It's a Big World After All...

First Neal Adams was talking about the "expanding earth" theory and his firm conviction that our planet has grown in size considerably over the eons, interpreting the continental drift theory in a strange new way. That was my first exposure to this concept. Recently, Michael Netzer sent out an e-mail agreeing with the idea and providing a link to The Fourth Revolt, a site that promotes the idea that our world has expanded in size and mass, and attempting to prove it in various ways. They focus on ocean age (the deepest ocean trenches are apparently only 250 million years old, implying that the ocean itself can be no longer than that), matching trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific coastlines (contintental drift from a once-unified Pangaea, they argue, would allow the Atlantic or the Pacific coastdlines to match, but not both), biotic disjunctions (plant an animal life is similar in now-separated parts of the world that would have been united before the oceans were created by planetary expansion), dinosaur anomalies (biological engineering calculations are hard-pressed to explain how the dinosaurs could move effectively through their world, the expanding-earthists maintain, but a smaller planet with lower gravity would eliminate these contradictions), and various mathematical calculations that I vaguely follow but lack the expertise to summarize. You're invited to check out the site for itself.

There's also discussion of the ether theory, which says that space is filled with a fluid referred to as ether. The creators of the site list some of the greatest scientific minds in history, including Bacon, Newton, Planck, and Einstein as being etherists; I haven't done sufficient investigation to discover if their claims are valid, so I'm neither supporting or refuting them here. In their vision of universal physics, the ether theory and the expanding earth theory are somehow related, and I'm sure I'll sooner or later have sufficient intellectual curiosity to read all their links and see just how this is--but I'm not to that point yet.

What is intriguing, though, is that this theory, flawed as it may be, does seemingly focus on some anomalies in the continental drift theory. I find this sort of scientific refocusing to serve a positive purpose, even if it proves to be totally wrong. If nothing else, it forces science to refute the new theories in sufficiently simple terms that the layman can understand, clarifying some pretty complex scientific theories. At best, it forces conventional science to acknowledge possible flaws in the accepted theories.

In fairness, Wired Magazine actually took Adams seriously enough that they did an article on the artist/writer and his fascination with the subject, pitting him against traditional scientists who challenged his conclusions. You can see the article here; it makes for some thought-provoking reading, although Adams doesn't emerge victorious (just in case you were wondering)...

I'm not taking sides here, but I do recommend paying a visit to the sites. If nothing else, they offer some theories that could be great fodder for a well-crafted fantasy/sf or sword-and-planet novel...