Are the planets growing?

[allynh]

One of the fun links on Bill Erickson's site is:

The Reduced Gravity Earth - Stephen Hurrell
http://www.dinox.org/redgravity.html

This YouTube video on the link has a nice description showing how to look at the scale of an animal as you increase volume and change the gravity.

Ancient Life's Gravity and its Implications for the Expanding Earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw3HWjvIhVw

Thanks for updating your site Bill. I need to read through all of your links and articles now. HA!

[Hoyasaur]

This YouTube video on the link has a nice description showing how to look at the scale of an animal as you increase volume and change the gravity.

Ancient Life's Gravity and its Implications for the Expanding Earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw3HWjvIhVw

Thanks for posting Stephen's YouTube video. I hadn't seen that.

[moonkoon]

Thanks to Bill Erickson for the links. Judging by the number of reads of this thread, curiosity about our planet's development is, to coin a phrase, growing.

Anyone interested in expanding (and maybe occasionally contracting) earth notions could do worse than read Bill's own, Ever Since Wegener: A Brief History of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis.
http://www.frontier-knowledge.com/earth ... egener.pdf

And for speculation on the possibly associated suggested variations over time in the mass dependent gravitational constant you will also find a link to Halton Arp's, The Observational Impetus For Le Sage Gravity on his site.
http://www.haltonarp.com/articles/the_o ... ge_gravity

[Hoyasaur]

Thanks to Bill Erickson for the links. Judging by the number of reads of this thread, curiosity about our planet's development is, to coin a phrase, growing.

Anyone interested in expanding (and maybe occasionally contracting) earth notions could do worse than read Bill's own, Ever Since Wegener: A Brief History of the Expanding Earth Hypothesis.
http://www.frontier-knowledge.com/earth ... egener.pdf

Thanks.

May I also humbly suggest that people read my 1989 paper Bipedal Hopping and the Origin of Dinosaurs in which I argue that obligatory bipedality in dinosaurs evolved as a direct consequence of the adoption of a bipedal hopping gait by ancestral thecodonts, who were normally quardrupedal and were merely facultatively bipedal.

Please note that my hypothesis does not rely on reduced gravity or earth expansion (although reduced gravity would certainly favor hopping animals, much in the same way that the Apollo astronauts "discovered" the advantages of hopping in the moon's low gravity). Please also note that many primitive crocodiles were also obligatory bipeds, so something was going on in the Triassic that favored bipedality.

IMHO, hopping behavior as the direct "cause" of obligatory bipedality remains the best explanation for obligatory bipedality, which is still regarded as a big mystery by paleontologists, who typically fall back on the tautological argument that bipedality was advantageous and therefore many dinosaurs became bipeds. Hopping, which relies on mechanical (elastic) rather than metabolic energy, would also help explain how the cold-blooded dinosaurs suppressed the warm-blooded mammals.

I've also argued that powered flight in the pterosaurs and dinosaurs had a "saltational" (hopping) origin, which is contrary to the conventional "cursorial" and "arboreal" theories. Many small dinosaurs were insectivores and I suggest that they would "hop" into swarms of flying insects and use their forelimbs for "harvesting." Since it would have been advantageous for these hopping dinosaurs to stay aloft as long as possible, any structural changes in the forelimbs that facilitated their "hopping-and-harvesting" behavior (including feathers, limb elongation, and a massive sternal complex as a keel for powerful muscles) would have been selected, which eventually led to the development of highly specialized flapping forelimbs (wings) and powered flight.

[allynh]

The concept that T-Rex hopped, was feathered and hopped, fills me with total fear. AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! Run away! HA!

Having big claws on the hind feet are not just good for traction, but for the kill. Hopping onto prey, with the back claws swinging down, would be a quick killing blow. Yikes! Remember, I said, run away!!!!!!

BTW, I found this great quote the other day.

“Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies." - F. Nietzsche

Reading through your various essays you can see the battle between "truth" and "convictions" that has gone on for well over a century.

Well done.

[Hoyasaur]

The concept that T-Rex hopped, was feathered and hopped, fills me with total fear. AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!! Run away! HA!

Having big claws on the hind feet are not just good for traction, but for the kill. Hopping onto prey, with the back claws swinging down, would be a quick killing blow. Yikes! Remember, I said, run away!!!!!!

BTW, I found this great quote the other day.

“Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies." - F. Nietzsche

Reading through your various essays you can see the battle between "truth" and "convictions" that has gone on for well over a century.

Well done.

The fact (or possibility) that primitive dinosaurs hopped has no direct bearing on T-Rex, which lived more than 100 Ma after dinosaurs first appeared. I never claimed that all bipedal dinosaurs throughout their 140 Ma history hopped, or, for that matter, were cold-blooded. I just claimed that obligatory bipedality in the primitive dinosaurs resulted from bipedal hopping behavior and that it enabled the primitive dinosaurs to remain cold-blooded and yet suppress the increasingly endothermic mammal-like reptiles.

Clawed feet are certainly lethal weapons, but their primary function is for support and locomotion. Their use for killing prey is merely serendipitous (for them, that is, not their prey). Similarly, the long sharp claws on cats large and small are lethal weapons, but they also improve traction during locomotion.

Nietzsche is certainly correct that convictions can be a foe of truth. Case in point: it's probably impossible to get tenure at a major US university and/or NSF funding unless one accepts, without question, Plate Tectonics. Dare to question PT and you're out of luck or, even worse, declared a crank or crackpot. So, at the moment, the triumph of conviction over truth is most evident in mainstream American earth science.

My favorite Nietzsche quotes (apropos of nothing) are "look not too long into the abyss lest the abyss look into thee." Also, "I say in one paragraph what others say in ten... what others don't say in ten."

[allynh]

The accuracy of the "dots" that they are talking about can already be matched by regular GPS survey equipment. The dots would allow science to tag huge areas and track the motion during earthquakes, at low cost.

Todd Humphreys: How to fool a GPS
http://www.ted.com/talks/todd_humphreys ... a_gps.html

Over the next 20 years, they will be able to show the Growing Earth. If they bother to look. HA!

[Hoyasaur]

Over the next 20 years, they will be able to show the Growing Earth. If they bother to look. HA!

I would love to see expansion. However, it's entirely possible (and in my opinion likely) that current or forthcoming measurements will show no increase in radius, or even a decrease. Following Lester King (1983), I believe that large-scale expansion (i.e. ocean widening and continental displacement) was restricted for the most part to the Mesozoic. IOW, I do not agree with those expansion models that posit continuous or accelerating expansion since the Permian (e.g. Carey, Owen, and Maxlow). Therefore, in my opinion, it's entirely possible that current or forthcoming measurements of the earth's size will show no change or even contraction. After all, many very large land animals lived during the Pleistocene that are no longer with us today, which suggests to me that surface gravity was less (and the earth's radius therefore greater) in the Pleistocene than it is today.

This is not a cop-out, or an ad hoc hypothesis to avoid a "crucial test" of expansion, which would be the sign of a "degenerative research program" (Lakatos, 1974). Rather, it is based on the fossil and geological evidence, and in particular the evidence from the ocean floors (i.e. King) and on the use of maximum body size as a paleogravity indicator (which I implied in my paper On the Origin of Dinosaurs and Mammals).

[allynh]

Therefore, in my opinion, it's entirely possible that current or forthcoming measurements of the earth's size will show no change or even contraction.

Check out this post on page 48. That's where we start discussing the evidence of growth after the Japan earthquake.

Re: Are the planets growing?
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 705#p49266

Then on page 50 there is mention of the Colorado Plateau growing.

Re: Are the planets growing?
http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 735#p51184

You will find post scattered through the thread where we show examples of recent growth. As I said in an earlier post:

Remember, the Earth is part of the electric circuit; galaxy, sun, etc... There is no way to isolate it from that circuit, so it will always be growing. Sometimes fast like between 6k & 10k years ago when there was rapid growth and the megafauna died off, sometimes slow like now where the growth can be ignored as error in the GPS system. At some point the data from the GPS system will be too big to ignore, then everything will break wide open. HA!

[allynh]

There are so many things that are deeply wrong with this article. They should do a series of TPODs about the subject. Wait! I think they already have. HA!

How Earth Formed: Prevailing Theory Is Flawed, Study Suggests
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/1 ... 82207.html

By: SPACE.com Staff
Published: 07/18/2012 06:40 AM EDT on SPACE.com

Earth probably formed in a hotter, drier part of the solar system than previously thought, which could explain our planet's puzzling shortage of water, a new study reports.

Our newly forming solar system's "snow line" — the zone beyond which icy compounds could condense 4.5 billion years ago — was actually much farther away from the sun than prevailing theory predicts, according to the study.

"Unlike the standard accretion-disk model, the snow line in our analysis never migrates inside Earth's orbit," co-author Mario Livio, of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, said in a statement.

"Instead, it remains farther from the sun than the orbit of Earth, which explains why our Earth is a dry planet," Livio added. "In fact, our model predicts that the other innermost planets — Mercury, Venus and Mars— are also relatively dry. " [A Photo Tour of the Planets]

Earth a dry planet?

Referring to Earth — with its vast oceans, huge rivers and polar ice caps — as a dry planet may sound strange. But water makes up less than 1 percent of our planet's mass, and much of that material was likely delivered by comets and asteroids after Earth's formation.

Scientists have long been puzzled by our planet's relative water deficiency, especially because Earth is thought to have coalesced from water-rich substances out beyond the snow line.

The snow line now lies in the middle of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but conventional models suggest that it was much closer to the sun 4.5 billion years ago, when Earth and the other planets took shape.

"If the snow line was inside Earth's orbit when our planet formed, then it should have been an icy body," said co-author Rebecca Martin, also of STScI. "Planets such as Uranus and Neptune that formed beyond the snow line are composed of tens of percents of water. But Earth doesn't have much water, and that has always been a puzzle."

The new study, which has been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, may help solve the mystery.

Diagram showing proposed formation locations for Earth 4.5 billion years ago. Our planet may have formed inside the so-called "snow line," explaining why it's so dry.

Moving the snow line

In the prevailing model of how things happened 4.5 billion years ago, the protoplanetary disk around our newborn sun was fully ionized — meaning electrons in the region had been stripped off their parent atoms by powerful solar radiation.

Material from the disk fell onto the sun, the theory goes, heating the disk up. Initially, the snow line was far away from our star, perhaps 1 billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) or more. (Earth orbits the sun at a distance of 93 million miles, or 150 million km.)

But over time, according to the model, the protoplentary disk ran out of material and cooled. As a result, the snow line moved inward, past Earth's orbit, before our planet had a chance to form.

But Martin and Livio found some potential problems with this scenario. Specifically, they say that protoplanetary disks around young stars aren't fully ionized.

"Very hot objects such as white dwarfs and X-ray sources release enough energy to ionize their accretion disks," Martin said. "But young stars don't have enough radiation or enough infalling material to provide the necessary energetic punch to ionize the disks."

A dead zone in the disk

If our solar system's disk wasn't ionized, its material would not have been funneled onto the young sun's surface, researchers said. Instead, gas and dust would simply have orbited around our star without moving inward, creating a so-called "dead zone" in the disk.

This dead zone would have acted as a plug, blocking matter from migrating toward the sun. Gas and dust would have piled up in the dead zone, increasing its density and causing it to heat up by gravitational compression.

This process, in turn, would have heated up the area outside the plug, vaporizing icy material and turning it into dry matter. Earth formed in this hotter region, whose dry matter became the building blocks of our planet, according to the new study.

While this new model could explain Earth's relative lack of water, it shouldn't be extended to all newly forming planetary systems, researchers said.

"Conditions within the disk will vary from star to star, and chance, as much as anything else, determined the precise end results for our Earth," Livio said.

[Hoyasaur]

This is from one of the posts (http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 705#p49296) after the first post cited by allynh.

Japan moved East, away from Korea. Korea moved East away from China.

Does that mean that the floors of the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea are made of elastic? I find it hard to accept that 8ft of seafloor for hundreds of miles appeared within those seas with no consequence.

Aardwolf makes a good point. I don't think there are any spreading ridges in the Sea of Japan, which makes it difficult to explain the eastward movement of Japan away from Korea in terms of classical "seafloor spreading." However, it would be consistent with "oceanization" in which the continental crust is "stretched" (ductile deformation and/or normal faulting) and attenuated, with mafic underplating (i.e. the transformation of ancient continental crust into oceanic crust).

So, to answer Aardwolf, yes, the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea are "elastic" but only in the sense that the seafloor spread laterally through some combination of block faulting and ductile deformation and without any "seafloor spreading" in the PT sense.

[Hoyasaur]

As long as we're revisiting old posts, here's another:

Allynh,In the earlier part of your post you quoted the claim that parts of Japan may have moved nearly three meters toward the US, yet later you stated that the Pacific was not shrinking... how do you reconcile this?

On a constant-sized earth, the movement of Japan away from continental Asia would necessarily mean that the Pacific is shrinking, and that's exactly what PT maintains. Indeed, PT claims that the Pacific has always been shrinking (or at least has become smaller after drift caused the ancient Panthalassa to cover less than a hemisphere, i.e. sometime during the early Mesozoic according to PT timetables.) But on an expanding earth, Japan could move away from Asia without necessarily getting closer to North America, i.e. without shrinking the Pacific.

Check out this article -- Biogeographical and geological evidence for a smaller, completely-enclosed Pacific Basin in the Late Cretaceous (McCarthy, 2005). The trans-Pacific biogeographical evidence, which is entirely equivalent to Wegener's trans-Atlantic biogeographical evidence (though not the same plants and animals, obviously), indicates that the Americas were once much closer, if not adjacent, to Eurasia across the Pacific. How is that possible on a constant-sized earth? Also, the Cache Creek Terrane in the Canadian Rockies is Tethyan. How did East Asian rocks end up in western North America?

[Aardwolf]

This is from one of the posts (http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpB ... 705#p49296) after the first post cited by allynh.

Japan moved East, away from Korea. Korea moved East away from China.

Does that mean that the floors of the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea are made of elastic? I find it hard to accept that 8ft of seafloor for hundreds of miles appeared within those seas with no consequence.

Aardwolf makes a good point. I don't think there are any spreading ridges in the Sea of Japan, which makes it difficult to explain the eastward movement of Japan away from Korea in terms of classical "seafloor spreading." However, it would be consistent with "oceanization" in which the continental crust is "stretched" (ductile deformation and/or normal faulting) and attenuated, with mafic underplating (i.e. the transformation of ancient continental crust into oceanic crust).

So, to answer Aardwolf, yes, the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea are "elastic" but only in the sense that the seafloor spread laterally through some combination of block faulting and ductile deformation and without any "seafloor spreading" in the PT sense.

If, as we are told, the Earth has a fixed circumference then where was the 8ft lost? 8ft of subduction in a matter of minutes should have caused some destruction. Where was it? Japan is no closer to Hawaii or the west coast of America. Where did an 8ft section of earth, hundreds of mile long, go in a matter of a few minutes?

[allynh]

What can I say. I'm shameless. HA!

Part 7: What if ... Earth were twice as big?
http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/145 ... e-big.html

If Earth's diameter were doubled to about 16,000 miles, the planet's mass would increase eight times, and the force of gravity on the planet would be twice as strong.

Life would be: Built and proportioned differently.

If gravity were twice as strong , bodies possessing the same construction and mass as our flora and fauna would weigh twice as much and would collapse. It'd be "timber!" for tall, thick trees such as redwoods. Large, sunward-reaching plants might still develop, but would require stiffer architectures of cellulose fibers or another material altogether.

Animals would have to be thicker-legged to support their weight. As for humans, our appearance would depend on the evolutionary demands placed on our biological forebears in a higher-gravity world, said Neil Comins, a professor of physics at the University of Maine. "If our ancestors had to run fast and fight hard, then we would be burly, but if not, we could be thin and light," Comins told Life's Little Mysteries.

Would Humans Born On Mars Grow Taller Than Earthlings?
http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/116 ... ings-.html

If we ever manage to overcome the fertility and sex troubles of space , we’ll probably be popping out little humanoid children on other planets. But our little tykes might not stay little for very long.

On Earth we experience the steady hand of gravity at 1 g force constantly throughout our lifetimes. On other planets in our solar system, that’s just not possible. Researchers are working on ways to make artificial gravity possible in order to make long flights easier on human bodies. According to NASA, most astronauts grow about 2 inches while they’re in space because the reduced gravity causes the fluid between vertebrae to expand. They lose the height within 10 days of returning to Earth’s crushing gravity. Because of the growth, NASA uses space suits that have extra room to accommodate the additional height.

(You also grow taller when you sleep : As you lie in bed, gravity pushes you down and elongates your spine enough so that when you wake up you’re usually about half an inch taller than the previous night.)

Grab those Martians for your basketball team — Mars settlement-proponent Robert Zubrin has theorized that children born on other planets with lower gravity, like Mars, which has just one-third of Earth’s gravitational pull would in fact grow taller by a few inches than they would have on Earth. While genes inherited from their parents wouldn’t change, the spine could elongate more than on Earth. Fortunately, Martian kids born in a low-g environment wouldn’t suffer from the muscle mass and bone problems that long-flight astronauts do.

Unfortunately, the biggest possible problem with your Galactic Globetrotters may surface if low-gravity-born humans tried to return to Earth. They’d experience three times their home gravity and could suffer serious bone problems. For example, one NASA scientist, Al Globus, gives an example of someone who weighs 160 pounds. “If I went to a 3g planet, the equivalent of moving from Mars to Earth, I would weigh almost 500 pounds and would have great difficulty getting out of bed,” Globus said. “For children raised on the moon or Mars, attending college on Earth will be out of the question.”

[Hoyasaur]

What can I say. I'm shameless. HA!

Part 7: What if ... Earth were twice as big?
http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/145 ... e-big.html

If Earth's diameter were doubled to about 16,000 miles, the planet's mass would increase eight times, and the force of gravity on the planet would be twice as strong.

Life would be: Built and proportioned differently.

If gravity were twice as strong , bodies possessing the same construction and mass as our flora and fauna would weigh twice as much and would collapse. It'd be "timber!" for tall, thick trees such as redwoods. Large, sunward-reaching plants might still develop, but would require stiffer architectures of cellulose fibers or another material altogether.

Animals would have to be thicker-legged to support their weight. As for humans, our appearance would depend on the evolutionary demands placed on our biological forebears in a higher-gravity world, said Neil Comins, a professor of physics at the University of Maine. "If our ancestors had to run fast and fight hard, then we would be burly, but if not, we could be thin and light," Comins told Life's Little Mysteries.

Obviously, that assumes constant density, with mass increasing in proportion to diameter (2^3 = 8). However, If the earth's diameter doubled at constant mass, then the earth would be much less dense and surface gravity would be 0.25 g, so we would get "...a lighter, slenderer, more active type, needing less energy, less heat, less heart, less lungs, less blood." (D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, ca 1920, speculating on the effect of halving surface gravity). In other words, we'd get very active and lightly-constructed ectotherms, and also giants. Gee, that rings a distant bell.

It's important to state one's assumptions.