Expanding Earth basics, Science doesn't get a free pass on this.

I have spent the past few weeks pondering the direction that my initial "Expanding Earth" blog entry will take. It is admittedly difficult to find a point from which to even begin a discussion. I will be challenging the scientific community, their dogmas, and failure to recognize how history has repeated itself in the form of stubborn adherence to contemporary thought. But I do not wish to sound too harsh, because I firmly believe science is mankind's most successful ideaology...the fruits of which are a horn of plenty. I am not anti-intellectual, nor are my motivation religious or faith based. I am simply a critical observer, a philosophical thinker who recognizes when a machine has become mired, no matter how efficient or useful this machine may (ideally) be.

So to begin, let me offer an anecdote. A humorous story that I think makes a valid point. I have an acquaintance whose father is an amateur pilot. I've heard many stories of childhood family vacations via his small aircraft. On one occasion in particular, my (then) young acquaintances was dutifully awaiting take-off while her father readied his plane for flight. He checked instruments, communicated with the control tower, focused his experienced mind on the task at hand. My acquaintance, on the other hand, was doing what children do, her mind fancying some juvenile distraction or another. She did, however, notice some smoke where smoke wasn't supposed to be. A smart and cautious child, she spoke up and said, "Daddy!"...To which her father replied, "Not now honey"..."But Daddy!!"..."I said not now sweetheart, I'm talking to the tower."..."But Daddy PLEASE!!!"..."What is so damned important?!"..."Daddy smoke!". And so the old saying goes, where there is smoke there is fire. Our father-pilot is indeed a lucky man that he decided to heed his daughters cries for attention.

In my deeply interested pursuit of learning on the subject of EE, I came across an artist's rendering of this concept on YouTube. His name is Neal Adams and he is famous for contributing seminal work in the Batman (and other) comics, some music album covers, animations for commercials, among other things. His resume is quite impressive and this man is a minor celebrity. Mr. Adams has taken quite a lot of heat on the various internets for his ideas. You can Google is name, or Expanding Earth, or both, and find many forums and blogs as evidence of his ill repute amongst "internet scientists". I use that term (internet scientist) because I surmise that only a fraction of his detractors are anything more than laypersons with an affinity for debating science for fun. (And in full sense of disclosure, that is precisely what I am). The few that are left, the ones who may indeed be scientists by title on some level, are probably nothing more than grad students at the dawn of their careers, professors enjoying comfortable tenure at an obscure university, or otherwise holders of some other post or position that involves cookie-cutter application of "accepted" science more so than actual ground breaking research.

I must confess, Mr. Adams is probably in over his head. It is difficult to understand his musings, and they sometimes seem disconnected. He seems more a child imagining science fiction scenarios than an informed observer of realities. However, it does not require a PhD to recognize smoke, and smoke is what Neal Adams has recognized. If you take the time to investigate the internet for instances of Neal Adams going toe to toe with skeptics and Plate Tectonics adherents, you will observe that they INSIST that he explain his theory completely, (they) employing the logical fallacy that in order for a concept to have merit it must be fully explained and all mechanisms identified. He, the artist, must step outside the constraints of his abilities, despite the intuitiveness of his perceptions and offerings (in the form of an artist's rendering). Lets go back to my anecdote of the plane ride. If that logic had been applied by my friend's father, she would have had to locate and diagnose the cause of the fire and suggested a course of action before he acted upon her warnings. He, the pilot and mechanic, would not consider that "smoke" for what it was, unless he had discovered it himself. This foolish scenario might have led to catastrophe. Common sense dictates that even a small child can recognize things which have deceived us all...in fact, sometimes it is the unsullied mind of a child which is most perceptive and open to new ideas.

Neal Adams will confess he is no scientist. He avoids maths, for which he admits no skill or interest. He has simply used the side of his brain that so many scientists are anemic of, and has seen something profound and obvious that they have been blind to. I start off with Neal Adams, because I feel a sense of pity for his attempts. I also feel a kinship. I grew up a would-be artist, but gave up on refining that talent to a useful degree. I, also like Adams, have a love for science and was quite the student...unfortunately, I never saw myself pursuing that interest. I was too eager to sink my teeth into "life" to commit to school for that length of time. I found myself instead leaving college to join the military, the experience gained ultimately led me to a career in a (coincidentally scientific) laboratory setting of industrial applications. I will freely admit that I don't much enjoy crunching numbers and performing calculations. This is not what I do. Instead, Here I offer a similarly intuitive angle on Earth geology (as Adams), I employ observation, limited scientific reasoning, philosophical thoughts, right brained approaches, and an unmuddied, unbiased, clean-slated view. I also suggest that almost EVERYTHING that science has recognized in PT theory also applies to EE, that the theories should some day be unified, and that denying the evidence for EE is equivalent to ignoring the smoke on our airplane.

At this point, I haven't offered much, an anecdote and some ramblings about science. If you have taken the time to watch Adams' animation, you will see that Adams is illustrating a theory that saw its day in the 1960's, about the same time that Plate Tectonics was being debated. I was not around at that time, but my research has led me to understand that both of these theories evolved, in almost parallel fashion, to answer many questions that (then) contemporary geology was failing to rectify. Since flat-Earth was resolved by legendary savants like Copernicus and Galileo, proven absolutely false by voyagers such as Columbus, and since that dawn of spherical Earth science, advanced by the visions of Newton and Einstein, a sort of stalemate had mired the Earth sciences. Understanding of seismology was leading to conclusive proof that the Earth was dynamic, not static. Forces were recognized to be at play. Mountains had not simply always been, but had FORMED over the ages. Earthquakes were symptoms of some quantifiable phenomenon. God could no longer be accused of shaking the ground in anger. Wegener correctly identified tale-tell signs that the Earth's land masses had at once been unified, and mid-ocean rifts indicated new ocean floor was growing and pushing the Atlantic apart. A mechanism HAD to be identified to explain what was once seen as unchanging. Sam Carry, an Australian Geologist and early advocate of Plate Tectonics, was not keen on the tectonic model that was being debated of "Continental Drift". Science held that though the Earth showed signs of dynamics, the SIZE of the Earth, it's average diameter and shape, MUST be unchanging. Therefore, to unify the empirical observations of new ocean crust (less than 200 mill yrs old), mountain orogeny, paleogeographic evidence of taxa distribution in the fossil record, etc., Plate Tectonics was accepted and became "Consensus" (more on that abhorrent term later).

Again, the reason PT became the accepted model to explain everything is precisely thus: Because no model of Physics allowed for planetary bodies to expand or gain mass, at least in advanced stages of existence as the Earth presumably is in, and because many methods of calculating the Earth's approximate diameter throughout history led to the conclusion that no expansion is in evidence.

And those are pretty difficult hurdles for Expansion theories to go up against, admittedly. At least, on the surface. However, lets make something more clear, Plate Tectonic models are not completely unblemished themselves. They are quite convoluted with contradictions and assumptions, and the entire theoretical mechanism is, in my mind, very "unnatural". It goes basically like this, the "oceanic" or "basaltic" crust of the Earth is essentially a network of conveyor belts, the surface of which carries (or perhaps pushes is a better word) the continental crust. For all of this to work, a theoretical mechanism of "subduction" is employed, where the basaltic slabs are pushing themselves downward, pulling the ocean floor along with them, and sort of clearing the way for the new crust forming at the rifts. This is sort of a perpetual motion machine at work. Geologists think that at certain points, completely random and without an explained cause, a slab of ocean crust sinks due to a differential in density. And sort of like tugging on a rug with an object sitting upon it, the ocean crust moves in unison to accommodate the tug, the whole of it for miles and miles, and the only relief is at the rifts thousands of miles away. The subducted slab returns to the mantle, only to be recycled eons later as new crust at the rifts. Mind you, the subduction process is only theorized to occur under the Pacific ocean, whereas all the other oceans are (admittedly by the PT folks) expanding. Literally thousands of miles of rifts constantly churning out new crustal material, only to be digested eons later in a literal bottleneck of only a scant few candidates for subduction zones. This literally BEGS answers to many questions, even if it were a possible mechanism.

I am not denying subduction here. I learned about it in school as any grade schooler does. Though, I am old enough to have learned it not very long after it was officially recognized (enough) as a theory to put it in textbooks. I'm 36 years old and had my first tastes of geology when I was but eight or nine I suppose. This means that subduction was "textbook science" by 1980 or so, and in only a short, very short, decade after it was first seriously considered, it became dogma. Put that into perspective. I feel, even at 36, that I am a young person. Life is short in itself, and I am but halfway through a typical life expectancy.

Plate Tectonics, lets be honest, is but an infant science, even if it is based on geology that took centuries to understand. The abandonment of Expansionist theories, likewise, is a fairly recent event...which, in my humble opinion, and in the plausible light of some yet unforeseen truth, may not be easily laid to rest. I've witnessed many bloggers refer to it as pseudoscience, and its adherents as crackpots. All, mind you, because to believe it you must re-examine and possible redefine a few tenants of physics. And that is, after all, why Expansionist theories have been collecting dust. Let's do some philosophical thinking, shall we? A little mental exercise never hurts. Lets think about why science is reluctant to back-pedal and re-examine established ideas.

First, I offer a tidbit about science that may be insulting but is STILL VERY MUCH TRUE. Science is a HUMAN endeavor. Science is NOT the "answer", it is a means by which we HOPE to find answers. It is dependant upon many things to work properly. In theory and often in practice, it is brilliant and unsurpassed, but nearly as often, occasionally perhaps, it is its own worst enemy. One of the weaknesses of science is reluctance to identify these old ideas and consider them at a later date. Old ideas, old publications, get stuffed away on microfiches, buried beneath piles of newer books and journals, forgotten in antiquity. This is especially true if the original concept was met with skepticism from the outset, and if current dogmas prevented its consideration. Often, the glorified process of peer-review prevents research from even seeing the light of day. Peer-review and consensus are two concepts that I can't avoided discussing later, but the gist at this point is that if a bunch of people don't agree with your idea, especially people considered credible or authoritative, you won't get very far.

This is as much politics as it is science, and in reality a somewhat new phenomenon. Newton didn't have to go up against peer-review, for example, though he probably did meet some status-quo resistance...as certainly Copernicus and Galileo did. And aren't these, by the way, particularly good examples of the problems of consensus in science?

I feel a circular argument coming on here, because no doubt a new idea requires a period of convincing, sometimes even centuries, and by definition it doesn't become credible until a significant faction of people offer it some support. But the issue here is that science has almost INSTITUTIONALIZED consensus as a function of science, where history has shown this to be a barrier to progress. But here is why, in essence, geologists abandoned EE theory, and even if they are tempted to reconsider the evidence, or if a young, energetic up-and-coming hopes to take it on, they ultimately run as fast as they can. Are you ready? In CAPS: ALL BRANCHES OF SCIENCE BOW TO AND CONSIDER THEMSELVES SECONDARY TO PHYSICS. Physics is the Queen Bee, the pimp of the science 'hood so to speak. Physicists do not ask geologists if their theories are acceptable, but geologists must pass their ideas through a physics plausibility check before going further. I almost imagine Physics professors, pocket protectors and all, roaming the halls of esteemed universities getting all the women, bullying geologists for milk money, and getting freebie lunches at the campus cafeteria. They are the Rock Stars of science, after all.

Think about it...The most important theory of all geology, its crown jewel, is PT, and the father of PT is Alfred Wegener. Ever heard of him? Honestly, up until this research sparked my interest, I barely remember hearing his name in Elementary School science class. I faintly recollect it, and I must say have a pretty good knack for trivial retention. I promise you if I did a survey, even at your average American university campus of students and DARE I SAY faculty, that less than 10% of the students would recall him and maybe one in four faculty would know the name. And I dare say, most all but the serious science student or hard science professor would fail to connect the name with his contributions.

This is not true of the great physicists and (as it so happens) one solitary biologist of note. Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Aristotle, and to a lesser extent Bhor, Maxwell, Tesla, Planck, Madame Curie etc, would all be noted at the very least as scientists by a typical sampling, with Einstein and Newton known by even small children. The one non-physicist scientist I can think of, whose name carries as much weight, is Charles Darwin, and he is easily and understandably an exception to an otherwise certain rule. Physics is the one branch of science that gets to write "laws" for the rest. Physicists approach omnipotence because they deal with theoretical complexities that sometimes seem otherworldly. They work out problems with models and formulas that even the brightest among us might have difficulty understanding. And they earn their mystical status by (sometimes) providing the necessary knowledge for man to do miraculous things...splitting atoms, walking on the moon, technologies that make possible our modern conveniences (ie laptops, cellphones, GPS), all of these things are the by-product of physics. So when physicists tell us planets can't grow, we listen...but should we? More on that later...

At this point, I'd like to make a case for why I'm convinced that the Earth has certainly undergone an expansion event or cycle in its history, and possibly is continuing to do so on some scale however small. I think it is instructive to conduct a little mental exercise that will illustrate a few things. Some preliminary considerations for our exercise are important. Let's begin by discussing the relationship between Earth's outer layers; its crust, its hydrosphere, and its atmosphere. The Earth is somewhat unique and quite fortunate (for life's sake) that it moves about in a solar system window where water can exist in liquid form in abundance. Only a few bodies in our solar system have the hint such water but on a much smaller scale and mostly frozen at subarctic temps...Jupiter's moon Europa as an example is a candidate for liquid water, but only theoretically deep beneath the frozen surface, the traces of primordial seas long ago frozen over.

Important to this line of thinking, water is a rarity in itself as most bodies do not have a thick enough atmosphere and strong gravity to keep it. The ones that manage to hold onto water generally exist in such cold orbits that it becomes eternally frozen. The transitional liquid phase of water only has a 100 degree Celsius tolerance. In short, water is a critical and defining characteristic of some planets but it should be seen for what it really is, a layer of ATMOSPHERE that condenses and solidifies at relatively mild temperatures. We, as Earthbound creatures, take for granted our good fortunate of liquid water and mistakenly see it as its "normal" state. And in our biased position, water masks the truth about the shape and nature of the Earth's surface. Scientists understand this, but even they are tricked by water's masking effects. We cannot overcome our human emotions, our biases. Scientists often do it better than the rest of us, but invariably they fall prey too.

On Earth, water is condensed atmospheric gas. If our planet were just a few hundred thousand miles closer to the sun, temperatures might be so great as to keep water in gas form completely. Given a long period in this position, Earth might completely outgas all water into space. What would be left would be the true geological surface of the planet, with the stark differentiation between young ocean crust and ancient continental crust clearly visible in relief form.

I am not arguing that water hasn't played a vastly important roll in shaping the Earth's contours, it has. I'm not arguing that the oceans don't have a roll in tectonic movements, they most certainly do. I'm merely presenting that they also deceive us and distract our understanding of crustal formations. What is left when we remove the oceans is a sphere with two layers of skin (to simplify things). One layer is all encompassing and has a mechanism in BOTH theories for self-repair when its integrity is compromised. This is the young ocean floor and the rifts are the sutures that accommodate new growth.

Here is the important logical conclusion about the other layer, the continental crust. It is the remains of the Earth's primordial skin, plain and simple. It is the CLEAR evidence, flawlessly logical, obvious, indeed conclusive, that the Earth was at one time smaller. It is the skin of a snake, too rigid to stretch, cracked and spread as the underlying body grew...Held onto only by the adhesive nature of gravity. It is the shell of an egg that has quickly expanded in boiling water, cracking as the white and yolk swell, yet clinging to the inner material it once protected. This ancient protective shell, the primordial matter that once encompassed the earth, is only 25% of the Earth's current surface, somewhat more if the underwater shelf is included (which it should be). Undeniably, the Earth has at SOME POINT increased in surface area by nearly 75%!!!

Neal Adams, in his video voice over, is as adamant as I am, passionate in his certainty. It is purely logical, obvious, so much so that a child can see it. It is the smoke in the plane. Science is simple, it is elegant, it isn't contradictory or convoluted. Oh certainly nature presents itself in complex systems, as life, as weather interactions, even as atomic particles...but where a simple and obvious explanation is evident, it invariably IS the truth. Plate tectonics holds that this ancient layer of shell formed just the way it is...but no wait, it claims that it moves around...no wait, it claims that it moves around, bounces like bumper cars at the fair, only to separate and start the process again. That is fine, and plausible I suppose, Their explained mechanism defies sensibility, but it isn't patently impossible...although improbable. The movement part is fine. As they sit upon our Earth I can imagine the continents being **not completely** restrained, well kinda I guess. I can see the theorized convection cells of heat underneath in the mantle generating the momentum to bump and tug and move the surface...if those convection cells do exist.

What I can't see, what defies all reason, defies nature's footprint, and ignores the question that it surely begs, is how the HELL, why the HELL, did the Earth just willy nilly form this 25% scattered area of separate and stratified matter? And what observable example outside our planet can be pointed to as an explanation? Geologists ignore this enigma, because it is convenient. I'm sure the lot of them know, they simply must know in their heart, that they are ignoring a VERY BIG question, a tremendous clue. But they won't, can't, mustn't buck the laws those pesky physicists insist on. After all, they are smarter...they have all the clout. They have contributed science that has made our world an amazing place. They have inspired technology, voyages to the Moon, and they are the seers of the future. They are the wizards, the magicians of our time. Geologists are just a bunch of guys in kaki hiking outfits digging up old rocks. The framer of their most important theory is a guy most people never heard of. Meh, no comparison.

At this point I'm going to end this entry, though I didn't write up much of a conclusion paragraph. I am about to go into the breakdown of science in general, where it occured. That is a discussion for another day I believe. Thanks for reading up to this point.

Introductory entry

Welcome to my blog. I hope to do an adequate job of collecting my thoughts and ideas on a variety of subjects, assembled in a coherent and relevant internet journal (of sorts).
My first blog topic will be offered in several parts. I will do my best to keep on track and piece this together logically. I must warn anyone reading this; I do tend to go off on tangents from time to time.

The past few years I have been reading a great deal on topics of science. My motivation, in part, was to learn more about the concerns of Anthropogenic Global Warming (herein AGW). It started out as an open-minded endeavor, but as I read, learned, considered, even participated in debate and conversation, I was struck by a strong opposing force to skepticism and contrary evaluation of the evidence. This opposition thrives largely in the scientific community, but also in large numbers from politically motivated individuals whose arguments have been tainted by personal agenda. I must admit, I feel there is something there in the evidence that should be understood. I believe science has a duty to continue investigating, seperating the truth from the politics, and presenting a realistic picture to the public at large. However, I am concerned whenever alarmism is introduced into such a subject, and certainly more so when science is recruiting politicians to sound said alarm (or vice versa as the case may be).

But I do not wish to get into that topic just yet. It is the environment surrounding it that I wish to analyze. This hostility that I became aware of, especially in blogs and message boards, struck me as shrill and very anti-science...even as I witnessed "claimed" scientists initiating the hostilities. A piece of me that had forever held science in high regard and was extremely disappointed in what I had observed. It was sort of like idolizing someone of high repute, only to see their human weaknesses exposed in the end.

In my continuing studies, I came across another controversy of science that I was totally unfamiliar with...and I must say, the discovery of this issue left me astounded and profoundly changed. Sadly, I observed the same arrogance, shrillness, and absolute ridicule (from the "scientific community") that the AGW debate exposed. The nature of this subject and its evidence, the logical conclusions that were so evident as I learned more and more, and the implications to the foundations of science, were so compelling that I couldn't dismiss them...and furthermore the mocking reaction I witnessed among the scientific establishment left me dumbfounded. I saw, in a deep and troubling unfolding, the very flaws of science itself.

The concept I am introducing is referred to as Expanding Earth Theory. It isn't a new idea, it was postulated long ago, I imagine the first time a perceptive person peered curiously upon a global map. This theory was discarded a few short decades ago in favor of "Plate Tectonics", sometimes called Continental Drift Theory. Both theories had proponents, but as modern science goes Tectonics proponents won the argument, in essence, by a "democratic" vote. Yes folks, science in the modern era is defined by popular opinion more so than evidence and common sense.

This is a good stopping point for me. I have spelled out the context of my blog for the moment. My next entry will be an introduction to the concept of Expanding Earth (herein EE Theory), and I will attempt to make a case for it as a viable alternative, in fact a superior alternative, to Plate Tectonics. Many people have extensive websites that dig deep into the technicalities. I will link to them as I see fit. My blog will not be so technical. I am not a geologist and I do not plan on proving EE or disproving Plate Tectonics (herein PT). I am simply going to analyze the heart of the theories, why PT won out, and why this was a huge blunder in science. In doing so, I hope to make scientists aware of their mistakes. I hope to set science, a method and ideaology of great merit, back on the course of truth finding...a course I'm afraid from which it has wandered.

I am sure that my blog, if I'm so lucky as to be read, will be met with scorn and ridicule from geologists, climatologists, and other scientists. To that, I say bring it on. The closed minded, stubborness that I have observed will be exposed once again for all to see. My assertion is this, science has no business being closed minded. Science should welcome honest criticism. And science has no place amongst the arrogant and elitist. Science is not an exclusive ideaology. It is for all people, of all walks of life. The minute science sets itself above the humanity that it serves, science becomes no more viable than organized religion.