - since all that is required is heat and pressure as you pointed out. This can occur in igneous domains where there is an intrusion, or in folding where mountains are being formed and does not required great depth necessarily. Depth and weight of rock are also of course another method that metamorphic rocks can be created.

As often as not there may be a combination of depth and orogenics where deep material is uplifted and folded to create some of the marvellous shapes we can see today.

The theory of orogeny in expansion tectonics is explained by expansionists as the effect of straightening out the 'skin' of the earth as it expands, and this causes the bunching up of the crust. It has it's problems I admit, but then so does the Pangea theory and continental collision. One of the arguments against Pangea by the expansionists is that for it to exist the earth would have to be out of balance. The centre of gravity would have to be shifted, basically to a position of instability. Fair enough, let's hold on to that thought.

The subductionists said "No, no, that would not be the case", and yet now the idea is being accepted into subductionist theory as the reason why Pangea started to break up. The only problem with this is that if you believe that prior to Pangea there were other movements then at some stage before Pangea came together the Earth had to force itself into an unstable condition to allow this super continent to form. That just would not happen. The forces involved would be too great.

Maybe be we have one round to the expansionists here?

• Accretion from outer space - subductionists
  
• Pangea and centrifugal wobble - expansionists
  

I still have to find time to study the various rates of apparent plate movement, and I am gathering data, since it has always seemed to me that there is anomaly. Just at present I am not sure which theory it is going to favour.

Hi

I just found a map of the world with the age of the ocean floor.


[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a03c0cc5d996.jpg[/atsimg]

Here is the link full screen: Link Click to enlarge.

Maxlow is right about the age of the ocean floor.

It could be me but does this not proof that continental drift can't be true.
Pangea existed in between the age of the ocean floor. right ?

[edit on 6/21/2010 by Sinter Klaas]

Here is the original website from the official source.

A source that is in fact an official one NOOA Geophysical Data Center.

Age, spreading rates and spreading symmetry of the world's ocean crust

Checking out how it works in plate tectonics right now...

reply to post by Sinter Klaas


Now you have looked at the map you need to look at this web page entitled Crustal Age

In particular examine the percentages of crust excretion across each time band.

The video that acompanies this is centre bottom of this page

I had a problem with these (not that it mattered as I downloaded them months and months ago) when I went to find the reference for you but I discovered that if you have RealPlayer installed you can download to disk and they work just fine. All I was getting on the site was a green screen.

In particular on this page you should look at the Mars clips and extra especially the Europa one.

Then take a look at this page which talks about the continentals shelves.

Now this page which is hosted on his site but purports to be from someone at the New York Times. Really as far as I am concerned it does not matter whether the source is the NYT or not. Read it carefully as it provokes much thought - or it did for me.

And finally a 'kiddies' cartoon

Start page

reply to post by PuterMan


Hi.

I've seen all the videos before from Neal's site, but just to make sure... I've got only the blue screen and my disc drive is broke.

What I've read and seen, I already knew, except for the migrating dinosaur part.

What was it that made you think ?

This Expanding earth theory is all new to me.
I'd like to believe it, as it kind of makes sence.

So I thought I'd look into something that relates to the Subduction Theory ..... subduction zones, or the Wadati-Benioff zone, specifically New Zealand's.
We have two, one each side, one to the north east and one to the south west.
I live in the middle near Cook Strait, north of the Alpine Fault, on the North Island, on the Australian Plate.

What I have researched is the depth of our quakes in relation to longitude, and have created cross sections.
You often see these on usgs when there is a big quake, here is an example from a quake off Chile a couple of days ago neic.usgs.gov...

Heres my page of maps and cross sections for New Zealand
seabreeze.wordpress.com...

As you scroll down the maps and graphs you can see the shape of the subducting Pacific Plate (on the right) start about Lat -36.5 diving quite sharply through to Lat -39 where it flattens out a bit. As it happens -39.0 to -39.5 is where all our volcanoes are at. At that point, Long 175.5, you can see all the activity there and almost see the two Plates in the one graph image.

Then it takes a dive again, but further west than before, all the way down to Lat -42 where it goes dead flat again. This is the area of the Christchurch quake of last year, which is a "new fault". If I had done this research this time last year there would probably be not much on the maps and graphs here.

By Lat -44 Fiordland kicks in and its hard to tell which way the plates are tilted, and it isn't until -45 that you can see the Australian Plate taking a reverse dive UNDER the Pacific Plate for at least one degree of latitude before it loses shape again south of Stewart Island.

I'm not sure if this backs up the Subduction Theory or not, if there are no subduction zones then how the heck do you explain the angles of the earthquake locations in the cross sections?
Those are one heck of a deep faults there

Originally posted by muzzy
This Expanding earth theory is all new to me.
I'd like to believe it, as it kind of makes sence.

I suppose you meant "sense"?

How does it make sense?

I read Maxlow's explanation here:

www.tmgnow.com...

I don't see any explanation of what could be causing the expansion. As discussed earlier in the thread, accumulation of space debris might have increased the mass of the Earth by less than one part in a million. That's not enough to support his theory. So why would the Earth expand? Where is the material coming from for the expansion?

Or do you think it's like a giant loaf of bread and becoming less dense as it expands? And if so what would cause that?

It doesn't make much sense to me at all.

reply to post by Arbitrageur


It makes sense in that the "drifting apart" theory of the Continents doesn't work out if the Earth has been the same size since day one, but the puzzle does fit together if the Earth was smaller.

www.nealadams.com...

reply to post by Arbitrageur


Well, does it make much sense to arbitrarily assume the makeup of the Earth's core and create theories upon that arbitrary assumption?

We have two competing theories that both assume thing's in order to work. Neither has proven to be 100% true as of yet. There are many different "makeups" (for lack of better words) for the Earth's core that could explain either expansion, tectonic drift, and seismology readings for the two competing theories.

Sucks at the moment because neither one has been shown to be a hundred percent true. No one's drilled down to the core as of yet.