*bash head on keyboard*
*rinse*
*repeat*
Global Expansion Tectonics is the crackpot theory that the Earth is expanding in size and that this explains why all of the continents fit together so well. Some folks calling themselves Terrella Consultants are claiming that by "utilizing modern geological and geophysical data to globally constrain the spatial and temporal plate motion history of all crustal plates, an expanding Earth tectonic model can provide a viable alternative to conventional palaeomagnetic-based plate tectonics." Emphasis theirs. The first evidence of crackpottery I see here is that they have a geocities page, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe their grant funding didn't come through yet.
Oh geez, where do I start?
How about with the term paleomagnetic. Paleomagnetism is the study of the Earth's magnetic field throughout history. When rocks are formed, magnetic minerals in them become locked into a specific orientation. By looking at these, we can see how Earth's magnetic field has changed over time. A bonus of paleomagnetism is that it makes it possible to track the movement of tectonic plates. If you know that a rock is 40 million years old and its magnetic orientation points east instead of north, then you know that somehow that rock has been rotated 90 degrees. If that rock is a massive sheet of bedrock, then you know that the whole area has moved. Its quite a bit more complicated than what I've laid out here, buy you get the point. So, Terrella Consultants has poured over data that the scientific community has been observing for decades and they claim to have found something that everyone else missed. Sure, that's possible. I'm still giving them the benefit of the doubt here.
Next, we get to the heart of their theory "prior to the Early Jurassic, modern deep ocean basins did not exist. All continental lithosphere was united to form a single Pangaean super continent enclosing the Earth at a much-reduced palaeoradius, with the volume of hydrosphere and atmosphere increasing with time in sympathy with the volume of oceanic lithosphere. " Let's try to grasp this in plain English, shall we? Before the Jurassic Period, the Earth was much smaller. There were no large oceans. The amount of water and air increased as the amount of land increased.
Alright, I've had enough. *tweet* SKEPTICAL FOUL!
What evidence is there to support this wonderful new theory? Luckily Right there on the website is my answer:
Where does the additional mass come from?
"...the Earth is expanding because of an exponential increase in mass with time, e.g. matter is the antithesis of energy, however the kinematics of an exponentially expanding Earth suggests that mass may possibly have been constant with time resulting in a reduction in density and surface gravity. The ultimate cause of Earth expansion must however be considered intimately related to a cosmological expansion of the Universe, i.e. where does the mass of the Universe come from? "
*tweet* SKEPTICAL FOUL! That's number two, buddy. One more and it's off to the locker room with you.
Firstly, matter and energy are not antitheses. Matter and antimatter are antitheses. Secondly, mass "may possibly" have been constant with time resulting in a reduction of density and gravity? Really? That sentence is so full of holes that I could write an entire blog entry about it alone. When something becomes less dense, it still has the same amount of gravity because there is still the same amount of mass in it. Isn't that what I'm trying to find in this paragraph, an increase in mass? Strangely, there's no further mention of mass here. What we get is a question as an answer to a question, "where does the mass of the Universe come from? " Apparently it comes from duct taping the Hubble Constant to a Higgs boson.
Just for shits and giggles, let's take some numbers from the site and see how they add up. "the Earth is undergoing an exponential expansion at the present rate of 21 mm/year" Really? Exponential expansion? Let's try a little math. I'll even simplify things by ignoring the fact that I see the word exponential in that sentence, for now. The Jurassic period began about 200 million years ago. If the earth is expanding 21mm/year and the original radius of the earth was 1700km....carry the one...non-exponentially... that's 4.2 billion mm plus 1.7 billion original mm equals 5.9 billion mm or a 5900 km radius of the earth. The actual mean radius of the earth is approximately 6372 km. Fairly close, but what about that word exponentially? Do they even know what an exponent is? Were all of the calculations done as x^1?
If the Earth were growing exponentially, it would be billions and billions of kilometers in diameter. Just think of it this way, If I give you a penny a day and double it every day for 30 days, on the last day I would hand you $5,368,709.12 just for that day's pay, not counting the millions I've already given you over the past month. That's what exponentially means.
*tweet* SKEPTICAL FOUL #3, PLAYER IS EJECTED.
Hit the showers pal, your game is finished.
3 comments:
"When something becomes less dense, it still has the same amount of gravity because there is still the same amount of mass in it."
If the earth were expanding, with the mass remaining constant, everything on the surface would be getting further from the centre of mass. F = GMm/(r^2) so the gravity on the surface would decrease over time. That's what they meant.
Having said that, it is still complete crap.
Fail because of crude tone in article
So you are just going to ignore the fact that all the continets all fit together in the atlantic and pacific.
Just because we currently don't know where the matter could come from doesn't mean it couldn't come from somewhere. We know that energy can be converted to matter, although it doesn't stay around too long. There are strange things like dark energy, dark matter, and even gravity that we cannot explian. Doesn't mean they don't exist becuase it is pretty obvious we have gravity based on evidence. I challenge you to analyze the evidence and decide what makes more sense, plate tectonics or the expanding earth theory.
Age of seafloor
Just take the time to study this image. Try to visualize how an expanding earth could produce the age patterns like that around the globe. Pretty easy.
Now try to visualize how plate tectonics could produce that pattern, not so easy. How do you explain the fact that the oldest part of the pacific is the same age as the oldest part of the atlantic. Nothing older than 180 million years old exists in the ocean floor. The odds that subduction would make that age pattern just by chance seem almost impossible.
Look at the mid ocean ridge on the west coast of south america. Notice how it matches the coastline of south america.
These patterns are just coincidence in the plate tectonics theory. They are explianed perfectly in the Earth Expantion theory.
The Earth Expantion theory has many more evidences than that. If you don't see the evidences, keep looking. Try doing some of your own analyzing of both plate tectonics the the expanding earth. Try doing your own thinking rather than just spewing out ideas that were fed to you in school.
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