Monday, October 22, 2007

Expanding Earth or Shrinking Brains?

DdH has linked to a very amusing video that he has gotten all excited about. I think the fact that Dave is so excited about it really goes to show that if you are cranky about one facet of science you are probably cranky about a lot of others. The video is by someone called Neal Adams, who thinks that the Earth (and other planets) have expanded over time. He basically is not a big fan of tectonic plates, so he as produced animations showing that if you shrink the Earth the continents appear to fit together.

Like any good crank he mixes in a lot of half truths with a lot of absolute nonsense, there are too many problems to look at now, but here are some of the best that just sprung to mind:

Throughout the video he claims subduction and movement of plates are impossible, yet somehow expansion of the entire Earth is fine. Hmm. There is also the fact that we measure the movement of plates, the obvious example being the laser measurement of the movement of the San Andreas fault.

If the Earth is doubling in size where does all of this extra mass come from? If its just normal matter from space we should have noticed the several tons per acre per day!! that should be falling on us (h/t to this video. Not sure I agree with everything he says but its quite fun.), if its due to some strange change in atoms over time then we could certainly measure that with current instruments. So where does it come from? Er that's not made clear. Then again it is very rare for cranks to think through the implications of their theories.

Another interesting problem is that he claims that the Earth has doubled in size in the last 65 million years, this is a bit of problem, as by my rough calculations it would mean that 65 million years ago if there was the same amount of water on the Earth, essentially everywhere would be underwater, oops.

After Neals "success" with geology he moves onto Physics, again proving that if you are cranky in one field of science you probably are in the rest too. Enjoy his explanation of prime matter here (sorry can't get it to show in here). Its been a long time since I've seen such a long stream of nonsense, especially without even a token attempt to provide evidence for his claims, the best one being that electrons wrap around a proton in a type of shell, which appears to leave a hole in it, brilliant. Don't give up the day job. Though I think Dave and him will get a long great, perhaps he can make the animations for the Autodynamics film?


Anonymous said...

hmmm... could it be that de hilster is actually just parodying a crank? he seems to accept this 'theory' on the basis of the evidence of a (rather poor) animation. it's like me understanding about the field of robotics by watching transformer's cartoons.

de hilster's gushing comments on the youtube link suggest that this guy deserves some sort of nobel award. i just can't believe that this guy is for real.

there is no science conspiracy.


Marc André said...

You don't understand Mark, there's interdimentional hole in the centre of the Earth, through which this new mass gets in. That's why we don't notice it ;-)
Or the centre of the Earth is getting less and less dense.

turdyturdpants said...


why's that a problem? didn't fish evolve first.

maybe the mass is created inside the earth - a kind of reverse nuclear thing.

IbaDaiRon said...

I'm really sorry I missed this when it was timely. :D

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