David Iain Greig wrote:
don findlay wrote:
Earth expansion and how to falsify it.

I say it's in the obvious category. The Earth has got bigger. Grown.
Which means the surface moves outwards from the centre, and that
crustal break-up and sideways movement of the fragments are a
consequence of adjustment to this outwards movement.

We can easily tell that this has happened from the difference in the
way the crust and the mantle have behaved, which leads axiomatically to
a conclusion that the Earth has got bigger - approximately doubled in
size since the Mesozoic.

Hang on.

1 Earth Mass (today) = 6.0e24 kg

0.5 Me = 3e24 kg

E = m c^2
= 3e24 * (3e8 m/s) ^2
= 3e24 * 9e16 kg m^2/s^2 (J)
= 2.7e41 J

Now 300 Myr is 9.5e15 seconds (can we call it 0.9e16 please?)

So the 'average' creation of matter over 300Myr would be 'about'

P = 2.7e41 / 0.9e16 J/s (W)
= 3e25 W

Now the sun provides 1.4 kW/m^2 of solar energy at one Earth orbit radius,
but according to Wikipedia, only abour 1kW/m^2 makes it to the ground.

Neglecting the fact that the Earth reradiates energy in the infrared,
then the total amount of energy hitting the ground also varies with
the angle of insolation, which is getting ugly, so I'll pretend the earth
is a flat disk, not a sphere!

Total crossectional area = pi * r^2
= 3.14 * (6.4e6 m ) ^ 2
= 1.29e14 m^2

So the total solar energy hitting my flat earth (ha!) would be about
1.3e17 W.

So if the Sun's total energy output hitting the Earth is 1.3e17 W,
but the power required to drive the creation of the needed matter
to make the Earth grow is about 3e25 W.

Then add the fact the Earth reradiates energy. And the fact that
the claim has been made that the process is discontinuous, IIRC.

So even admitting that a lot of energy from the Sun would not be
in the visible band, you're missing 8 orders of magnitude of energy
to source the conversion to matter.

So your theory breaks the conservation of energy, creaing matter
from nothing. If you can think of an energy source 8 orders of
magnitude bigger than the Sun, please posit it.

(Note: check my math, let me know if I've blundered.)




(Well yes-but, the question was a geological one. I know I'm posting to
physics/ astro/ talk, but that's in the belief we might come across
some information there since geologists here seem not able to address
the question. But the question is geological.

That 1.3e17W, ..is that the amount of energy hitting the Earth in 300m
years? Does that mean we can rule out sunlight?

And when you say we need "bigger than the sun", do you mean the sun?
Or sunlight intensity at a distance of 93million miles?