Are the planets growing?

[Florian]

How are Neal Adams' videos bogus? Not that I'm sticking up for them, rather, since you've studied EE alot, I'm interested in where the videos go wrong.

Hi,

For example, his Pangea video is stupid. The guy ignores the basics like isostasy. Most of his reconstructions are bogus, because he totally ignores geological data. Maxlow's work is much more sound. And his explanation on the formation of mountains is laughable for anybody knowing a bit of geology. By the way, the best book on this r subject is Ollier & Pain "the origins of mountains":
http://books.google.com/books?id=v7gtX4K75NIC
The authors do not clearly make the statement that Earth is growing, but it's written all over the pages for those who know how to read between lines. And Ollier is a proponent of Earth Expansion anyway.

Also, I'm curious about whether you subscribe to transmutation of elements (perhaps, you have already stated that and I forgot).

Yes. See my precedent post

Gold seems to be found either in mountainous areas within the rock in veins or in the river valleys below them, suggesting the gold came out of the moutains. Mountains, orogenic "upduction", seem to generate a lot of pressure, likely temperature, and possibly electrical energy. florian, in your view how do heavy elements, gold, lead, and platinum, and so on, get into the shallow crust if these metals are "star dust"? Wouldn't heavy metals have a strong tendency to stay in the core because of their specific gravity?

Actually, these kind of ore veins form by precipitation out of solutions of hot water by the hydrothermal process. It is a well known process. Except that the origin of the ore and water remains mysterious, but for someone familiar with EE .

Reading your comments, it's clear you have a very developed theory, so I'm just trying to "pick your brain", hope that's okay

That's all good. Actually, I'm looking for collaborators. For example, I'd like to open a blog to discuss various Planetary growth models, observations etc... But I need people for critics, or correct my broken english .
Would you be interested? Though, I have a lot of work these days, and I might not have enough time to write some articles before december.

[calebeaton]

I guess I'm looking for more a simplistic explanation of the correlation between expanding earth and EU. How about a set of equations? I'm no electrical engineer, but it seems like they probably use a set of equations everyday that would easily explain expanding earth in light of an expanding solar system.

For the sake of clarity, I'll provide some examples of what I have in mind. Please don't nit-pick the specifics as I'll admit I have no clue. But I hope an EE can follow the broader logic and provide the real-world equations.

M = Mass
S = Diameter or size (very different animal than mass)
C = Conductivity of elements
D = Distance
V = Current

We assume earth and solar system has been expanding...

If MC=DV
The constants we choose determine our explanation for the other changes.

If Mass and Current is constant then elements would need to transmuted to better conductors to account for more efficient electric flow over greater distance. So we start with elements that have high density (smaller earth) and poor conductivity and evolve to ones with lower density and high conductivity.

If Conductivity is the only constant (elements don't change), then our explanation might call for stronger current and the necessity for expanding planets to maintain the electrical connections.

If Current and Conductivity are constants, then perhaps more Mass is required as the Distance increases.

My point is that surely there is a set of equations and laws used by electrical engineers on the micro level that would perfectly overlay on the solar system scale. When we know those equations, it does away with lots of speculation. For example, if Diameter is more important than Mass, it would give weight to the hollow earth theory. If conductivity is most important, transmutation seems to come into play. One of the cool things about the EU perspective is that well-known physics provides perfect explanations and predictability. Wild speculation is left to traditional astronomers who invent laws of physics, new forms of matter, etc. to keep their view alive.

[james weninger]

It seems like an expanding Earth would fit Le Sage type theories of gravity. (read "Pushing Gravity" for a sampling of these theories). The basic idea is that gravity is a faster than light particle,not a curvature in spacetime. Tom Van Flandern pointed out in "Dark Matter,Missing Planets &New Comets"that planets should absorb gravitons and eventually explode. If Earth really is absorbing energy and converting it to mass,that would seem to support the graviton theory. At any rate, this will be any easy test. If the earth really is expanding,then it is piling up additional matter on the outside,or absorbing energy internally and converting it to matter.

[james weninger]

By the way,if the earth is expanding in size,but not mass,it would actually support Le Sage type theories even better. In this case the gravitons would be absorbed and converted to heat, expanding the Earth. In this case Tom Van Flandern would be correct that planets should heat till they explode.

[Aardwolf]

I would expect that it is expanding in mass as the evidence (although circumstatial) would suggest gravity has increased. If it were to increase in size but not mass then the effect of gravity would have been to reduce over time.

[Anaconda]

I suspect there are numerous readers, here, who subscribe to the "subduction" plate tectonics model and reject the idea of an expanding Earth.

Here is a lengthy and well documanted article by Davit Pratt that chronicles the problems with the "subduction" plate tectonics model:

Plate Tectonics: A Paradigm Under Threat (hat tip Lloyd):

http://newgeology.us/presentation20.html

(The article does not rely on creationist ideas, but rather documentation from conventional geology, itself.)

According to the orthodox model of plate tectonics, the earth's outer shell, or lithosphere, is divided into a number of large, rigid plates that move over a soft layer of the mantle known as the asthenosphere, and interact at their boundaries, where they converge, diverge, or slide past one another. Such interactions are believed to be responsible for most of the seismic and volcanic activity of the earth. Plates cause mountains to rise where they push together, and continents to fracture and oceans to form where they rift apart. The continents, sitting passively on the backs of the plates, drift with them, at the rate of a few centimeters a year.

But numerous individuals in geology have pointed to assumptions that have colored geology:

Van Andel (1984) conceded that plate tectonics had serious flaws, and that the need for a growing number of ad hoc modifications cast doubt on its claim to be the ultimate unifying global theory. Lowman (1992a) argued that geology has largely become "a bland mixture of descriptive research and interpretive papers in which the interpretation is a facile cookbook application of plate-tectonics concepts ... used as confidently as trigonometric functions" (p. 3). Lyttleton and Bondi (1992) held that the difficulties facing plate tectonics and the lack of study of alternative explanations for seemingly supportive evidence reduced the plausibility of the theory.

One of the most damaging pieces of scientific evidence is about the depth of the continents into the body of the Earth, or in other words, how deep do the roots of the continents go into the Earth.

Seismic tomography, which produces three-dimensional images of the earth's interior, appears to show that the oldest parts of the continents have deep roots extending to depths of 400 to 600 km, and that the asthenosphere is essentially absent beneath them. McGeary and Plummer (1998) say that these findings cast doubt on the original, simple lithosphere-asthenosphere model of plate behavior. They do not, however, consider any alternatives.

In elaboration:

...[T]he compelling seismotomographic evidence for deep continental roots (Dziewonski and Anderson, 1984; Dziewonski and Woodhouse, 1987; Grand, 1987; Lerner-Lam, 1988; Forte, Dziewonski, and O'Connell, 1995; Gossler and Kind, 1996)...evidence from seismic-velocity, heat-flow, and gravity studies has been building up for several decades, showing that ancient continental shields have very deep roots and that the low-velocity asthenosphere is very thin or absent beneath them (e.g. MacDonald, 1963; Jordan, 1975, 1978; Pollack and Chapman, 1977). Seismic tomography has merely reinforced the message that continental cratons, especially those of Archean and Early Proterozoic age, are "welded" to the underlying mantle, and that the concept of thin (less than 250-km-thick) lithospheric plates moving thousands of kilometers over a global asthenosphere is unrealistic.

But even with all the, above, scientific evidence, textbook and public parlance continues to propagate this simplistic view of the Earth's interior and the general public remains unaware of this evidence:

Nevertheless, many textbooks continue to propagate the simplistic lithosphere-asthenosphere model, and fail to give the slightest indication that it faces any problems (e.g. McLeish, 1992; Skinner and Porter, 1995; Wicander and Monroe, 1999).

Where have readers, here, seen that before?

It's no wonder that the public swallows the naive idea that continents go wondering the surface of the planet and get together for occasional orgies, called supercontinents.

But the majority of scientific evidence suggests this is wholly impossible.

40,000 miles of mid-ocean spreading ridges are an undeniable scientific fact.

If continents can't go sloushing around the surface of the planet like butter on a hot skillet because they have roots 400 km to 600 km deep, and so-called "subduction" doesn't happen, that leaves only one possibility:

The Expanding Earth theory.

(The David Pratt article is quite lengthy, but if you want to get to the bottom of the "subduction" controversy, without the spin and the stonewalling from mainstream geologists, this is a must read article.)

[allynh]

Only have a sec, but had a question-

The supposed cracking points (between supposed plates) are the oceanic rifts aren't they? From what I can tell, first the continental plates crack, second the continents supposedly slide away from that cracking spot, and third those spots are then supposed to keep expanding, along the extact same place. Isn't that correct? I don't really know for sure, my knowledge of the subject is small right now, but anyhow...here's my question: if the continents slip away from the spot they cracked from, wouldn't the continual cracking always be along the oceanic rifts? In that case, we shouldn't see mountain building, earthquake activity, or volcanic activity anywhere along the continental coasts (example: the Andes).
But we do.

Ideas?

Go ahead and read through this thread. I will be happy to comment if you have any questions.

As an overview, there is a difference between Growing Earth Theory and Expanding Earth Theory. One is where matter is constantly transforming into more complex forms, the other is where the Earth was compressed when it grew in a gas giant and is only now expanding out, uncompressing.

There is a site called Growing Earth Consortium that links to many of the competing sites. Each has an interesting viewpoint.

Then there is this related thread on the Forum.

A German video about the expanding earth may show EU effect
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 27&start=0

Then if you have time, Lloyd started a couple of threads about Shock Dynamics. The thread was similar to what starbiter is doing, where people discussed the concept along with the competing theories. A great many ideas came together. Now that I've seen the video I mentioned in the Duning thread, elements of Shock Dynamics are also possible.

Breakthrough on How Continents Divided
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 62&start=0

Also check out the short thread that Lloyd started to summarize the Shock Dynamics thread.

LK EU Geology Theory
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 31&start=0

Now that the thread has popped up all the GET and EET people will come out of the woodwork to start commenting, so have fun.

[starbiter]

Ahhhhhhhh!
Great to see this resurrected. Can i say resurrected?? Your both welcome on the duning thing any time.

Dr. V had land masses moving around after the breakup of Pangaea, i think. That would seem comfortable with the expanding stuff, i think.

I'm agnostic about most everything. I don't know. Is that a religion? When i think of something i assume it's wrong. Consider the source and all that. But if i can defend myself i start to see a glimmer of hope.

Dr.Vs model is much closer to Expanding Earth theory, than mine. If i had a couple of hours with him tomorrow, with access to Google Maps, i fantasise he'd side with me.

It's the addition of material that seems to be the rub with Expanding Earth. Way beyond me. But i can listen and think. I can wait, and i can fast. With this anything is possible!

OM, michael

[GaryN]

starbiter said:

It's the addition of material that seems to be the rub with Expanding Earth. Way beyond me.

Well, it may be beyond me, too, but I'll chance making myself sound silly...

I believe that electricity in sufficient amounts will create matter within resonant micro or nano cavities in the existing substrate. We need hard gamma rays to reach the energies needed for proton production, but we can easily produce UV photons in LEDs that use a resonant cavity, so lightning should be able to produce the energies necessary. We can get x and perhaps gamma with scotch tape, can't we?
My view is that the earth is slowly accumulating matter all the time due to the energies from regular lightning, and maybe that is the cause of the background earthquake rate. In much more energetic times, there are many, bigger earthquakes and much matter creation.
OK, you can snicker now.

[Florian]

Of course they are growing!

Here is a blog where it was recently discussed (read the comments):

http://skepticblog.org/2009/11/23/no-gr ... ournalism/

[Aardwolf]

starbiter said:

It's the addition of material that seems to be the rub with Expanding Earth. Way beyond me.

Well, it may be beyond me, too, but I'll chance making myself sound silly...

I believe that electricity in sufficient amounts will create matter within resonant micro or nano cavities in the existing substrate. We need hard gamma rays to reach the energies needed for proton production, but we can easily produce UV photons in LEDs that use a resonant cavity, so lightning should be able to produce the energies necessary. We can get x and perhaps gamma with scotch tape, can't we?
My view is that the earth is slowly accumulating matter all the time due to the energies from regular lightning, and maybe that is the cause of the background earthquake rate. In much more energetic times, there are many, bigger earthquakes and much matter creation.
OK, you can snicker now.

Considering there are approximately 300 million ground strikes of lightning each year (and 1.1 billion in the atmosphere) there certainly seems to be enough energy available.

[allynh]

Here is a blog where it was recently discussed (read the comments):

Awesome link, Florian. You were right about the comments section. Whoa! I did not know about the Skepticblog. I need to watch that site. Thanks...

The series of articles that were mentioned are a great summary of GET.

Our growing Earth?
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ ... 122x1.html

Dogmas may blinker mainstream scientific thinking
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ ... 122x2.html

Top artist draws growing global conclusions
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ ... 122x3.html

I'll copy them into the Forum before the links age and break.

[allynh]

Oceans of data: This map, using radiometric data compiled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, illustrates the process by which the ocean floors have been created within the last 200 million years. Pink and red indicate the most recent additions; greens followed by blues are the oldest. Detail added by researcher Neal Adams' Continuity Associates breaks the growth into 10-million-year sections. Humans have existed on Earth only during the time indicated by the pink lines. NOAA / CONTINUITY ASSOCIATES

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ ... 122x1.html

Our growing Earth?

Put aside that stuff about continental drift and tectonic plates explaining the world as it is, and consider a globe that may be getting bigger all round like a pumpkin on a vine
By JEFF OGRISSEG

Special to The Japan Times
The world is awash with wild theories, conjecture and speculation about everything you could imagine — and then some.

However, one theory that popped up some time ago stands out due to its unexpected curiosity: Earth is enlarging — in the way a pumpkin both balloons and adds mass.

Could this theory offer one simple explanation for the current distance between Earth's continents, and the death of the dinosaurs — without involving a Hollywood-size asteroid — and turn the long-held notion of India smashing into Asia on its head?

Is it merely a coincidence that you can reassemble the continents into a single supercontinent that would encase a much smaller Earth?

Growing Earth Theory says yes, yes, yes — and no; geology is not big on coincidences.

Though much of the theory is routinely ignored or dismissed by mainstream scientists, as its specifics reveal themselves, a nagging awareness persists that "dismissed" does not mean "disproved."

Indeed, the prevailing explanation of how the continents came to be where they are today — Plate Tectonics Theory — was also generally dismissed by mainstream science until well into the 1950s.

That theory, incidentally, draws on much the same data as Growing Earth Theory.

Plate Tectonics Theory assumes the Earth has been about the same size since it was created some 4.5 billion years ago out of material thrown across space in the so-called Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago.

That assumption has gained further traction due to a lack of evidence that our planet may have been smaller or may be growing according to the 18th-century Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis about the formation of our solar system in an ever-expanding universe.

On the other hand, as its name suggests, Growing Earth Theory has it that the Earth has grown over the eons — and indeed is still doing so. Start by taking a look at the complex makeup of this planet we inhabit.

Earth is 40,000 km around the Equator. It has a solid iron-nickel inner core measuring about 70 percent the size of our moon. Around that inner core swirls an outer core of liquid metal, about 2,260-km thick, that generates Earth's magnetic fields. This is all encased in a 2,980-km thick blanket of magma — semisolid rock kept just below its melting point by tremendous pressure bearing down on it from what is called the mantle.

At points of weakness in this solid rock mantle, magma melts due to the reduced pressure and then escapes through it to the surface in a volcanic eruption. This is followed by the magma's cooling or crystallization as it gradually becomes an additional part of Earth's relatively thin crust.

The mostly granite crust beneath the continental land masses is around 3.5 billion years old and averages 60- to 100-km thick, though it is deeper in some places. It is either resting on, or rooted into, the mantle.

The crust beneath our oceans, however, is markedly thinner and younger. Consisting mostly of dense basalt (volcanic rock) and gabbro (crystallized basalt), it is only about 8- to 10-km thick and 200 million years old at most.

Meanwhile, under our oceans and running almost entirely around the planet is a 65,000-km-long network of volcanic rifts, through which new volcanic material is being continuously added in an accepted process called sea-floor spreading.

However, scientists favoring Plate Tectonics Theory maintain that this new material is not actually new, but is material that is recycled in a theoretical convective cycle called subduction.

This cycle posits that the tectonic plates are moving and that they force the material down from the surface (or the mantle) back into the molten magma blanket — from where it eventually re-emerges. This analysis allows the surface of the planet to remain the same size.

The problem with Growing Earth Theory, mainstream scientists say, is that it would require the creation of brand new matter — a mechanism for which they claim has not been confirmed and therefore is not accepted as happening.

However, it probably doesn't help that it also leads to a reassessment of the planet's very evolutionary nature and, with it, humankind's rise to dominance. All that aside, Growing Earth Theory, summarized in detail from here, is really quite simple and even explains a number of paleontological mysteries — but beware: this is the stuff many dismiss.

The theory has it that, since the Archean Eon some 3.5 billion years ago, our planet has been ever so slowly growing in size and mass — and expanding radially outward like a balloon being inflated.

In fact the theory states that, over the past 200 million years, Earth has approximately doubled in size and the rate of growth has also been slowly accelerating.

During the Permian Period, from 300 million to about 250 million years ago, the annual rate of growth cited by the theory's proponents was about the width of a human hair. Currently it is estimated to be about 22 mm a year — or some 2.2 meters every century. Certainly, widespread measurements have confirmed that the equator is expanding, but tectonic-plate theorists attribute that to what they call "polar flattening" — without explaining the rationale for that.

Growing Earth Theory, however, winds the clock way back to when a supercontinental granitic crust was covering a half-size Earth like the shell of an egg.

There were no large mountains or deep oceans in those times, just shallow seas, although about 70 percent of the surface was covered, as now, by water.

Then, when the growth of the underlying mantle (due to forces not yet agreed upon), became more than the supercontinental crust could take, the volcanic fissures started to appear. These are the fissures that now underlie the ridges we see today in all the world's oceans.

We know that from these oceanic rifts there spews a continuous outpouring of volatile gases, mineral-rich water and molten rock up from the mantle — magma, just like from a volcano — which, when exposed to cold ocean water, crystallizes to begin forming a new, thinner crust.

In the accepted process of sea-floor spreading, constantly erupted material settles and starts forming new crust while at the same time pushing older material away from the ridge with the helpful pull of gravity. All of our oceanic basins were formed this way.

As this volcanic spreading pushed the continents apart, Growing Earth Theory has it that most of the ancient seas drained off the land masses and started forming the oceans.

Indeed, it also holds that the volume of water, which, in a hydrogen-rich universe is readily produced (Enceladus, a moon of Saturn with a diameter of just 600 km, spews water from its southern pole), has increased in proportion to the amount of Earth's growth — just as the planet's gravity has increased along with its increased mass.

In terms of mountain building, too, it's interesting that none of the large, nonvolcanic mountain ranges on our planet, such as the Alps, Andes or Himalayas, are more than 100 million years old.

In terms of geological time, that makes them quite recent arrivals.

However, rather than attributing their formation to what would be an improbably rapid movement leading to the collision of tectonic plates — or to ancient shields (like that of the Indian subcontinent) breaking loose from the mantle and sliding about — Growing Earth Theory puts their formation down to folding and stacking resulting from sea-floor spreading.

This has the effect of flattening the Earth's curvature, but — because the Earth's granite crust is so thick — it tends to retain its curvature as it can't bend or stretch. Then as gravity tries to recurve it to the flattening surface of the growing planet, it cracks and breaks and throws up mountain-range-size ripples such as today's Himalayas. For 160 million years until 65 million years ago, dinosaurs were the dominant species and roamed this planet unhindered by oceans, often migrating much as birds do today, Growing Earth Theory posits. Indeed, fossil evidence of like dinosaur species continue to be found on multiple continents now separated by oceans too vast to traverse. From the fossil record it has also been learned that the bones of dinosaurs had about the same density as animal bones do today, yet many dinosaurs were three or four times larger than any existing animals, yet were probably just as maneuverable. The reduced gravity on a smaller planet with less mass could well account for this, growing Earth theorists propose, as well as accounting for the significantly larger flora of that time.

And as for the mass extinction of the dinosaurs in geologically short order, the theory has it that because they were the dominant species for so long, as oceans formed between the continents and climatic zones changed, their habitats and migratory life cycles were fatally disrupted. Moreover, the known decline of the dinosaurs coincides with the emergence of mammals, which both protect their eggs internally and will readily feed on those of other species (such as dinosaurs) left lying around. So the "terrible lizards" simply did not adapt fast enough as the Earth grew, and that is what killed them off — not some CG-like impact from outer space. There it is. We are growing from the seams as new crust is added at the undersea volcanic ridges. No need for giant rocks from outer space, runaway continents or credulity-straining subduction zones to consume and recycle epic masses of material.

But if you remain skeptical, or just plain dogmatic, about Plate Tectonics Theory, the crustal-age map produced in 1996 by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration may yet tip the balance. The colored bars on the map that are in the ocean areas represent various ages of the crust, as measured by what's called radiometric dating of electromagnetic radioactivity in the rocks.

For clarity, this rainbow of color has been further graduated down into segments of 10 million years. The pink and red areas in the very middle are the most recent additions to the Earth's surface; the yellows, greens and then blues near the continental shelves represent the oldest.

The data was originally compiled — paradoxically, to back up plate tectonics theory — because geologists and paleontologists could not find fossils in the deep oceans older than 70 million years.

For those deft at visualizing 3D processes, working backward in time, progressively remove each age stripe on the map in your mind and close up the empty space to see our planet as Growing Earth Theory sees it back through the eons. Alternatively, simply cut up a world map and then reassemble the pieces on a smaller-size ball or globe.

Few theories are without their flaws, but Growing Earth Theory certainly has a way of growing on you.

Jeff Ogrisseg is a Tokyo-based journalist with an abiding interest in Earth sciences.

[allynh]

On a plate: A map of the world showing the boundaries of the 15 largest tectonic plates on the surface of the planet as delineated by Plate Tectonics Theory. The theory assumes the planet has always been about its present size, and that many of its landforms have been created as a result of enormous pressures caused by movements of these plates. U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ ... 122x2.html

Dogmas may blinker mainstream scientific thinking

By JEFF OGRISSEG
Special to The Japan Times
The competing claims of Growing Earth Theory and Plate Tectonics Theory as presented in the accompanying article may appear to be a recent rivalry, but they are in fact following in a long tradition.

Soon after accurate maps of the world were first drawn courtesy of the great European navigations of the 15th to 18th centuries, scholars studying them were struck especially by the facing coastlines of Africa and North and South America that appeared to fit into each other if pushed together.

Consequently, they theorized that those continents — and by extension other land masses — were long ago much closer together. Just how long ago, however, was not determined until well into the 20th century.

Back in 1912, a German scientist named Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) published his theory of continental drift, which he believed held the key to answering those questions.

According to this, the land masses were once one giant continent Wegener named Pangaea that was surrounded by water, and they arrived at their present positions by drifting around somewhat like melting ice cubes do on a sheet of glass.

Most of Wegener's evidence was circumstantial and his theory failed to explain the geological mechanism driving continental drift — how, for example, the Indian shield, ancient rock that is essentially welded to the mantle, could break loose and ram northward into Asia and keep on going with such force as to cause the giant ripples now known as the Himalayas.

Wegener's hypothesis was largely forgotten until the 1950s, when it was dusted off and revised to become Plate Tectonics Theory a decade or so later. And that — despite being so complex in its supposed workings and requiring such radical geomorphic change over a very short period of geological time as to render the Earth unique in the whole of our solar system as we know it — became the received wisdom now generally treated as fact. Interestingly, though, it's not so long since science was leaning in favor of a far simpler explanation that followed in the footsteps of those who had centuries before set their eyes on the first world maps.

Scientists such as Otto Hilgenberg (1896-1976) in Germany and Samuel Warren Carey (1911-2002) in Australia, working in the years before World War II, not only noted how the continents bordering the Atlantic appeared to fit into each other if pushed together. They also observed, and made models to show, that the Pacific, Indian and Southern Ocean continents also fitted together — but as one mass entirely covering an Earth half its present size.

Rather than accept this staggering proposition, though, scientists — without being able to refute it — instead latched on to the more comfortable alternative of Plate Tectonics Theory that didn't require any change in Earth's size.

However, that scientific consensus occurred despite oceanic surveys and deep-core sampling in the 1960s that began to plot a 65,000-km-long network of undersea volcanic ridges that run like the seams on a baseball around our planet — and which were found to be in constant and various stages of "eruption."

Advanced radiometric age-dating then revealed something truly remarkable — that the age of the oceans' floors increases symmetrically on both sides as you move away from the volcanic ridges. And yet more stunning, the findings also showed the ocean floors are nowhere more than 180 million years old.

From the results of this research it was a short step for some scientists to postulate a process of seafloor spreading. This holds that new volcanic material erupting from the submarine ridges is constantly forming new oceanic crust which, with the help of gravity, pushes the older crust further away. It was an analysis that seemed to quite adequately explain what enlarged the Atlantic and pushed the Americas and Africa apart.

But if this spreading has been happening over geological time from all the ridges, wouldn't that mean the whole planet must be growing in size?

Not necessarily said all those wedded to Plate Tectonics Theory.

In their collective mind, it was — and remains — more feasible that the surface of the planet is made up of crustal plates that are either converging, diverging or colliding with one another, all driven by heat from inside the planet.

In essence, such thinking is an extension of 1929's Theory of Continental Drift championed in the face of widespread skepticism by the English geologist and pioneer of radiometric dating, Arthur Holmes (1890-1965). According to Holmes, it is so-called convection cells in the mantle that dissipate radioactive heat from beneath, which then propels the continents around.

So both the continental drift and plate tectonics theories allow Earth's size to have remained relatively unchanged since its creation.

As far-fetched as the proposed mechanisms behind both these theories may have seemed to some, they gained a new lease of life through the work of seismologists Kiyoo Wadati (1902-95) at the Japan Meteorological Agency and Hugo Benioff (1899-1968) at the California Institute of Technology.

After conducting research independently in the 1930s on deep seismic activity, they theorized the existence of what came to be known as Wadati-Benioff Zones. In these zones, they maintained that tectonic instability appeared to be the result of one piece of crust being pushed — or "subducted," as they termed it — under another.

Armed with this new perspective, advocates of both continental drift and plate tectonics theories could now explain the relatively young age of the crusts forming oceanic floors as being the result of subduction.

From there it was but a short step to hypothesize that older basaltic crust underlying the oceans was either being swallowed by oceanic trenches or pushed beneath another plate, Wadati-Benioff style — and then "recycled" back through the magma to the oceanic rifts in a fashion resembling a conveyor belt.

But to cover all the bases in cases where neither of the above are happening, Plate Tectonics Theory allows for denser but thinner oceanic crust 8 km to 10 km thick to somehow be part of the same plate as the ancient, granite continental land masses up to 100 km thick. And, on some of the theory's delineated borders, such as that between the African and Eurasian plates, it's even OK for no tectonic markings to appear at all.

In short, it does seem the theory appears to make exceptions to fit each situation.

Back in Australia, meanwhile, Carey had initially supported the Theory of Continental Drift and set out to prove it. But his search for answers only led to more questions. Finally, inspired by Hilgenberg's work in Germany, and a growing list of similarities found in geological structures now separated by oceans, he eventually became a foremost advocate of Growing Earth Theory.

But Carey was far from alone in his scientific stance. Among his contemporaries was East German engineer Klaus Vogel, who in 1977 recreated a smaller pancontinental globe without oceans inside a transparent globe of the Earth as it now is, and Dr. Ken Perry of Wyoming, whose computer models corroborated expansion tectonics with geometrical precision. Carey's downfall, though, was that — like Wegener in the early 20th century — he was not a physicist and so could not propose a mechanism that might cause what the geological record was telling him had happened. Then when subduction reared its head, Earth no longer had a need to be growing.

In late 1993, Carey symbolically handed off the baton in a letter to Australian geologist James Maxlow, whose draft manuscript on Growing Earth Theory, Carey said, "would satisfy the most hostile examiner."

That hasn't exactly been the case, but Maxlow has remained an active force, disseminating research findings and various compelling evidence through books, papers and seminars in the face of continuing disdain — based on precious little scientific evidence — from mainstream scientists.

Undeterred, Maxlow continues to maintain that the difference between Growing Earth Theory and Plate Tectonics Theory simply boils down to whether or not the presumed need for a constant Earth-radius premise is true or false.

"The problem that mainstream geology imagines is that expansion tectonics is a threat to their career, research programs, reputation, or at the very least a threat to their intelligence," said Maxlow by e-mail.

"An expanding Earth is perceived by mainstream literature as having been proven wrong, so why should they bother."

Whether that's entirely the case or not, what certainly seems to be true is that rather than being pursued by the entire scientific community in a dedicated spirit of inquiry, research into how the Earth came to be the way it is now is tainted instead by dedications to dogma, whatever the exciting results of new research.

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Geology's Dark Knight: Famed graphic artist Neal Adams holds a homemade paleoglobe showing how tightly Earth's continents fit together on a smaller sphere. HANAKO HORIBE

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ ... 122x3.html

Top artist draws growing global conclusions

By JEFF OGRISSEG
Special to The Japan Times
Neal Adams became a cult star as a graphic artist with DC and Marvel comics during the late 1960s and '70s through his work on series such as "The Spectre," "Batman," "Superman" and "Green Lantern" — and also his contributions, at Marvel, to "X-Men" and "Conan the Barbarian."

Geology's Dark Knight: Famed graphic artist Neal Adams holds a homemade paleoglobe showing how tightly Earth's continents fit together on a smaller sphere. HANAKO HORIBE

Since then Adams, now 68, has — in between designing high-tech theme-park rides — brought his vision to bear in the world of cinema. He resurrected the old campy Batman, turning him into today's Dark Knight, and brought "X-Men" to the big screen. He will also be among the first people to thank when animatics-charged "motion" comics appear in the near future.

But what really consumes Adams these days is the way he's drawn to Growing Earth Theory — to the point where he's spent more than half a million dollars of his own money striving to contribute to the scientific debates. He has, through his Continuity Associates studio, produced more than a dozen video clips demonstrating expansion tectonics in action all around our solar system that have been viewed by millions online.

Then there's "A Conversation Between Two Guys in a Bar or a New Model of the Universe," a graphic-novel-in-waiting in which Adams takes on mainstream science and accepted wisdoms about dinosaurs in tongue-and-cheek layman's terms.

Specifically, Adams has for more than a decade been the outspoken voice of Growing Earth Theory, openly challenging the scientific community to stop ignoring the evidence of growth he cites not only here on Earth and across our solar system, but in the universe as well.

In support of his case, Adams believes he may have identified the "missing mechanism" concerning the creation of new matter in the work of the late Australian geologist Samuel W. Carey, the acknowledged father of modern expansion tectonics whose work he has been studying for almost 40 years.

"Nobody has ever disproved Sam Carey's work. . . . And the evidence coming in from our planetary missions shows that tectonic growth is happening all over," he said in a recent interview for The Japan Times in New York.

While berating much of the scientific community — which he accuses of having become so specialized as to be unable or unwilling to examine challenging research from outside — he doesn't shrink from talking its language.

The "missing mechanism" he tells its members, and millions more through the Internet, is to be found in the phenomenon known as subatomic pair production.

This cutting-edge concept describes a process in which an electron and positron are simultaneously created in the vicinity of a nucleus or subatomic particle. In more accessible language, it is thought to be an example of the materialization of energy as predicted by special relativity theory in the scientific realm of quantum electrodynamics.

"I'm upsetting all the apple carts," he said. "This really comes down to a new science. I'd like to sugarcoat it, but I can't. Most of what we know or assume to know is wrong one way or another. That's kind of a kick in the ass to everyone, isn't it?"

He added that, "What surprises me is that people do not want to talk reasonably about this in any way.

"It won't change our moral beliefs, but it will totally change our view of the universe. It won't help us find more oil, but it will guarantee that we have more than enough oil while we change over to hydrogen power," he said.

To find out more about Neal Adams' work, visit http://www.nealadams.com/nmu.html