Ten embarrassing questions for advocates of Expanding Earth theory

Post of the Month: August 2007

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Subject:    | Expanding earth miracles
Date:       | 21 Aug 2007
Message-ID: | pan.2007.08.21.21.55.15.872750@earthlink.net

The Expanding Earth model raises some issues which, if not impossible, are at least improbable or inexplicable enough to be called miracles. If the model's proponents want to be taken seriously, they have to come up with viable explanations for at least a few of these.

Miracle 1: Where does the new matter come from?

Miracle 2: How does it happen that the new matter has the right chemical and isotopic compositions in the right quantities to be undetectable? Changes over time in heavier elements might simply be buried deep inside the earth, but the model also creates water and other volatiles on the surface in the right quantities and isotopic balances to leave no trace in the geological record.

Miracle 3: How does it happen that the new matter has not affected earth's orbit or rotation period? The added material has increased earth's moment of inertia, so keeping it rotating at a constant speed (after allowing for tidal drag) is inexplicable.

Miracle 4: How does it happen that the earth's paleomagnetism is everywhere consistent with a constant-sized earth? A smaller earth in the past would make paleomagnetism directions very much different, if the earth's magnetic field was roughly the same. By what incredible conincidence did the magnetic field adjust to produce data just like one would find on a constant-sized earth?

Miracle 5: Why is expansion not occurring on other planets? Bodies without atmospheres, notably the Moon and Mercury, don't have erosion to obscure stretch marks, and the Moon and Mercury show no signs of deformation for well over a billion years. Nor is the sun, or the earth's orbit would be affected.

Miracle 6: Why is expansion not seen occurring on Earth? Modern instruments are plenty accurate to detect changes in both size and mass, yet they detect neither.

Miracle 7: Why could overthrusting (subduction) not operate in the past? We can see that subduction is happening at a fairly constant rate today. And the expanding earth model includes subduction (they call it overthrusting), but says that it eats up only tens, or at most hundreds, of miles of oceanic crust. The limit makes sense only if overthrusting started less than about ten million years ago. Why not earlier?

Miracle 8: Why is an expanding earth not detectable by paleontologists, neither as changes in morphology from an increasing gravity, nor as patterns of biogeography? Even if expanding earth proponents are not looking at this issue, other paleontologists are, and they should have noticed and pointed out patterns which do not match expectations.

Miracle 9: Why are competent geologists not expounding on the expanding earth, especially since it was such a hot topic 35 years ago? The data to conclusively support or refute the expanding earth has been around for a couple decades or more, and most scientists love underdog ideas when the evidence supports them. Why do no geologists want the laurels of making the definitive case for an expanding earth?

Miracle 10: What do a small handful of amatuers know that the competent geologists don't? Their knowledge of geology is only slightly greater than that of the average layman, and their knowledge in other areas, such as in physics and in the scientific method, may well be less than average. Yet, they say, they know more about the foundation of the field of geology than do people who have devoted lifetimes to studying it.

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