Re: Owen's Two-Phase Model of Earth Expansion
From: George (george_at_wtfiswrongwithyou.com)
Date: 02/25/05
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Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 19:30:44 GMT
"Matt" <matt.edwards@utoronto.ca> wrote in message
news:e25c654e.0502250746.6ce0367a@posting.google.com...
> "George" <george@wtfiswrongwithyou.com> wrote in message
> news:<4LoTd.22339$4D6.20381@attbi_s51>...
>> >>
>> >> And that mechanism would be?
>> >
>> > As already mentioned, that will have to be a separate discussion.
>>
>> Well, there is almost no point in discussing it unless you have a mechanism.
>> I
>> mean, really. You're claiming earth expansion, then claiming that all the
>> planets have expanded, but have no mechanism to explain why all the planets
>> have
>> expanded, nor explained why the hyposthesis doesn't violate the laws of
>> thermodynamics. It seems quite a stretch. No wonder this stuff doesn't get
>> published in peer reviewed journals.
>
> Well, I can't blame you if you want to see the mechanism before you
> want to discuss EE. Others have felt the same way. But it's
> important to recognize that the question of whether the Earth expanded
> or not is a valid scientific question, regardless of whether we know
> the mechanism or not.
Define "valid scientific question" related to a concept that violates the known
laws of the universe.
> The mechanism of PT may be better defined than
> that for EE, but there are still huge gaps in the PT tale. Where's
> your energy source to drive this whole thing? Radioactive decay
> processes are localized in the crust,
Who told you that? The earth is still plenty young to be heated by the decay of
radioactive elements. Estimates are that the earth formed about 4.6 billion
years ago. Plenty of natural radioactive isotopes have persisted from that time
to the present. The most important are Thorium-232, Uranium-235, and
Uranium-238, but there are many more. Here is a list of some long-lived
naturally occurring radioactive nuclei and their half-lives:
Nucleus Half-life (billions of years)
Potassium-40 1.28
Rubidium-87 48
Indium-115 510,000
Lanthanum-138 110
Neodymium-144 2,100,000
Samarium-147 106
Gadolinium-152 110,000
Lutetium-176 36
Hafnium-174 2,000,000
Rhenium-187 40
Platinum-190 600
Platinum-192 >60,000,000
Thorium-232 14.1
Uranium-235 0.7038
Uranium-238 4.468
So, you can see that many of these nuclei, though radioactive, have not had
time to completely decay away since the formation of the earth.
Radioactive elements such as uranium, thorium, and potassium are low
abundance in the Earth, but they pack quite a punch! When radioactive
elements decay, they emit atomic particles that collide with and are
absorbed by the surrounding matter. This stops the particles from moving,
and the energy of motion changes to heat energy. There is enough heat
energy generated by radioisotope decay to cause convection within the Earth
and continental drift of the crust.
Another source of heat is the action of gravitational forces on regions of
different density."
Oh, and neither of these concepts violate the laws of thermodynamics.
> whereas evidence from hotspots
> and other sources suggest the heat driving the process is coming from
> the mantle.
> There is no presently accepted mechanism for this heat
> production.
Most earth scientists do, in fact accept that radioactivity plays a very
important role in the earth's heat engine.
> This is why geophysicists are concentrating their
> activities on understanding what's going on at the core-mantle
> boundary.
There are many reasons to study the core-mantle boundary. Heat production is
just one of them.
> As for EE not being in peer-reviewed journals, that is just false.
> There have been hundreds of articles on EE in such journals. Just
> take a look at the bibliography list in "Why Expanding Earth?".
Hundreds? Gee, Matt. I've looked at that bibilography a number of times, and
many of those are 1) not articles about expanding earth theory, and 2) are not
published in peer-reviewed journals. For instance, there is one reference
listed as "AP article Jan. 30, 1982, in Richmond Times-Dispatch." And I just
love this one "Myers, L. S., 1972. The Accreation of the Earth, 30pp (This paper
was returned by the AGU referee with the comment "Mr. Myers does not understand
plate tectonics.")." It helps to have an idea of a concept before you attempt
to refute it. Some of these references are simply letters to various agencies.
The bulk of the work is related to Carey's work, and to a 1981 symposium in
Tasmania. There was no scholarly study of earth expansion published in a
peer-reviewed journal in the last year, or the year before that, or the year
before that. In fact, the most recent reference cited is an "Open letter to
President Clinton, Jan 19, 1998". Really!!! As if Clinton didn't have enough
to worry about without worrying about some EEer sending him rant mail. Another
reference has the mysterious title "McCarthy, D. D., 1996, Personal letter dated
14 Feb. 1996."
Come on Matt. Other than Carey's work, there are no serious references to
scholarly earth expansion publications here at all.
>> >
>> > It may well be that there has been some growth of continents through
>> > accretion, but that only sets the problem back further in time. At
>> > some point you need to have something that can be 'accreted to'.
>>
>> There is. It's called the cratons, the core of the continents, most of which
>> was formed early in the earth's history.
>
> If you're saying that cratons were the initial continents, then all
> the more mysterious why just these icebergs appeared in the primordial
> landscape.
Who said they were the only ones? They are the only ones left. The cores of
the continents are essentially all that remains of the original crust after much
of it had been bombarded from space, rifted, remelted, rifted again, and again
subducted, subducted again, and again, metamorphosed, faulted, folded, and
turned upside down, and generally fubared.
>> > You
>> > need to have some primordial continents. Now if you're saying that
>> > ocean basins were there at the start, then you need to explain why.
>> > If the ocean basins were added later, then you have the EE
>> > supposition.
>>
>> Unless, of course, the original ocean basins were formed from impact basins.
>> Then EE isn't necessary. You do recall the great bombardment 3-4 billion
>> years
>> ago, don't you? I know I was there. lol
>
> Creative at least! This is the problem with PT and the early Earth.
> Talk about peer review, I don't think there have been many journal
> articles which seriously try to explain the continent-ocean basin
> dichotomy using PT.
Really? Nothing at all about crustal density differentiation? Nothing about
oceanic crust being more dense than continental crust? Nothing about uplift
occurring along plate margins due to mountain building, which also causes
regional uplift within the continents? Nothing at all? You've done an
exhaustive search of the periodic literature and came up empty?
>> >
>> > No, I'm not denying the fossil evidence. At this point in our
>> > discussion, we need to distinguish between slow expansion on one hand,
>> > and PT and fast EE on the other. I've made a very recent shift
>> > towards slow expansion. In that model, the oceans were there from
>> > very early on. The fossil evidence supports this. The difference
>> > between slow EE and PT is that in the former the primitive ocean
>> > basins were just the existing basins reduced in size. You still
>> > haven't explained the dichotomy in PT.
>>
>> At this point I don't need to distinguish between either of these because I
>> don't think expansion ever happened, and I certainly don't believe it is
>> happening now. I've simply discounted it because I don't see any viable
>> evidence to support either slow or fast hypothesis. PT doesn't need to
>> explain
>> a dichotomy that doesn't exist. You make the assumption that the earth, and
>> therefore the oceans, were reduced in size. PT doesn't make that assumption,
>> so
>> there is no dichotomy to explain. The idea that the primitive oceans were
>> just
>> the existing basins reduced in size it bogus, in my opinion, since there is
>> no
>> evidence at all to support such a contention.
>
> Are there two basic types of crust, sial and sima, or are there not?
> If there are, then EE can explain that, whereas PT cannot.
Hello? Did you attend petrology class in undergraduate school? No offense, but
that is certainly not a claim that is substantiated by the facts at all.
>> The existing ocean basins are no
>> older than 250 million years, as shown by a mountain of evidence.
>
> I asked you for some evidence that this is the case, evidence not
> based either on the seafloor ages (which could be deceiving in a slow
> EE model) or fossil data (which has proven controversial). You gave
> me a link to Quebec geology, but there was no proof there.
How does one present evidence that the current sea floors are not older than 250
million years with evidence not based on the age of the sea floors? As far as
I'm concerned, that is like asking me to defend E=mc2. There is no mistake on
the sea floor ages, despite your attempt to dismiss it. The age of the sea
floor has been studied in detail by numerous researchers. There are no
significant discrepencies of which I am aware. If you believe there are, then
by all means present you data. Just remember that it must meet or exceed the
same rigorous analysis that has been done to date. Frankly, I am rather
surprised that you question it, considering that you have presented no evidence
to suggest that there is any valid reason in the data to consider otherwise.
>> So you can't
>> look at the existing oceans to find the older oceans. I've shown you where
>> the
>> old ocean basins are located. It has been known where these older oceans are
>> located for at least 100 years. The while problem with the older oceans is
>> that
>> you look at the continents as these big granite factories and that is simply
>> not
>> the case. Where I am sitting right now (in the middle of the U.S., the
>> continent is composed of nearly ten thousand feet of sedimentary rock (nearly
>> all of it marine in nature), below which is mafic oceanic rock of precambrian
>> age. The strata runs from precambrian through middle mississippian, and
>> latest
>> pennsylvanian age further east and west. The only Permian and younger strata
>> is
>> in far western Kentucky, and that consists of continental deposits. The
>> point
>> is that where I live today was an ocean for hundreds of millions of years
>> prior
>> to the breakup of Pangea. You can't disguise some 10,000 feet of paleozoic
>> ocean sediments any more than you can disguise a mafic igneous basement.
>
> Yes, North America was covered in water in parts and there was a sea
> of sorts, but I don't think you can claim that the basement rocks in
> the U.S. are the same as what's being laid down now in ocean
Basalt, gabbro, serpentinite, etc., are not rocks laid down in the modern ocean
floors? Yes, they are. And these same rocks form the basement in much of the
U.S., particularly in the Eastern U.S.
>>
>> Actually, as I've pointed out above, whether your talking about slow EE or
>> fast
>> EE, there are huge problems with the fossil evidence.
>
> I'm not sure where you pointed that out.
Read below.
>>
>> That's just the point. Before Pangea broke up, there were huge tracts of the
>> continents that were below sea level. That's how nearly 10,000 feet of
>> sediments got deposited where I live. Much of the continents except gondwana
>> were covered by ocean water. Only in places where mountain building was
>> active
>> was there substantial dry land. I suggest you study the paleogeography of
>> the
>> paleozoic era to get a clearer picture of what was going on. I don't have
>> the
>> time nor the patience to recite all of the paleozoic history of the planet
>> for
>> you.
>
> I'm aware of this.
>
>> >> The significant vertical displacement of huge areas of continental crust
>> >> in
>> >> North America and elsewhere, is now attributed to mantle processes, as has
>> >> been
>> >> recently summarized by CalTech geologist Michael Gurnis. Two quite
>> >> different
>> >> processes appear to be responsible for the ups and downs of the crust. One
>> >> of
>> >> these is the existence of hot mantle "super plumes", and the other the
>> >> slow
>> >> descent of cold subducted oceanic slabs.
>> >>
>> >> http://www.mala.bc.ca/~earles/mantle-dynamics-mar01.htm
>> >
>> > Will check that out. I don't think this is incompatible with slow EE,
>> > if we suppose that ocean crust is being continually recycled as in PT.
>>
>> Again, you're hypothesis has evolved to the point where you don't distinguish
>> is
>> from PT, so you might as well call it what it is. PT!
>
> I don't know why this is so hard to get across. In a slow EE model,
> the ages of seafloors could have little to do with the rate of actual
> movements of plates.
Except that plate tectonics has shown that the ages of the seafloors and the
rate of plate movements are intricately linked.
> The cycle time parameter for the seafloors could
> have had any value, 100 Ma, 2 Ga, 5 Ma, whatever. The ages need not
> indicate precisely what's going on longterm with the Earth's surface.
> A small growth could be occurring. I would just like some hard
> evidence from someone that Pangaea did indeed break up 100-200 Ma ago,
> evidence that does not involve the seafloor ages.
Again, there is the fossil evidence, as I've pointed out. Look at the fossil
record on both sides of the Atlantic prior to the breakup of Pangea, and the
fossil record after Pangea broke up. Look at the ages, petrology, and
structures of the continental crustal elements of the plates (non-oceanic
elements) on either side of the Atlantic. Look at when these crustal elements
were essentially identical, and when they began to diverge.
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