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Mud From Space

Posted by: Ion | June 19th, 2007 · 9:44 AM

Tyrannosaur
(photo: JimD)

Last night my father and I were engaging in one of our late-night email conversations. The subjects of our chats are typically scientific and last night the matter at hand was the photograph of the adult Tyrannosaur above (full version here), taken by a flickr publisher at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Dad and I were turning over the old and fun question of why it is, that animals do not evolve to such gargantuan sizes as they did in the Mesozoic. It’s something of an open question among biologists and paleontologists and frequently the subject of academic debate. The reason is obvious enough naturally, as for animals there remains significant enduring incentives to go big. A mouse lives a short and terrifying life. But a healthy adult elephant is almost impossible for a pride of lions to bring down, unless separated and cornered by some very desperate cats, despite their being the top predators of the elephant’s range.

The longevity size tends to confer on an organism is also highly desirable. An elephant can reasonably expect to live for seventy years (a feet scarcely approached by man until recently). In the case of the dinosaurs, the larger sauropods had average lifespans which easily exceeded a century…and the supergiant sauropods were up to seven times larger than an elephant.

We explored most of the most common theories for why the dinosaurs seem to have had a singular trademark on massive physical scale. Atmospheric: The possibility of a more oxygen-rich atmosphere which facilitated more effortless breathing and better muscle development. Behavioral: Dinosaur abandonment of their young incentivized size (reduced restrictions on available food sources and ultimately size). Thermoregulation: Perhaps dinosaurs were cold blooded after all. Geographic: Larger continents may enable larger animals, due to the acceleration of predatory pressure (the largest prehistoric mammals too, resided in the massive Asian land mass). Climatological: The environment was hotter and wetter, which means more vegetation and thus enabled larger consumers of that vegetation.

Then came the no-no: Suppose the earth’s mass was less then, than it is now. That is, suppose a reduced gravity permitted the dinosaurs to grow larger than is possible for dominant animals to do today. This is known in my family as the “mud from space” theory in another context, an old shortcut to explaining the vast sedimentary stratification found in the Rockies. But as it’s a joke in our family, it’s an obsessive truth for others. The explanation that the dinosaurs enjoyed less real weight and thus could achieve larger size, is unquestionable truth to the cult of the “expanding earth.” A truth with proves for them that everything you know about the natural history of the earth is wrong.

Expanding earth theory is probably most frequently associated with the discredited ideas of the late Australian geologist Samuel Warren Carey. But he has a modern, substantially less distinguished advocate in the form of Neal Adams. If you’ve spent some time on YouTube or listening to late night talk radio, you’ve no doubt encountered the views of Mr. Adams.

For some background, Adams is a comic book artist and pseudo-scientist without formal scientific training, who believes that virtually everything you know (or think you know), about the physical universe is incorrect. The nature of matter, cosmological evolution, continental drift, the extinction of the dinosaurs, on and on. What you know about these things are fictions, the result of an organized conspiracy by the scientific community –with whom he has highly adversarial relationship– to deceive you into accepting a false view of reality…for no given reason.

The locus of most of Mr. Adam’s conspiracy theories is his belief that the earth is hollow at its core and that for no apparent reason, it began expanding in size like a inflating balloon about seventy million years ago. Indeed, he contends that this is happening to every celestial body in the universe, in a process which will continue in perpetuity. According to Mr. Adams, prior to our planet’s expansion, the earth was half its current size and no oceans existed on its surface. The expansion he argues, precipitated the K/T extinction of the dinosaurs by stretching out their migratory routes to longer distances, or cutting them off with the emergence of the oceans, which were created by an ever growing surface area. Due to this, the dinosaurs apparently got lost and died.

Needless to say, this baloney is not supported by any credible evidence. Serious physicists, geologists and paleontologists dismiss it as pernicious nonsense or something akin to a modern mythology. Indeed, the view of a hollow earth is an ancient belief that stretches back to pre-history, but was introduced in a scientific context first by Edmund Halley in 1692. That’s the edge of a pattern, as almost all of Mr. Adams views and “research” is not original, but instead atavistic resurrections of old and disproven alternative theories like the hollow earth (the expanding hollow earth pedigree stretches back to at least 1889).

What Mr. Adams considers to be the exclusive evidence for his theory, is the geometric congruity of the continents themselves. All of his videos focus exclusively on maps of the geometry of the continents, applied to an sphere of increasing and decreasing radius. The accepted explanation for that of course, is supplied by plate tectonics, not an expanding planet. But Mr. Adams believes subduction and mobile tectonic plates are impossible, even ridiculous ideas. To him, plate tectonics is the problem. It is a lie, perpetrated by his nemesis the scientific community, which is deliberately withholding key evidence from the public which would prove him to be correct.

Mr. Adam’s theories do however tend to attract some respect, but only with the usual suspects of Truthers, ufologists and other crackpot victims of paranoid personality disorders, forever looking for new ways to convince themselves that the world is arranged by hidden forces, through conspiratorial schemes. Since this type of person thrives on the unregulated and egalitarian internet, there is an enormous quantity of material to be found therein promoting Mr. Adams as a “geological theorist” of the first rank.

This is particularly true on YouTube where this video in particular has been uploaded many times and annoyingly associated with inappropriate keywords. In watching, pay particular attention to the topography he displays of the Southern hemisphere toward the end of the video, it will become important in a moment:

Now enters a young post-graduate geologist from New Zealand, who blogs under the pseudonym Yorrike. Yorrike, as with most professional geologists, takes a dim view of Mr. Adams self-proclaimed and unsubstantiated expertise in his field. He also notices some fairly obscene things about the claims in the above video you just watched. Particularly their contradictory relationship to the geography displayed. As a response to Adams video, he put together this little clip in which he slows down the animation and trains a sharp eye on some manufactured illusions:

As is so often the case, when the conspiracy theorist cries “deception!” at his opponents, it would have been better spoken as self-description. Mr. Adams is inventing geography to make his continents conform to his expanding planet, something he himself says is impossible.

Fortunately for us, the entertainment does not end here though. Yorrike expands this brief criticism above into more fundamental areas in the comments thread of one of Adams’s YouTube clips. There he finds himself engaged in a rhetorical contest with a couple of expanded earth cultists. It’s a little one-sided, but enjoyable all the same. I’ll reproduce it here:

yorrike (3 months ago) I’m a fifth year geology student. This hypothesis is rubbish. You’ve not provided any evidence what-so-ever, except that if you shrink the world, things come together. That’s not evidence, that’s basic geometry. The mere existence of mountains and compressive seismic boundaries (an expanding earth would have only spreading boundaries), disproves this idea.

D4rr3ll01 (2 weeks ago) yorrike - I find it interesting you throw out the “geometry” that Neal has done on a wide range of planetary surfaces. Why can this not be looked at as evidence? Do you not look at the strata in a rock formation, calculate your theories and such on what happened in the past to create such a strata? How is this different from what Neal has done? He did it with whole planets and got the bigger picture. His ideas here say that mountains need to exist where they exist today.

yorrike (2 weeks ago) Because looking at a strata is often not enough to reach a satisfactory conclusion on formation. For example, you can’t tell the age of a granite within a sedimentary strata just by seeing where it is in the sequence. It could have been in place before the sediments came in, it could have been an intrusive dyke. You can’t tell before doing some geochemistry. Neal’s hypothesis do not match the real-world evidence. Mountains are where they are because of convergent tectonic margins.

D4rr3ll01 (2 weeks ago) yorrike - But Neal has used other people’s geochemistry experiments. The precise one I reference is the “Rainbow Map” which shows the age of the ocean floor. Neal methodically takes away the oldest down to the youngest and the Earth is a smaller sphere with the same continental plates. How could this coincidence occur if the seafloor is supposed to be subducting all the time? That is “real world” evidence right there.

yorrike (2 weeks ago) The reason the oldest sea floor is ~180 Ma (just east of Japan) IS because the sea floor is being subducted all the time. The youngest sea floor is at the mid ocean ridges, where it’s being produced by mantle convection. And he’s not used geochemistry experiments, he’s using the magnetic pole reversal record of the oceanic lithosphere.

D4rr3ll01 (1 week ago) yorrike - imageGoogle ocean floor age. That is the age of the ocean floor. Its on the NOAA website. Neal has also done the same thing following the spreading from the ridges and rifts on the ocean floor. That is 2 seperate sources of data with the same outcome. That is a geological experiment looking at the land forms and extrapolating. This shows there is something we do not know. You can’t just throw this all out the door.

yorrike (1 week ago) You can’t claim to have done any geological analysis on tectonics when you ignore the mountains of evidence in support of subduction and tectonics. The oldest remaining sea floor is not the first ever sea floor, in the same way the oldest discovered minerals - Zircons, Jack Hills Australia - are not the oldest ever minerals.

yorrike (1 week ago) I should probably add that the Zircons I mentioned are the oldest discovered on Earth. I’ve actually got older minerals, Plagioclaise, Feldspar and Spinel aggregates (Calcium Aluminium Rich Inclusions) from a CK Chondrite , sitting next to my keyboard (that’s the type of geology I do - planetary and early solar system geochemistry).

timefilm (1 week ago) so you can accept that the ocean floor has different ages, you can accept movement of the crust, but you can’t accept the growing earth. Why? why must the earth remain at a fixed size while all the surface movement takes place without it. here’s a thought, surface features are a direct result of a much grander torent going on benieth us. is that beyond you?

yorrike (1 week ago) I doubt the expanding earth hypothesis because no one has given a convincing case for a driving force for expansion. If the world is expanding, HOW IS IT EXPANDING!? Your last statement is intrinsic to plate tectonics (yes, things on the surface are often reflective of processes in the mantle), and offensive in it’s assumption that I’m lacking in mental ability and/or rational honesty.

timefilm (1 week ago) well lets hear a convincing case for a driing force for a fixed earth size with a plate that is moving like a conveyer belt. while we’re at it, lets hear a convincing case for a super continent floating around breaking apart!

yorrike (1 week ago) No. I’m not going to detail a scientific theory you don’t understand, yet claim to be able to refute on no more than a logical fallacy; personal incredulity. The burden of proof is on YOU to provide a case that’s more convincing than plate tectonics, and win over educated geologists like me. If you can’t even provide a source or process for all the new matter that would be required, your hypothesis fails. Again, the burden of proof is on you.

timefilm (1 week ago) You just dont get it, do you. here’s the thing… The Earth is expanding - yet you refuse to believe it because I can’t give you the process of its mechanics? dude, I’d be hard pressed to explain how a can can exist when all we have to begin with is the dirt and the trees…. that doesn’t mean cars dont exist. There is no burdon of proof on me to prove anything. I can only do what Neal does and show you the topographical maps. it’s up to you and your own abilities to see the facts

yorrike (1 week ago) You don’t get it. If you can’t explain HOW the earth is expanding, you and Neal can sit here on YouTube or where ever else and claim it’s expanding until you’re blue in the face. No one with any scientific ability is going to give you anything but expressions of outrage at your poorly conceived, pseudo-science. By all means, keep trying, but get comfortable with this hypothesis’s irrelevance, because without a HOW, you may as well claim pixies are doing it.

timefilm (1 week ago) give me a break Yorrike. You can’t even explain the process you believe is correct. You claim to know it but say that I wouldn’t be able to understand it so you wont even try. By your logic existence doesn’t exist

yorrike (1 week ago) I didn’t claim I couldn’t explain it and I didn’t say you couldn’t understand it. I said you clearly DIDN’T understand it and I couldn’t be bothered telling you something you should know. Do the research yourself, lazy.

timefilm (1 week ago) would you listen to yourself. you want me to explain all this too you because to not means that there is no explanation. Yet you, with your 5 years geological expertise, refuse to do me the same. I’ve given you examples. you’ve given me nothing! I dont need to do the research. Perhaps your talking to a geologist? did you ever think of that? what i want is to hear from you something i haven’t heard before

yorrike (1 week ago) “would you listen to yourself” “I dont need to do the research” - Yes, I want you to explain it to me. Go on, if you’re so damn smart and in the know, convince a geologist.

timefilm (1 week ago) Modern Geology says that the Earth is fixed and that, like a conveyer belt, the plates submerge at one side and re-emerge on the other. It also says that we started with a super continent and that it broke apart and formed the current locations of what we now now to be islands and continents. Thats it. No more explanation. no driving force. Nothing about the formation of this supercontinent. it all just kind of starts from there

yorrike (1 week ago) “the plates submerge at one side and re-emerge on the other” - There’s no re-emerging. Formed oceanic plates subduct at subduction boundaries. New (new, not old), oceanic material is produced at the mid ocean ridges and spreading margins. “It also says that we started with a super continent” - no it doesn’t. There have been many super continents - we didn’t start with ANY continents.

timefilm (1 week ago) Does Pangea not ring a bell Mr. 5 years educated Geologist? yorrike (1 week ago) Plate tectonics didn’t START with Pangea, that was simply the last of many previous super continents. But please, keep trying to school me on geology, it’s entertaining to say the least.

timefilm (6 days ago) not as entertaining as this notion that a geologist actually believes Pangea was the first of many super continents. Honestly now, where is this magical evidence of a super continent with many more before it? how is that theory more grounded than this flimsy idea that all the continents were joined on a smaller globe. You’re just being a doof aren’t you.

yorrike (6 days ago) I didn’t say that. Pangea was the LAST of many super continents. NOT THE FIRST.

timefilm (6 days ago) I love how you avoid discussion by pointing out obvious errors in type. I’m agreeing to disagree with you on this Yorrike. Time will tell which theorygains ground. by all means, keep it alive

yorrike (6 days ago) I’m not avoiding discussion, you’re misquoting me and then extrapolating those misquotes to try and strengthen your case. Furthermore it’s not a matter of gaining ground, it’s 2007, not 1907. The Expanding Earth hypothesis is to plate tectonics what “intelligent” design is to evolution. There’s no wait and see on this, the superior model (tectonics) has proven to be accurate for the most part.

timefilm (6 days ago) ‘The Expanding Earth hypothesis is to plate tectonics what “intelligent” design is to evolution.’ You got that so backwards

yorrike (1 week ago) “Thats it. No more explanation. no driving force” - The driving force is a density-driven top-cooled convection system. The oceanic rock is cooled by the ocean and when it hits more bouyant continental rock, is forced down in the mantle, pulling the spreading ridges from which it originally came, apart.

yorrike (1 week ago) The ridges are “younger” because the material being brought up has been melted and thus any radiometric systems used to date that rock have been reset. The constant spreading of the ridges and the grinding, friction and collision caused by the oceanic plates subducting fit very well with where and when you’d expect to see mountain ranges, trenches and volcanic arcs.

yorrike (1 week ago) The material erupted in those volcanic arcs (Chile, Japan, New Zealand) tend to have the same or very similar trace element signatures (especially rare earth elements), when compared to the subducting material. A change in elemental composition laterally along a subduction trench tends to be displayed in the eruptives in the resulting volcanic arc.

timefilm (1 week ago) Try and see past subduction - hypothetically - and take note of all the tears around those areas. those tears are the result of a ripping and pulling apart as new land is produced at the ridges. those ridges are the expansion zones. like it or not, the Earth is increasing in size

timefilm (1 week ago) <2cont.> The new theory is that the Earth was a smaller sphere, and that sphere, through processes UNKNOWN is expanding. Through this expanding theory and explanation is given to why ALL the continents fit together, and also why there are ridges between the continents and why those ridges are younger in geological age. now your turn. make it good.

yorrike (1 week ago) And expanding earth has many, many major problems; 1.) As you said, there’s no known reason for the Earth to be expanding. This is the first MAJOR problem. 2.) The existence of heat and pressure generated metamorphic rocks such as marble and jade (both form from sea shells and carbonates), show there must be a process which can drive that material down, and then bring it up (subduction followed by obduction)

timefilm (1 week ago) trying to understand the interior of the Earth by studiing the surface is akin to trying to figure out how a car engine works by looking at the hood

yorrike (1 week ago) 3.) The existence of convergent and strike-slip boundaries - Japan, New Zealand, South America, India for the former, North America, New Zealand’s Southern Alps for the latter, is not what would be expected if everything was expanding. Some of the aforementioned zones of tectonic activity have histories stretching tens of millions of years.

timefilm (1 week ago) look at the ridge between Africa and America. it’s clear as day that those two continents separated from this ridge. Even you can see this. So where is the equal subduction. you can’t find it. because with that separation has come an obvious growth of the earth

yorrike (1 week ago) “So where is the equal subduction. you can’t find it.” The Nazca plate subducting under South America.

timefilm (1 week ago) you. can. not. be. SERIOUS! That little tiny section under south america is the ENTIRE subduction from the ridge between Africa and America which covers the entire half of the planet from top to bottom. Are you even looking at google earth?

yorrike (1 week ago) Nope, that’s not the whole thing. The Juan de Fucca and Cocos plates, which modern research suggest where a single plate, have been subducted under north America . A large chunk of that is going down at a shallow angle, hence the huge breadth of the Rocky Mountains. The Nazca plate goes a LONG way down, so it can account for at least the S.A section of the south Atlantic. I’m not up to play on the African side of things.

timefilm (1 week ago) I think if you really truly cared about geology you’d be interested in this. There is no land moving under america. In fact, the west coast is land moving AWAY from america. Hawaii is a great way to examine this - the other islands in the pacific are secondary if you wish to continue. i suggest also getting up to speed on The ridge between Africa and America

yorrike (1 week ago) Hawaii, for the second time, is not a spreading ridge.

timefilm (6 days ago) I’ve not said hawaii is a spreading ridge. Hawaii is a piece of the west coast of America. Look at the stretch mark it’s left on it’s voyage away from the main land. And look at the peninsular it leads to - which further proves the sea floor is moving AWAY from the American continent. You would see this if you were a true geologist and honestly cared to look

yorrike (6 days ago) The Hawaii-Emperor seamount chain is a chain of volcanoes, not rifted continental crust. Stop questioning my geological expertise. Any geologist will tell you the same.

timefilm (6 days ago) im so sorry, i wont question it anymore. good bye

yorrike (1 week ago) “There is no land moving under america” well you’re the one to know. I’ll send the USGS an email and let them know.

timefilm (6 days ago) the only land moving under America is the land moving away from the west coast. Even you can grasp this concept.

yorrike (1 week ago) 4.) If plates are just crumpling, as Neal claims, there shouldn’t be seismic tomography (pictures made with earthquake data) showing subducting planes under South America, New Zealand and other places.

timefilm (1 week ago) look at those subduction zones. They are something other than land sliding under and over. this explanation is unacceptable

yorrike (2 weeks ago) And just because something looks some way, doesn’t mean any old unsupported hypothesis is a good-enough explanation. The Sun, for the most part, LOOKS like it’s orbiting the Earth, but it’s not.

timefilm (1 week ago) actually… the sun doesn’t look like it’s orbing the Earth, not to someone who pys attention to the seasons and the movement of the night sky, along with the moon. it’s actually quite easy to see. but maybe it’s just me and my uneducated observations

yorrike (1 week ago) “actually… the sun doesn’t look like it’s orbing the Earth” And the Earth doesn’t look like it’s expanding to someone with the geological knowledge and expertise.

timefilm (1 week ago) Lets hear more of this expertise you claim to have. You sound like you’ve only read the first 10 pages of an atlas you found in your grandfathers bookshelf

yorrike (1 week ago) Seriously. I thought Neal was annoying. I’m sick of re-explaining this over and over again to people who should know better. If you’re so outraged with the theory of plate tectonics, I’d expect you to at least know enough, so as not to have to have it explained to you over and over.

timefilm (1 week ago) I’ve yet to hear 1 person explain plate techtonics as a whole, and not just individual sections that, when all put together, make little or no sense.

(YouTube)

Funny.

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2 comments to “Mud From Space”

Yorrike.com » Expanding Earth and Neal Adams, July 8th, 2007 at 6:49 am:

JimD, January 13th, 2008 at 6:02 am:

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