COMMENTS BOARD
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Strange quark matter
I once proposed on your BBS my own theory of how Earth's mass may have
increased over the eons. Now there seems to be new supporting evidence of
sorts. Have you considered mini black holes as a possibility or "strange
quark matter"?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2502755.stm
Barry E. DiGregorio
Earth's gravity
The hypothesis of the earth gaining mass so to speak, or at enough to effect gravity in such a way as to reduce the feasable size of land animals isn't bad but wouldn't it make more sense by least saying that maybe some other force affected the rate at which earth accelerates. For instance the moon hasn't always been a sattelite of earth's....Would such a body entering the earth's gravity well send the earth of its previous orbit displacing te earth to a new orbit and also affecting its velocity around the sun. Just a thought.. one of many ideas floating around
Mario
Growth, Accumulation, Compression, Heating, Expansion, Relax.
After 15 months of Studying Expanding Earth I am finally starting to make significant progress towards meaningful graphs of the Growth and Expansion of the Earth. My base rate of 0.4 mm increase in radius has not changed, but I am considering increasing my maximum rate of accumulation a very small amount. I originally started with 4.8 mm per year as the max and lowered it to 4.6 mm per year as the maximum. I now believe it is above 4.6 mm and below 4.8 mm per year. This cyclical rate gives me a total accumulation during the final Galactic rotation of 750 km (compressed from 790 km of accumulation)using a base time period of 230 MY for one Galactic Rotation. The period to rotate the Galaxy should be slightly longer each time (going backwards in time)but so far I am unable to find out how much longer. I therefor have been using uniform time periods of 230 MY or shorter to model growth. Growth is cyclical (pulsational) and begins and ends a cycle with 0.4 mm per year accumulation. (about 3 sheets of paper) The peak of the cycle that I have been using is assumed at 4.6 mm per year, but the sequence of the cycle has an increasing amplitude as you move forward in time, or decreasing as you move backwards in time.
It plots above a critical point in the Growth of the Earth namely the point that corresponds to the initial opening of the Pacific Ocean. That critical point is (900 MY, 3632 KM radius). Actually (900 MY +/- 20 MY, 3632 km +/- 65km). That critical point corresponds to a radius of 0.57 of the current Earth radius ( range 0.58 to 0.56 Re)and encompasses Three important concepts. 1)The continents were continuous and unbroken. 2)There was a global equitorial mountain belt of aproximately 0.566 of the curent equitorial circumference. and 3)The Phyla Anamalia began 880 MY ago after the initial opening of the Pacific allowed for continuous Oceans on the Earth. Prior to the initial opening of the Pacific, oceans were shallow and intermittent thus the diversification of life was limited to bacterial and various forms of algae. Continuous Ocean was one of the ingreedients towards diverse life.
The sequence I have been using based on the concept of growth using 0.89^n where The base is 750 km increase and each prior increase was 89% of the one before. It plots just above Pacific opening critical point (-900MY,3632km)
The sequence of growth going backwards is 750, 667.5, 594, 528.7, 470.6, 418.8, 372.7, 331.7, 295.3, 262.8, 233.9, 208.1, .... etc. The 24th is a negative number and the intercept is at - 4.8 Billion Years. The result is that a final growth of 750 km is slightly too small and 0.89 is slightly too big. somewhere between 750 km and 780 km is the correct amount of final rotation growth and the growth coefficient will be between 0.87 and 0.89. this will give a final date of -4.6 billion years as it should. 23.5 rotations seems to zero you out as far as radius no mater what the period of each cycle. The correct formula will send you thru the following three points (-4600,0) (-900,3632) (0,6372.4) and probably be a quadratic equation.
You didn,t tell me if you got the print out on density or not that I sent you and if it was of any use to you. I got a series of data points now on gravity for the last Galactic rotation in intervals of 0.03 T where T can be 230, 240, or 250 MY. It started at 0.799 G and proceeds thru 1.0 G. The peak of the dinosuar size is at 0.895 G.
The Bakker book allows for a higher gravity as the critical component, the cantilevered neck structure of seismosaurs, could be raised and lowered in ostritch style so that it would not be required to be fully extended. A full extension would require 0.8 G at the peak, but an S shaped extension of the neck allows for about a 0.9 G without more massive neck muscles and bigger base vertabre.
As you can see I am making progress. Next I intend to tackle the problems of decrasing atmospheric Temperature, pressure, density and volume in association with decreasing gravity as you go backwards in time.
Growth and Expansion of the Earth
I have been studying Expanding Earth Theory for nearly two years now and have made a few breakthroughs. The most important it the time rate of growth of the Earth.
Specifically the radius of the Earth at any time (t)is equal to the fraction of the elapsed time raised to the power e. Both the radius and time must be given values between 0 and 1. For example when 81.5% of the total time to construct the Earth has passed, the radius of the Earth is at 57.3% of the current radius. This is the point where all the continents fit back together into a unified land mass (single continent covering the Earth)and more importantly two things are occuring or about to occur. The thinner continental skin of the planet is wrinkling up along the equator due to a faster rotation rate thus creating a global equitorial mountain belt, and the gradual heating up of the interior of the Earth as the Earth grows. Also the Pacific ocean is (or is about to) split open creating the first permanant (continual) ocean on the Earth. The corresponding gravity of the time has climbed to 4.07 m/sec^2 and the the remaining time to reach Earths current size is approximately 888 million years.
In the next 888 MY all of the important things that have occured on the Earth will happen as the Earth matures. Most importantly the explosion of life in the oceans 545 million years ago,followed by the advances of life out of the oceans and onto land are all tied to the growth of the Earth, and to the resultant increase in the force of gravity from 4.07 m/sec^2 (-888 MY,R=3651 km) to 9.815 m/sec^2 (now,6372.4 km). Specifically life on land is tied to the current density, pressure, temperature, volume and composition of the atmosphere. This in turn is governed by the current gravity, and what prior life has done to change the composition of the atmosphere.
It is rather sobering to me that meaningful life is tied to the final 1/9 or less of the elapsed time of the Earth, but in that time the radius has increased 171%, and the surface area has trippled, and the gravity has more than doubled. In the next 200 million years, the Earth will grow to more than an 8,000 km radius, the gravity will be greater than 12 m/sec^2, and the sea level temperature on land will aproach the boiling point of water. Life then will only be possible at high altitudes, and high latitudes.
I have become convinced that life responds to available nitches only after the growth of the Earth has created those nitches. Those nitches are constantly changing because of variations in the Earth's growth rate, variations in climate, and variations in the locations of continents relative to the equator. The growth rate has hit lows of 0.4 mm per year (now), up to highs of 4.8 mm per year, thus varying the rate of increase in the radius of the Earth. The maximum size of life on land (the dinosaurs) responded to one of those 4.8 mm per year peaks. It was blessed with a lesser gravity than today, an equitorial climate, a rapid accumulation of space dust (nutrient loading), an atmosphere that was less dense, an abundance of carbon dioxide to stimulate tree growth, and about a hundred million years of above average growing conditions, while the gravity slowly increased from around 7 m/sec^2 to almost 9 m/sec^2. About 50 million years in the future these condition will begin to occur again with one important exception, the gravity will be significantly higher, therefor the "giant" life driving forces will again push for enormous sizes, but the results will be animals that are very stout, not slender and relatively graceful as dinosaurs were.
This 230 to 240 million year cycle (time for our galaxy to rotate once)is a major contributor to the fluxuation in the growth rate of the Earth, and a major contributor to changes in the maximum size of life. We have only seen 2 1/2 cycles since the explosion of life, and there will be only 1 more cycle until the surface of the Earth becomes too hot to inhabit. I suspect that dinosaurs are the maximum size that will ever inhabit the Earth (on land)as increased gravity in the future will be the limiting factor.
You are encouraged to publish this as the more that is known of the complex inter-relationships between the growth of the Earth and the size of its inhabitants, the more that will be known in the future.
Prior Comments
Funny how you can go back and look at your prior comments, and spot the errors, because your understanding keeps getting better. The most blatant was the rate of growth. It should be 5 x 10^14 kg Minimum up to 6 x 10^15 kg Maximun at the peak in mid dinosaur times (not 10^19 and 10^20). This converts to 0.4 mm per year (min) up to 4.8 mm per year (maximum) increase in the radius of the Earth solely due to growth from accumulation. This is not expansion. Expansion is due to compressive heating, differentiation, nuclear decay (more heating), and changes in chemical composition. Expansion is currently much faster than growth (up to about 6 inches increase in the circumference of the Earth per year).
Careful what you ask for
This is my fourth or fifth comment. I have been rereading some of my prior comments and laugh at what I wrote a year ago. You shouldn't write after midnight. Any way there is a gentleman who was wondering about future predictions for the growth and expansion of the Earth, so I took on this challange and worked several months on a method to estimate the growth rate of the Earth. I finally succeeded. However, sometimes you shouldn't ask certain questions as the answer you get may be rather sobering. I have put together a model for growth that is exponential in nature, and fits my prior estimates very well. It starts out at or near a zero radius Earth 5.0 Billion years ago, passes thru a 57.3% radius Earth 900 million years ago and proceeds to the current size as of now. Unfortunately when it is extrapolated into the future it predicts that exponential growth continues "exponentially" with the resultant surface temperature, pressure and density of the atmosphere continually increasing until it exceeds the boiling point of water on land. Needless to say life as we know it on land anyway will cease to exist. The issue of course is how soon will this occur. It may be as long as 200 million years away, or as close as 50 million years away. Either number is too soon to suit me.
Let me step back and give some of the mathematics and logic that that this estimate is based on. In prior comments I had written that in successive galactic rotations of 230,000,000 years led to an increase in the radius of the Earth of about 300 km for each of the 23 to 25 rotations. This is a fair average if growth was linear, but it isn't linear, it is exponential. The final galactic rotation led to an increase of approximately 780 km in the radius of the Earth due solely to growth. Each prior rotation had accumulated about 88% of the time before, so as you go backwards in time the growth rate rapidly become rather small, and when the Earth was young the growth rate was very small. I finally snapped that this is exponential growth, and that means "e" and natural log functions.
I then converted it to an extremely simple equation. The growth rate of the Earth as a function of time is:
Radius (t) = T^e , Surface Area (t) = T^e^2 , Volume (t) = T^e^3 The value of t is first allowed to go between 0 and 1 (0 is 5.0 billion years ago, and 1 is now). The radius then plots between 0 and 1 ( the 0 is a zero kilometer radius, the 1 is the current radius of the Earth - 6372.4 km). All that is needed is a third point and that is (0.815,0.573) - (elapsed time of 4.1 billion years (900 my ago) and a radius of 57.3% - 3651 km) This mid point is the crucial one as it corresponds to the point where there was a single continent covering the surface of the Earth, and no ocean floor, though there were shallow oceans sitting atop the continental low spots. The other thing that is important is that the global equitorial mountain belt is still intact on a rapidly spinning smaller Earth.
Then things start to change. The growth rate is joined with an increasing expansion rate that starts to tear the unified global surface into the continents we see today, and it created the ocean basins along these rifts and the associated thin oceanic crust.
The Pacific Ocean was the first to form (it is now the largest). All of the other ocean basins formed soon after as the rate of expansion accelerated and overtook the growth rate. Many will note a problem here as the ocean floor are no more than 205 million years old, and none approach 900 million years old. This may be a limitation of our ability to drill deep enough holes, or the earlier floor may be under the continents now, or just plain remelted.
The logic portion of this has to do with the timeing and sequencing of the geologic/fossil record. The explosion of life in the oceans occured between 600 million and 545 million years ago. It was followed by a series of evolutions in geological/ time sucessions. Plants came before animals, ocean occupation before land occupation. It is a ralatively simple concept. The evolution of life on this planets is intimately linked to the growth and expansion of the Earth. Mass, gravity, atmospheric pressure, temperature,and volume, and life nurturing nitches all became available sequencially, and life responded to fill those nitches soon after they were created. The important components are water, oxygen, temperature, and pressure. Gravity controls and creates all of these, and gravity is controlled by the accumulating mass of the Earth. At the outside there will be only an available window of roughly 800 million years for life on the Earth, and 600 million of those years have already expired. These correspond to "force of gravity" ranges between 5 and 12 meters per sec^2. We are now at 9.8 m/sec^2. Pressure and temperature (kelvins) became high enough 600 million years ago for life to flourish in the oceans. 430 to 400 million years ago life moved onto land because pressure and temperature again exceeded the minimum necessary for life. What life on the planet will face in the future is a continually rising temperature, and life's nitches will dwindle first on land, and then the oceans will slowly boil away. Whe will be left with what we started with, high temperature bacteria, and eventually nothing. In 2.5 billion years or less we will be about the size of Neptune.
After plotting t between 0 and 1 (0.01, 0.02, 0.03 .... 0.97,0.98, 0.99,1.00) it is instructive to keep adding time, so far I went up to t = 1.53 where the volume of the Earth is 101 times what it is now, the surface area is 33 times current area, and the radius is just over ten times what it is now. The Earth will be an emerging gas giant, and Jupiter will be a protostar. Mars is our best hope for continuance, but unfortunately is slightly below the lower threshold where life and oceans began on Earth. Mars had a 3400 km radius, and oceans didn't really start developing on the Earth until 900 my ago at 3651 km radius.
Enjoy life while you can.
Mike Clark
Organic matter
I think you are correct, organic matter could have been a factor if my understanding of matter and energy is correct. Over time, plant life taking in energy could slowly increase mass over time.
Paul
Increased gravity produces increased orbital diameter
As the Earth's gravity increases, so must its orbit increase for equilibrium's sake? However, this would take the Earth further from the Sun, and thus reduce the temperature of sunlight falling upon it. However, the temperature of the Sun has been increasing, for reasons of internal physics, so there must be (?) a degree of compensation between the two.
Hence, the threat to life processes, which require a relatively narrow range of temperatures, is reduced.
The Expanding Earth principle seems fair. But gain through meteorites is only part of the story, because light energy - which surprisingly has mass - is falling on the earth at the rate of 1kg per sec. Some of this is is known to be reflected (according to satellite pictures of earth), but much of it is not.
Regarding demise of the larger dinosaurs. It is likely that, like cassowary birds, crocodiles, tortoises, their sperm fertilises but does not determine gender, which is temperature related within 2 or 3 degrees during incubation. Some of the clutch of eggs will hatch male, simply on the temperature of that region of the clutch. This is true of alligators, crocs,tortoises, cassowaries, etc, (and to some degree, apparently,also with chickens...). Therefore, with the impact of the meteorite 65m years ago, and the consequent temperature fall, there would be great difficulty for the adult to maintain optimum hatching temperatures for both male and female. It seems likely that, given a reduction of ambient temperature, there would be a gradual bias towards an excess of males (low temp.
Tim Sesemann
Facts vs. Fiction
I've not had the time to browse through all of the comments on this website, and hesitate to criticise without fully digesting all that's been said here. But would draw readers to two points.
1. The fact that Pangeaa cannot be accurately fitted together is cited as evidence for the expanding Earth. This would be true if all continents drifted at the same rate. Unfortunately for the expanding earth theorists, they don't. Rates of oceanic spreading vary. Rates of subduction vary. Most continents move obliquely to one another. Bearing this in mind, it would be highly surprising if all the continents could be fitted together like jigsaws. Conclusion: there is no need to invoke an expanding earth in this respect.
2. There are stated in these pages the concept that our Moon has been recently captured from elsehere in the solar system. Take a look at any sedimentary rocks of shallow marine origin, and you will find evidence of tidal processes. Think of the Pre-Cambrian algal mats that formed on tidal mudflats. Tides = Moon. Sorry, it's as simple as that!
My thoughts (for what it's worth) is that the reason for Dinosaur's bigger size has more to do with climate. The Jurassic and Cretaceous Eras were generally warmer than nowadays, which must have been to the advantage of cold-blooded reptiles. The atmospheric content may have varied too. These would seem to me to be more plausible routes of enquiry!
Graham
Theory correct
Good day!
I've heard about this theory a while ago, but wasn't interested much. That's partially because I didn't consider it to be accurate somehow. Well, it was my mistake obviously.
Neat web site, BTW.
Vladim�r Socha
Are Dinosaurs Real?
My boyfriend does not believe in dinosaurs and has almost convinced me not to believe in them either. The thing that gets me is that the bones of dinosaurs were said to be fossilized. But, why does this not happen to squirrels or alligators or other wildlife. If we stuck one in a tar pit and waited a couple million billion years, would the alligator or squirrel be fossilized? He thinks that someone was just tripping on mushrooms and saw a duck and pictured these big "dinosaurs." Plus, he said that the "real" bones were kept someplace in storage where molds are made from them and then put together in museums. But, how do we know that they are real?
Lori
Expanding Earth principle correct
As the Earth's gravity increases, so must its orbit increase
for equilibrium's sake? However, this would take the Earth
further from the Sun, and thus reduce the temperature
of sunlight falling upon it. However, the temperature of the
Sun has been increasing, for reasons of internal physics,
so there must be (?) a degree of compensation between the two.
Hence, the threat to life processes, which require a relatively
narrow range of temperatures, is reduced.
I believe the expanding Earth principle is correct. The gain
through meteorites is only part of the story, because light is
falling on the earth at the rate of 1kg per sec. Some of this
is reflecting off (according to satellite pictures of earth), but
much of it is not.
Regarding demise of the larger dinosaurs. It is likely that,
like cassowary birds, crocodiles, tortoises, their sperm
fertilises but does not determine gender, which is temperature
related within 2 or 3 degrees during incubation. Some of the
clutch of eggs will hatch male, simply on the temperature
of that region of the clutch. This is true of alligators, crocs,
tortoises, cassowaries, etc, (and to some degree, apparently,
also with chickens...). Therefore, with the impact of the
meteorite 65 m years ago, and the temperature fall, there
would be great difficulty in maintaining optimum temperatures
for both male and female. Thus, there would be a bias
towards an excessive number of males (low temp).
Regards, Tim
A GROWING EARTH.
I know I am out of my class but I have one quick question.
Why is it that nobody has mentioned organic matter as the source of the expansion of the earth?
Denny
I believe some people have considered the possibility that organic matter has converted sunlight into mass. Prof Carey briefly mentioned this in his book Earth, Universe, Cosmos. I've not seen it mentioned anywhere else. SWH
Expanding Earth hypothesis otiose?
Have you seen the critique of plate tectonics at
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/tecto.htm
If this paper is right then the Expanding Earth hypothesis is otiose.
Bill Parkyn
Feel free to submit your own comments for inclusion here.
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