Has it ever occurred to anyone that the earth was much smaller in diameter and size but many times greater in density. I would say roughly 2/3 the size it is today. That would mean that the earths land masses would be much older than the ocean basins. It would seem logical that during its formation, the earth was the target of millions of ice crystals or small planets if you will, some other cosmic anomalie that was composed of ice. Being molten at this point in time and the crust as we know today had not been formed or only slightly formed with frequent and enormous volcanic activity. The reaction with the ice introduced into this ancient environment would have been catyclismic in nature and the mostly molten rock would have exploded, therefore decreasing its density while increasing its mass by many times. The water vapor would then be forced into the ancient atmosphere, but held by the earths gravity.
The earth at this point would have grown in size over time due to the cooling of molten rock and its expansion. The oceans that we know today were once cracks and fissures in the ancient earths crust and over millions of years of the above process, widened and began to be more stable as bodies of water or collection points for water. Life on this planet started at this point. Being composed of microbes trapped in the ice crystals, they evolved into many creatures and in time, man.
The present day earthquakes and volcanoes are but a shadow of the earths violent past. The Pacific and Atlantic volcanic islands are a perfect example of this thoery. They rise up thousands of feet in order to break the surface of the present day ocean. In doing so, they increase their mass by many square miles of material. To sum this all up, there was no "super continent" that drifted over the face of the earth, only the expansion and diffusion of molten rock which over millions of years greatly increased the surface area of the earth. Creating great rifts and valleys that eventually filled with water. Treat this explanation how you will, but it is much more plausible and logical than the drifting continent theory. Now you have something to investigate and prove.
There have been polar caps found on Mars. It would be interesting to know whether they are devoid of life or if there are in fact microbes or organisms existing there.
My email addy is drp2266@earthlink.net if you wish to contact me.
note added by rickyjames: I added paragraph breaks and links to this submission, just to make it more approachable. The original AH words remain unchanged. Note that the links I’ve added represent the conventional wisdom on the topics listed and may or may not support the train of thought being expressed at that point by Anonymous Hero. The essence of science is individuals having doubts about conventional explanations of things, proposing alternatives, then seeing if the proposed alternative better fits the facts at hand. Right or wrong, Anonymous Hero devoting some serious thought to these issues and writing it up for others to see here is a great thing; thanks for the posting. Discussion?
I think this theory is rather unlikely.
The continents are mostly giant granite slabs that ‘float’ over the surface of the molten Earth. The Pangea theory claims that these slabs had floated together several hundred million years ago doesn’t mean that they weren’t free before that time or that they will clump together many hundred millions of hears from now. It’s not illogical any more than bits of stuff floating on a swimming pool surface tend to clump together.
“Has it ever occurred to anyone that the earth was much smaller in diameter and size but many times greater in density. I would say roughly 2/3 the size it is today.”
Where did all this mass go? Was it cataclymically blown off the planet by an impact?
“That would mean that the earths land masses would be much older than the ocean basins.”
This is already known. The sea basins are constantly being formed by the splitting and expansion of the Earth’s crust (such as the case with the Mid-Atlantic Rift) and consumed by the sea floor ramming up against continental plates and being pushed down into the mantle and re-melted (such as the Pacific Rim).
It would seem logical that during its formation, the earth was the target of millions of ice crystals or small planets if you will, some other cosmic anomalie that was composed of ice.
Again, where did all that mass go? You you are proposing is not logical by any means. If you claim that the Earth was smaller and denser, then its makeup would have been of different materials (rather than the iron that’s believed to be at the core).
1) That flys in the face of what is currently known about stellar evolution and the rate of production of various materials. It’s possible that the Earth originally had, say, a gold core at that time, but it would have required some as yet unknown stellar phenomenon to make such a thing happen.
2) Where did this mass go? You propose that falling ice contributed to the body of the Earth, but you don’t make mention of how the density would have changed without the expulsion of other matter from our gravity well. And before you say ‘The moon!’, let me remind you that the moon is of even less density of the Earth and that you are making the argument that Earth plus moon minus water == much smaller Earth. It just doesn’t fly.
3) The mass of all the water in the body of the Earth hardly compares to the mass of the molten rock in the mantle and the metals at it’s core. The water on earth is a thin, thin, thin skin on the surface of a massive ball of glowing hot molten rock and metal. I mean, we’re talking 100 km deep at the thickest compared to a 12,750 km diameter.
4) You claim that as the earth cooled (which it really hasn’t yet; and thank god for that since if it did cool we would lose our molten swirl of iron that generates the Earth’s magnetic field that keeps us safe) it actually expanded despite the fact that most materials besides water contract when they become solid.
But the summary really distills this madness best:
To sum this all up, there was no “super continent” that drifted over the face of the earth, only the expansion and diffusion of molten rock which over millions of years greatly increased the surface area of the earth.
I appreciate the outrageous challenges to scientific knowledge that occur on a continuous basis because they help to keep scientists from becoming lazy. But this article is NOT science. Science is the refinement of observation, conjecture, experimentation and gathering of evidence, and observation again while all the while trying to craft a theory that best fits the evidence. And that process has been underway in the field of contenental geology for over a hundred years. Merely looking at a diagram of Pangea and saying “pshaw! I can think of a better explanation!”
Finally, did you bother to do the math for this? For the Earth to have only 30% of it’s current surface area would require it to be 7000km in diameter. 58% the diameter. And if it was to have the same mass at that size (and therefore the same gravity), it would have to be 6 times as dense. Good luck finding materials that are 6 times as dense as iron. Uranium (2.5 times as dense as iron), Gold (2.5 times as dense as iron), and Platinum (2.75 times as dense as iron) don’t fit the bill.
How does this theory explain the fact that the west side of Africa and the east side of South America fit into each other so well? Sure, it could be a coincidence of cosmic proportions, but it makes more sense to me that they broke off from one another at some point.
Further, we can still observe continental drift today — as a Californian I can tell you that the effects of the continental plates moving past one another aren’t always a theoretical matter.
That second to last paragraph’s final sentence should have been:
Merely looking at a diagram of Pangea and saying “pshaw! I can think of a better explanation!” does not a scientific theory make.
On a quick read, I find the theory very intriguing–although, I still believe that life started in or around thermal ocean vents. Overall, I find the idea very creative, well thought out, very refreshing and worthy off further exploration and discussion. Thanks for the breath of fresh air.
Having read it over twice, I think he’s saying that there WAS a supercontinent that broke up, and therefore west Africa was indeed contiguous with east South America. But he’s asserting that it wasn’t a supercontinent surrounded by ocean – rather it was the entire surface of the smaller, denser, oceanless Earth.
At least, I think that’s what he’s saying. This could be disproved by studying the paleontological data, which I believe indicate vast shallow seas on the edges of Pangea (fossilized molluscs etc.), as opposed to the land critters or more likely lack of life predicted by this theory.
Well, I think this is an imaginative idea that actually incorporates some things that are thought to be true, like comets from space falling on the Earth and providing water for the oceans. Unfortunately, I am totally unconvinced by your basic premise, that the early hot rock of the crust expanded in volume upon contact with cold water from space to create the ocean basin features we see today. Couple of problems with this. First of all, your wording incorrectly uses mass when you can only possible mean volume, and uses “square miles” when you mean “cubic miles”. The mass of rock cannot change by physical processes like crystalization or chemical processes like absorbing carbon dioxide from the air to form limestone, which is the process that happened on Earth and didn’t happen on Venus that resulted in such vastly different atmospheres on otherwise similar worlds. Only nuclear processes can change mass, and then only very slightly to produce huge explosions of energy. Nuclear processes that would significantly change the mass of a planet would almost certainly blow up into space dust.
So, first point – precision of language and thought is important. Mass and volume are two different things, and you need to think in terms of the implications of what you’re actually proposing here – changes in volume, not changes in mass.
Now look at Hawaii. Yes, the formation of the Hawaiian Islands produces volcanos rising up from the ocean floor that put huge volumes of volcanic rock where the little fishies used to swim. But the overall volume of the rock doesn’t change – somewhere else, over thousands of square miles of surrounding ocean floor, the sea floor level sunk by a couple of inches or feet to free up an equivalent volume of rock that was pushed together into the volcano by geological movement forces. The Hawaiian islands and new islands being formed all the time like Surtsey CAN’T be formed by the process you describe for the early earth – otherwise we’d be able to see the ongoing rush of water vapor going into the atmosphere you propose every time a volcano formed, and we don’t.
Finally, there’s a basic gut misunderstanding about the relative importance of the crust and mantle in the Earth – understandable, our whole lives are lived out only on the crust, and the Earth’s mantle and core are just theoretical constructs we only infer from seismograph data and never come in actual contact with. Thus we think the crust is most important geologically because it’s most important to US, and that’s just not so. The crust of the Earth where we live, there all the continents are, where all of the oceans are held, is in reality a thinner “skin” on the earth than the peel of an apple skin is to the apple. Lots of interesting geology happens to the crust, but overall it is DWARFED by what happens to the mantle. Continental drift and oceans forming and all the rest are just processes of a skin of material that is floating on the always molten mantle. Any process that changes the volume of the crust, as your theory proposes, is going to have a virtually microscopic impact on the total volume of the planet because the crust is so thin and the mantle is so vast. Water has never touched the mantle, and it’s the volume of the mantle, not the crust, that would have to change for the Earth to go from two-thirds volume to current volume as you propose.
Keep thinking.
It’s not just matching shorelines — and the Africa/South American match is just the best known of many. IIRC there are also many geological features that were created at one time and place, then split across different continents. We know they were created at the same time and place because of matching isotopes, ash layers, etc., but they’re now on different continents.
If the argument is against continental drift (and I believe I have seen a very similar argument in "creation science," but it’s too sketchy to be sure) then the author also needs to explain how we can find fossils of sea life in mountains throughout the world.
…why do you think that life started in or around thermal ocean vents? I would be curious to hear what you had to say is all.
As detailed on this page, the great scratches left by glaciers in bedrock are some of the main evidence that points to contintental drift, in addition to the fact that the shapes of the continents are closely matched. For example, the direction of these scratches can be determined, and in South America, they seem to be coming out of the ocean. In the corresponding part of Africa, they’re going into the ocean.
Like other pseudosciences, especially creationism, this article can be easily argued against with only a tiny amount of investigation into what research has actually been done.
As someone said, it’s hard to know where to begin with this.
To start with, almost all materials _shrink_ when they cool, not expand. Not to mention that such extreme changes in density don’t happen at any temperature short of a phase change to gaseous. Not to mention the innumerable other facts that support the plate motion theory.
Spend some time in a library. Take a science course or two. Realize your last name isn’t Einstein.
There is exotic bacteria that thrives in the hot gaseous waters around thermal vents. The heat associated with the vent is a catalyst for many chemical reactions–reactions happen many times faster than they do in a cold or room temperature environment. I have read several articles that argue the fact that life did indeed begin at or around underwater thermal vents. There is a lot of research in this area. Other than that I think the on going discussion very refreshing for a webblog and I am always excited to hear raw, fresh, creative ideas discussed in a friendly environment.
Cheers!!!
I think for that reason this was actually a very stimulating article to have at SciScoop (although it was hard to read) – it’s been a good exercise for us to refute it, but it didn’t take too much research. :-) And everyone’s taken different approaches. It’s been an interesting, multidisciplinary discussion. Thank you A.H.
In no particular order:
Link #1
Link #2
Link #3
Link #4
Link #5
Notice that rickyjames added the links to the story. If the poster of the article will read those links he will learn much about the Earth. The poster did not do even the small amount of looking which rickyjames did.
If the poster had not learned all he knows from the pictures on the TV, he might have noticed that the rock on the continental crust is indeed both lighter and older than that on the ocean floor. His belief that continents and ocean floor must be the same age is only an assumption which he made.
His belief that water must have come from falling ice crystals is an attempt to explain water on rock. He doesn’t realize that the Earth was made of the same rocks which are elsewhere in the Solar System. Asteroids have plenty of hydrogen, oxygen, and water — put many of them together and the hydrogen, oxygen, and water will still be there (well, some water may have formed and some water may have been disassociated, but the hydrogen and oxygen will be available to create water). The Sun’s composition demonstrates that there is plenty of hydrogen around (look up what percent of the Solar System’s mass is in the Sun). And many rocks have a lot of oxygen. The water, or its hydrogen and oxygen, were in this planet when it formed.
The islands are nowhere near the scale of a continent. They’re little pimples. Look at a map which shows the rocks without water hiding them. And also notice the old Hawaiian islands which have worn down – they didn’t hold up above the ocean very well.
And I don’t see what the polar caps on Mars have to do with anything about the Earth’s crust. Other than showing that Mars also has gases and condensation. If you want to see gases, look at the Venus atmosphere or that of Jupiter.
I’m very doubtful about most of this. However the idea that the Earth was once smaller and has expanded has been seriously suggested several times in the past century. See the following links:
http://microlnx.com/expansion/rogue_scientist.htm
http://www.triplehood.com/peex1.htm
http://www.johnkharms.com/planetary.htm
Notice that any theory of the Earth expanding has to deal with the Moon. The Moon was blasted off the Earth during a big impact.
Any theory based on the shape of the continents (ie, that they all used to fit together to cover the sphere) must have taken place after the impact, and consider if a gap is due to the impact.
The Moon is less dense than Earth, and it is not at all surprising that the upper, less dense, layers of old Earth got splashed the highest. Theories have to deal with whether what is now the less dense continental crust was the surface layer on preLunar Earth.
Theories get to figure out the makeup of the impacting body and what the subtraction of the Moon’s volume and the addition of the impacting body did to the size of Earth.
Not only are hydrogen, oxygen, and water common in space but also under the surface of Earth.
Basically, any rock under the water line (usually no more than a few hundred feet under non-mountainous surface) should be considered as being accessible to water. Solid rock might not have water in it, but any fractures may be filled with water because water is penetrating far down. Even some “solid” rock is porous enough for water to saturate it. There is a lot of water in the rocks above the molten magma of the inner/outer core.
Also there is water in magma. Magma at the surface often has water in its composition. Some characteristics of the huge amount of molten magma in the planet are best explained by there being water in the mix.
Remember, just because throwing water on molten steel makes steam does not mean that water behaves the same way under intense pressure. How intense? Well, you’ve heard that diamonds are formed under great pressure — diamonds are formed when carbon-containing magma is suddenly depressurized during a fast flow upward. This happens someplace above 200km, in the upper mantle. The upper mantle extends downward to 400km under the surface, twice the depth of diamond formation. And that’s less than 1/20th of the way to the center. That’s a lot of pressure.
I WOULD LIKE TO OBTAIN ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THE SUPERCONTINENT OF PANGEA