Expanding Earth Theory

I love hearing about science conspiracy theories. My new favorite, that I stumbled across the other day, is that Earth is increasing in size, and that expansion is the only plausible explanation for what looks like the continental drift.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjgidAICoQI&feature=related

This interests me because years ago I proposed a thought experiment about gravity, where I noted that if all matter in the universe were expanding, you would appear to be attracted to other objects when all that was happening is that those objects were growing and closing the space gaps between them.

Naturally there are many holes in this theory, including the lack of evidence that planets are getting larger. But now I discover this theory that the earth has indeed grown. And it must be true because it is on Youtube!

My theory of gravity held that if you and the earth were the only things in existence, and you both grew at the same time, you wouldn’t notice the growth because all the reference points are growing too.

One of the big criticisms to this theory is that mass would increase if size increased. Originally, I waved my hand at that problem and just said the theory includes an ongoing shift of the laws of physics to keep everything in balance, such as orbits and the relative strength of structures.

But isn’t the mass of earth increasing? People are being born and new trees are growing every day. Perhaps that increase in mass is borrowed from other places, such as dust landing here from space, but clearly some objects are gaining mass, as the expanding matter theory of gravity requires, and the source of that gain is not obvious to the eye.

For the expanding matter theory of gravity to be true, you’d expect some things to expand at different rates than others. That’s consistent with the youtube video on how the earth expanded while the land mass didn’t change much. It’s also consistent with the universe itself expanding, which we observe.

The expanding matter theory of gravity isn’t a serious one. It’s just a fun mental detour. And like all fringe theories, you can always find clues that make it seem as though it all fits together, so long as you don’t know too much about science.

[Question: Photons have mass. What happens when all those photons from the sun hit Earth? Does the mass stay here?]

Comments

[craig jones]

Subduction is a scientific device. a pause if you will, to say I don't know. Like the age of the universe, yeah 14 billion years, could be 17 trillion years whatever a year means, but it creates a nifty a notion of a temporal subduction zone. we pander to the child inside longing for
a conservative aspect of the universe that will save us
yet not bore us or demean our self esteem.We make laws and rules about everything,some people say it is a function of humanness, ridiculous. It is an injury, an abberation like
war and empire. the universe is life and will continue to
grow wherever it can, and suprise us whenever we notice.

[Andrew Falconer]

This concept makes as much sense as all the other geological theories that have been brought up in the past 50 years.

If you want to challenge it, then create your own whole-earth geology computer simulation that explains the continents and oceans from the beginning of the earth to now. Show a better way to compensate for all the forces on the entire sphere of the earth?

[craig]

What do they have?

[Keith Wilson]

Dilbert humor is amongst my favorites, but . . . There are four designated possibiities that tried to explain expansion. They can be found at www.eearthk.com. There is also a brief history there and how fast a timeline standard scientists decided on Plate Tectonics (PT) after they were forced to accept "expansion" at mid-ocean ridges. PT has to have a proven "subduction". So, any Dilbert at the meetings would say "Surely, you've measured the Earth size more than once?" or "Certainly, you've placed objects and measured them being subducted?" And when he finds they haven't perhaps he'd say "Perhaps they don't want to know." Good references. Check out the Carey book for all the science.

[ryan]

PHOTONS DONT HAVE MASS. PERIOD!

[Jeff]

The mass stays here, except for the portion reflected back into space.
Solar intensity is roughly 1366 watts per square meter. The earth's radius is roughly 6.4km - so the total power hitting the earth is roughly 1.75*10^17 watts.
That works out to roughly 2 kilograms hitting the earth each second, or 170,000kg (380,000lbs) each day.
This is a microscopic amount compared to the total mass of the earth - 1/(10^20) of the total mass.

[Mark]

In a way the earth is getting bigger - there is an amount of "space dust" falling on the earth every day, although not enough to really make a difference.

When things grow - they aren't creating new mass. Come on Scott, you should know this - for example, when trees grow, they extract the carbon out of the atmosphere and use it to create new molecules. Believe it or not, most of the mass of a tree is extracted from the air.

[craig]

what if space is being captured?

[Joe]

Photons don't have mass, but they do have energy, and--as Einstein told us--E=mc^2, so energy and mass are one and the same.

And yes, I do have a degree in physics.

There is no gravity, the earth just sucks

[Aeryck]

Mark McCutcheon has taken a serious stab at developing a physics based on the idea of everything expanding (so there really isn't any gravity, etc.) Exactly as you are describing: http://www.thefinaltheory.com/

[Rabbit]

You know, If the surface of earth is bombarded with photons, it would auctually exert a force on the surface of the planet that wound cause it to compress. It would be similiar to a submarine diving deep into the ocean. Also because it acts one one side of the planet, it would cause the earth to have a constantly increasing orbit. Good thing we have the moon to shoot photons to the back side of the earth, otherwise we would fly off into space!

To answer your question about photons, the energy is asorbed. If I remember correctly, photons are asorbed by atoms and they cause the electrons to jump into higher orbital states. When an electron drops from a higher orbital state to a lower one, the photon is released again.

[neopolitan]

From hollowearththeory.com ..

"Understanding outgassing and atmosphere formation on a hollow planet model helps us explain past mysteries such as the great flood on Earth and the Floods on Mars."

You don't have to scratch too hard to find "God did it" behind a lot of these crackpot theories. Sorry, the Great Flood is a myth (albeit possibly with some basis in an ancient catastrophic event for which there may be geological evidence - like the flooding of the Black Sea, not the world, but enough to be inconvenient if you lived on the shores of the Black Sea).

I must point out that I distance myself from these sorts of theories. My model (previously described) is in all likelihood entirely consistent with standard cosmology and general relativity and totally at odds with theological crackpottery (especially anything which has even the vaguest whiff of Intelligent Design).

cheers,

neopolitan

[Asgeir S. Nilsen]

If the planet is expanding; I'd guess it puts the dinosaurs in a different light. I mean, if it's expanding at a constant rate it might only have been a third the size when the dinosaurs walked the then quite tiny planet?

So if the dinosaurs walked the earth today, a T-Rex would only be the size of a cow..

Asgeir

[Gekkobear]

Photons have mass (even tiny mass) and they're traveling at light speed. Force = mass * acceleration (or deceleration) so they're all slamming into anything exposed to light like tiny cannonballs.

Which is why I hide from the light. Except my computer monitor for some reason.

Oh my god, it's shooting me with light right now.

AAAAAAARGGGGGGHH!

Or maybe light doesn't have mass?

[neopolitan]

Looking at the general level of posting, I have to say "ouch". I doubt that many could think through the whole idea properly.

And photons don't have mass - reference here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon - (although they are sometimes treated as having mass, it's one of those little physics fiddles to keep the equations working).

Plus, everything expands. So the idea of just the Earth expanding and water not expanding, or blood not expanding, is just silly. The effect that could cause the effect of gravity works like this:

Everything expands.

Concentrations of mass-energy resist expansion.

Structured matter maintains relative separation.

So the Earth _effectively_ shrinks relative to the surrounding space but then immediately expands to maintain relative separation.

This gives us all a velocity outwards from the centre of the Earth, the closer something is to the centre of the Earth the greater the effective velocity is. So things below us are a little faster, so they either catch up to us, if we are above the surface (so we fall) or they push against out feet (keeping us from drifting off into space).

These effective velocities make time run slower the deeper you are in a gravity well, in accordance with General Relativity.

--

But I doubt that many people can follow that (and it is a bit quick and dirty anyway).

cheers,

neopolitan

[Kyle]

photons are a massless particle

[Blablevic]

Photons don't have mass, they are energy transmitters.

Also, expansion doesn't mean increase of mass. If expansion happens without an increase of mass, then the density is decreasing. If this theory of expanding Earth is true, then the density of whatever there is inside of the earth is decreasing. This might also explain why those very large planets are just huge gas bubbles and not solid like Earth.

[M. Groves]

Two comments: First, if everything was expanding, it's not hard to see that different shapes would expand at different rates. So, if you had a sphere and a cube with the same width, over time, the cube would grow faster than the sphere. You could measure that.

Second, since the earth is at kind of a steady state right now, the amount of energy absorbed from the sun should be about the same as that radiated off into space.

Although I'm intrigued by the creativity shown by some crackpots, "expansion theory" seems pretty easy to debunk.

[whatever]

Who said mass has to increase if size increases? A singularity is smaller than can be imagined yet can contain nearly infinite mass. The amount of mass might also depend on the perception of the observer. Other than that the earth gains mass as it accumulates energy and dust from other sources in space. Apparently, more energy and dust is accumulating than is being released by the earth. There are more people and trees, but not this doesn't mean mass has necessarily accumulated, but rather because of the conservation of mass/energy.

[Bob]

Question: Photons have mass...

Answer: No they don't. Nothing with mass can move at the speed of light.

Question: What happens when all those photons from the sun hit Earth?

Answer: The sun gives us heat and light. Both of these escape from the Earth eventually. If it was like Vegas, and all of the photons that came here, stayed here, then the Earth would be an invisible ball of fire.

[Bob]

Question: Photons have mass...

Answer: No they don't. Nothing with mass can move at the speed of light.

[Felicity]

The earth is not only EXPANDING, it's HOLLOW! Check this out http://www.hollowearththeory.com

[Felicity]

The earth is not only EXPANDING, it's HOLLOW! Check this out www.hollowearththeory.com

[Christopher]

"People are being born and new trees are growing every day."

Isn't that why mothers are asked to "eat for two"? And wouldn't all that eating tend to DECREASE the size of the earth? So maybe the earth is contracting at a velocity that is a function of the number of pregnant women?

[Wise-acres]

An expanding earth sounds reasonable. With so many asteroids, alpha/beta particles and cosmic rays hitting the earth, I imagine that the earth would be increasing in size over time.
IF E=Mc^2, then energy can be converted into mass and vise versus. So energy is really just another form of mass. Which means if a photon is absorbed by a particle, the photons can add to the particle’s mass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass-energy_equivalence

[Anarchy In Your Head]

Something's growing in my pants. Uh huh huh. -Butthead

OK, seriously though. e = mc^2
Someone already said that but it really is a pitiful amount of mass. The speed of light is a really high number and then you SQUARE it! You get a crazy amount of energy from a tiny amount of matter which also means you get a tiny amount of matter from a hell of a lot of energy.

[Tony H]

Yes, photons have mass. They don't have RESTING mass. E=MC^2 and all that. Did Einstien die in vain?

[Ian]

This reminds me of the armchair theory I came up with. Only instead of everything expanding, everything is shrinking (at the speed of light). Now, this doesn't explain gravity, but it might lend some insight as to why the speed of light is constant, with the understanding that the shrinking behavior of light is different than matter.

[Bryan P]

Answer: No. Because photons radiate back out. Otherwise the earth would fry from all the heat.

[Tomas Liubinas]

IMO Answer: Yes photons have mass, but it (photon and mass) exists only when moving at speed of light. The moment they stop they stop existing or smth..

Greetings from Lithuania
http://tomas.liubinas.com/

[GNB]

Scott,

Great blog, comic, books and etc!

To answer your question, photons leave Earth as often as they land on it. That's why you can see things. If all photons were absorbed when they reached Earth everything would be pitch-black. Perhaps a black hole?

George

[Sondra]

I thought of something else.

People are writing - one pot of soil, one seed, yada, yada, yada

Weigh the water that you add to the pot.

[Sam]

(I'm going to join the herd I'm sure is above this post box)

PHOTONS HAVE NO MASS. only energy, which theoretically can be converted into mass, but that's not important to this discussion.

[Sabrina]

Scott,
It's ok, we all make mistakes. Those new trees and people you see are not adding mass to our planet. They are converting raw materials and energy found on Earth to their new forms. If you want to get down to the nitty-gritty :) they are using the carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and iron and selenium to build their bodies, but these materials come from their foods (which is a bad arguement, because we only eat living things..AH HA! Where did THOSE things get their mass!?)

Well, eventually the food chain is brought back to plants and the plants get their mass from minerals in the ground around them, dead things in the ground around them, water, and the sun's energy. The energy from the sun does not increase the mass of Earth. (yes, I understand that E=mc squared, but that doesn't change my premise at all)

Photons have ZERO rest mass--just like quarks

And the mass from asteroids or dust or whatever DOES come to Earth...And gases (especially Hydrogen) escape our atmosphere...So we do lose and gain mass, but the amounts are so small and almost in equilibrium.
Ok, there's my rant, or explanation. You have a great day, and I personally liked Jesus (pronounced Hay-soos)

[Ceri]

Scott, you once again display the grasp of science for which MBA's are justly famed. Photons have mass do they?
Are you sure? No-one else thinks so. Look at Wikipedia.

So that I can say something nice for once, 'Influence' was a really good book recommendation. Thanks for that.

[Greg]

I,m thinking the world's mass is increasing - probably because of the weight of all those extra servers required to hold you tube videos

[betrueseektruth]

I find strawmen devices especially delicious. I can poke a little fun at the giggly conspiracy nuts because any self- respecting industry-serving proletariat knows there are no conspiracies. When Dana Perino blurted out that she was not allowed to talk about the tanking dollar under threat of termination, that by no means implied that there was a conspiracy to suppress this information. Why not? Simple you tin foil hatted wonders: conspiracies don't exist! Everything is fine. Lets giggle some more and go max out another credit card!

......MS. PERINO: Wendell, I’m under strict instructions, and have been from the beginning, to not talk about the dollar, and I’m not going to get fired to satisfy your question.

[Paul G]

"Photons have mass? You fail high school science again? -) You're thinking about PROTONS?... surprised no one noticed.. I guess the whole hi IQ readership thing was a hoax."

Photons do have mass. They have no REST mass, but thats not the same thing.

[Oliver]

Photons are massless, but they do have momentum. So when they strike the earth they transfer momentum to the planet, exerting an extremely weak force away from the sun, but don't increase the mass of the planet.

[Daniel]

Photons do have mass, but unless they hit something that we see as black, they bounce off. That's why we can actually see things.

[Dave Oblad]

Ok, so I watched the video. Very interesting!
Cool morphing software!

This should be easy to prove one way or the other:

Continental connection or drift was first given weight,
not because of shapes fitting each other but by mineral
fingerprints. Cut a finger print in half. You can
match the ridges and mate the two half's again or deny
the two half's are the same print by the mismatching ridges.
So, edges of Pangaea were mapped by mineral fingerprints
to see how the continents were mated long ago.

Now.. If Pangaea was a single continent, then the outer
edges won't map to any other edges. If all the edges map
to opposing edges, then the video might hold water.

Speaking of water, I have no problem with water appearing.

Much of what hits the earth from space is just ice.
But that makes me wonder why mars is so dry.
Or, the water is simply being forced out of the earth
over time, like squeezing a wet sponge (sort of).

That the earth might have grown 100% from it's beginning?
Still, not a big deal, so lava cools and trapped water
forces it to expand like pumice. Still a cool notion.

None of which fits with the expanding universe.

Best wishes Scott! Just 2 more cents from Dave :^)

[Kevin]

Someone said:

"You see, according to Einstein's relativity, now some of the most well-accepted and well-proven theories of the last century, there is a constant that NEVER changes. The speed of light in a vacuum. No matter what the effect of gravity are, light will always travel at the same rate in a vacuum"

Einstein showed, and it has been backed up by experiment, that light is, in fact, affected by gravity. Light does not always travel at the same rate in a vacuum, it's path is bent and it is slowed by very massive objects. Special relativity is only a special case of general relativity when gravity is set to zero.

[Dave Oblad]

Photons have Mass? Not when they are taking a break. (at rest..lol)

Actually, your right, the earth is bigger because of sunlight.
Sunlight converts to heat. Heat expands the distance between atoms.
Objects get bigger when hot. So the earth is slightly bigger because
of sunlight. However, on the side of the earth, away from the sun,
it must be dissipating that energy into space or we would go into
thermal runaway, oceans boiling, general hell on earth. So, we are
in thermal balance. So size remains somewhat constant.
Also, inversely, take away the sun and the atmosphere condenses to the
surface and the diameter of the earth is reduced. Atmosphere counts!

Of course, size is not a good indicator of mass. Which weighs more,
a ton of feathers or a ton of gold?

Anyway, as you somewhat understated, the earth is increasing in mass
by the hour, due to meteors and cosmic dust caught in our gravity well.
I am totally guessing, by I wouldn't be surprised if it amounted to
several tons per day. I know lots of it ends up under my bed.

I'd like to know if the lattice that supports matter is constant in size
or flexible? And if flexible, does gravity play a part?
See.. if the lattice were to expand, everything would expand, including
the space between everything. So, no local ruler would be able to measure
it because the ruler would be expanding too.

Here's a mind blower.. Distant galaxies are moving away from us at a
significant part of the speed of light. Now either we are still and that
galaxy is hauling butt.. or it's still and we are hauling butt.. or we
both are sharing the speed difference. In any case.. we are moving very
fast through the universe in some direction. Now, many know that matter
stretches in the direction of travel. So I might be twice as thick when
facing, say north or south, as when facing east or west.
So how come when I spin, I just look dizzy rather than looking like a
reflection in an undulating fun house mirror?

Maybe it's not enough to measure on my personal scale, but the earth is
huge and spinning. Seems like the shifting expansion and contractions
would be large enough to crack up the brittle surface and start them
moving all over the place. Oh wait! They are all cracked up and moving
all over he place.. never mind!

Fun Blog Scott. Best wishes to all from Dave :^)

[Venkat]

photons happen to be massless...and trees and babies grow up by getting nutrition from outside, so their gain in mass is from the mass of all that they ate - so no net mass increase due to that either.

[Deepak]

Umm photon's havent had mass since newton's corpuscular theory

[Bjarke]

"Photons have mass. What happens when all those photons from the sun hit Earth? Does the mass stay here?"

Assuming that no heat ever leaves the earth, then yes, the earth mass will increase by the amount of the photon mass. (heating -> energy -> E=mc2).
Gives a new meaning to global warming.

[Frank]

By absorbing photons, the earth gains energy and therefor mass. (This is fine, hot things weigh more than cold things, but the difference is trivial.)

As people are born, the matter that makes them up comes from the food that their mother eats, it doesn't `pop into existence'.

Overall the earth is actually probably loosing mass. Yes it gains some space dust etc, but at the same time, the top part of the atmosphere (ionosphere) is constantly leaking into interplanetary space (particularly when solar disturbances (coronal mass ejections) disrupt things). Again, this leak is trivial, so not significant over the course of human civilization, let alone a single life.

[Chris Hulley]

[Question: Photons have mass. What happens when all those photons from the sun hit Earth? Does the mass stay here?]

Yes, of course it does. Although strictly speaking, photons have energy, E = hc/l

where h = Planck's constant
c = speed of light
l (lambda) = wavelength

but the energy, when the photon is absorbed, contributes to the mass of the system that absorbs it. Strictly speaking, photons can also have a spin, which should be taken into account too.

Of course, the earth radiates a lot of energy, mostly as infra-red. This is electromagnetic radiation too, made up of photons, so there is a balancing effect. Nonetheless, the energy that is absorbed and retained in processes such as photosynthesis does add to the mass of the planet. Not much, because it takes a whole lot of energy to add up to a little mass. A nuclear explosion, big as it is, does not burn up all the uranium, plutonium, tritium etc involved, just a teeny bit of it.

[charlie]

actually photons don't have mass. But even if they did it wouldn't matter if the mass changed, since it's only energy that has to be conserved, not mass.

[Bill B]

Damn you, Scott Adams. Do you have any idea how much time this post inspired me to waste? What got me going was the idea that energy from the sun drives biological and a few chemical processes on the Earth. When this happens, the energy it takes to do whatever is done must add to the mass. I need to add here that we're probably talking a few parts per zillion (convenient name for a number I don't want to try to find). The time I wasted was in calculating how much mass the Earth could have gained from sunlight. I made a lot of totally unsupportable assumptions.
The Earth receives 1366 watts/square meter. I presents a disk-shaped outline to the sun with an area of 1.29X10^14 sq. meters. This has been happening for about 4.5 billion years. Assuming it is all absorbed (wildly inaccurate)and that the intensity hasn't changed (mildly inaccurate), I come up with 2.5X10^34 joules received from the sun. Plug that into E=MC^2 and you get 2.8X10^17 Kg. Even assuming that 99.9% of all solar energy is eventually lost to space, that still comes to 2.8 trillion tons! This, however is only about 5 trillionths of the mass of the Earth. Now I need to go get a life. Where did Hay-soos go after he was fired?

[Mark]

[interesting theory and very plausible but like everything the truth is probably somewhere in between

Posted by: aj]

A great answer to this (and all "we MUST compromise" statements) was in a signature on the internet:

Some say the sun rises in the east. Some say it rises in the west. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

PS: Scott, photons have MOMENTUM, not mass. When they stop they have zero rest mass and their momentum is lost. It's a force of (if I remember correctly) about 1.6lbs per square kilometer.

So even if it WAS mass, that's not a lot of mass going down...

I'd like it if you thought these things through: these crackpot ideas are only entertaining in that the persuit of whether it's true can open up some amazing things. But you have to look for them. You seem to want to skip that bit...

:-(

[James Thomas]

Regarding the expanding matter solution to gravity - apologies if this has point has been made before, it's been in my head for years and I've yet to see it made so I'll go for it.

I have no problem with orbits in this thought experiment - to be honest I'm not totally sure how they work anyway. When a scientist tells me the proven idea of light being a wave and a particle, I believe him, even though I can't see how that's possible. If a scientist tells me that orbits still work in an expanding-matter framework, I could believe that too.

What I have difficulty with is density. If you have two planets that are the same size, but planet A is twice the mass of planet B, we observe that planet A has more gravity that planet B, despite the fact that they retain the same relative size so must be expanding at the same rate.

However ... it occurs to me that maybe scientists only "know" the mass of each planet by calculating it from the gravitational effect it has. Maybe they're wrong because they haven't accounted for the expanding matter.

However however ... we still see planets of very similar size with very different gravitational forces. Even without knowing the mass of the planets, that seems to throw a spoke in the wheel. My brain's not big enough to see a solution to that one if the gravity is an illusion caused by expanding matter.

But then, as I say, my brain's not big enough to appreciate light as a wave and a particle either, but I still believe it.

[kedron]

Yes, photons do have mass, which is proportional to their energy over the speed of light. However, this has no net effect on the mass of the earth because we are (more or less) in thermal equilibrium, meaning that we radiate an equal energy of photons back to space. The outgoing IR radiation is also photons with mass and energy.

[patti]

Patti adds:
I believe that this makes good sense.
Why, just yesterday.....
I felt light headed and my significant other.. decided to give me mouth to mouth.
As he blew deeply into my mouth.. I felt myself expanding.
On and on.. he blew.
Now, today.. I try to look into the mirror and it is almost impossible.

My liquid filled eyes are now on the side of my enlarged head.. my ears are located a little bit north and waaaay to the side and they seem to be filled with fluid (water. Maybe?).
My once delicate mouth... is enormously large with water dripping all around it.
My forehead is located way at the top..
AND? my doctor could not explain the water on my brain.

And I worry. I WAS once a very stable person. and ...I don't want to appear Bi-polar. However, I now feel flooded with emotions that engulf me with out-of-control ideas and ever expanding conflicting thoughts.

I am terrified. So? Tonight, I will ask my significant other (who is now much smaller and less significant than yesterday) to PLEASE .. PLEASE attack my mouth and suck-out .. the expansion.
I will need to deflate immediately or I am truly afraid that I will crack.

[Simon Witkiss]

@ Kirado

Got to stick up for the high readership IQ here. Photons may have zero REST mass, but you don't see many photons at rest given by definition they travel at the speed of light.

The delightful Einstein told us that E=mc^2. We also know the energy of a photon is propotional to it's frequency (multiplied by the Planck constant).

Quick substitution reveals a photon having non-rest mass proportional to it's frequency / c^2, i.e. non-zero.

[Charlie]

In response to your question about photons:
It's true that they act mass-like in a gravitational field but this is not because they have mass. Nothing with mass can travel at the speed of light. I'm sure you're familiar with wave-particle duality. Photons (light) can also be described as waves of electric and magnetic fields propagating through space. Electromagnetic fields have electromagnetic energy which has a momentum associated with it. This momentum has a mass associated with it that corresponds to the mass expected from the mass-like behavior observed when passing through a gravitational field. It's not quite true to say that photons have mass.

Anyway, so mass is not deposited on earth when photons from the sun slam into the
planet. What actually happens is the energy of the photons/electromagnetic field is transferred to the ground or whatever object they hit in the form of temperature. What literally happens is the photons bang into particles on earth and the other particles ricochet off faster, like billiard balls. The kinetic energy of the the particles being hit increases because their speed increases. Temperature is the average kinetic energy (related to speed) of the particles in the object, so as the particles move faster the object heats up. This is why things that have been left in the sun are warmer than things that are in the shade. This energy doesn't remain on earth forever though (because that would cause a buildup of mass by mass energy equivalence). Classical physics and relativity predict that when a charged particle like an electron changes speed or direction, it emits energy. If an object is hot enough, it emits radiation energetic enough to be seen by the naked eye (for example when we say something is burning white-hot). So the now quickly moving particles inside the warmed object are bouncing off each other more often and changing direction faster, so they radiate more energy than before (since the particles are always moving they're always radiating energy. Although this radiation is too low energy to be seen, infrared cameras can use this energy for imaging). As they lose energy, they slow down and the temperature drops. Under normal conditions when they reach equilibrium the object will be at room temperature.

[Trayce]

I thought photons will only contain mass once they prove the Higgs boson exists?

[Brain of J]

Hey Scott. Every person and tree that I know was made from matter that was already part of the Earth. As far as I know, my birth and subsequent growth did not add any mass to the Earth, since, as you know, for every pound I gained, some poor cow or potato had to give up a pound. Food for thought I guess.

[Chepech]

About the photon mass thing...

Try not to confuse the M of (E = mc2) with actual mass, its call relative mass which is just a semantic term. It is not actually mass at all. The mass of a photon is zero.

However if all the light is perfectly deflected in the Earth atmosphere this could, in theory, increase the mass of the Earth as stated in the Perfect mirror box experiment.

I Hope this contributes to your theory,

I'll try to think in a way to get money out of this... a cream to prevent potential mass increment sound like a infomercial success to me

[Rainmaster]

Photons have mass? I'm sorry??? You must be a moron.

".. so long as you don't know too much about science."

I think almost all of your readers "don't know much about science"...

[Ed]

The eearth is not expanding. It's just holding its breath until "W" leaves office.

[aj]

to finally clear this up just because something gets bigger doesn't mean the mass increases i can just be less dense

also the guy said thats why all the fish fossils were found on land well its a bit hard to do archeology underwater

[Rodger]

Not sure if it was mentioned yet, but the earth is gaining mass all the time. It is just insignificant when compared to the total mass of the earth. Most studies hint to the daily increase being around 100 tons a day from space dust, meteors and other things. The earth also loses some mass from the loss of gasses from the atmosphere, but that is even less then the mass gained.

As many others have indicated here, the growing of animals and plants comes from the shifting of matter from one form into another. Many into higher energy/energy potential states.

[ChessMan]

I thought experimented with the expanding matter theory of gravity when I was a teenager 15 years ago.

The theory broke down for me because I couldn't explain orbits. An accelerating mass beneath your feet explains the gravity we all feel, but it doesn't explain why the moon travels around the earth.

[Kirado]

Photons have mass? You fail high school science again? -) You're thinking about PROTONS?... surprised no one noticed.. I guess the whole hi IQ readership thing was a hoax.

[Minister of Silly People in Green]

Bummer about Jesus being canned. I was looking forward to him making an apple run Vista. Or does he get rehired in three days?

"Yea, though I walk through the mail room. I shall fear no tasking, for my time card is punched. And I will dwell in the excutive lounge forever!"

[MaxDZ8]

It's true! It's on youtube! ;)

[-drew]

Eh. I am so compelled to do this, and I don't want to.

(1) If we expanded at the same rate, we would all die. Although all reference points would expand / contract at the same rate, your heart cannot continue to pump blood effectively if it were ridiculously huge.

(2) Last time I checked, there are more people because we are turning food into people: we have sex, combine the DNA, fetus grows (as it steals food stuffs from Mom, which is why pregneant women need to eat more), birth happens, kid eats food and gets bigger. We take in food, convert it to energy and get bigger. No change in mass.

Look, I agree that science is as much about consensus and advances in science are due to fring elements in the scientific community. However, any scientific advancement is brought about by individuals who have spent their time studying, experimenting, and reviewing. Their hypothesis may be stricken down at first, but usually enough people review it so that the rest of the scientific community must acknowledge it.

Anyone can observe a series of events and develop a reason as to why that occurs. Unless you can prove it, however, that doesn't make it true.

[Matt]

Actually, you've got the effects of expansion exactly backwards. Expanding universe means that the distances between all objects are increasing-- and the distances between objects that are farther apart are increasing faster than the distances between objects that are closer. It's the bugs-on-an-expanding-balloon effect.

[Andrew Fisher]

Just an ignorant question....if the earth expanded and water filled in the gaps...where did the water come from?
Wouldn't that mean that the whole earth was underwater for a time if this theory is true. Or maybe the planet was under a hydrogen cloud or something. Makes you wonder if maybe there were two types of clouds, hydrogen and oxygen, and they weren't allowed to mix because their mommies said to stay away from each other. But one day, maybe two teenage clouds got together on the railroad tracks to light one up when they thought no one was looking, then poof!!!! water! Just a thought.

[Skyler]

The most obvious problem with this lunatic theory is it doesn't explain where all the water in the oceans came from.

[Big A]

I became convinced that the earth must be expanding by the ever increasing length of scheduled flights between the same two cities. For example, in the early 1980's a flight from Chicago to Toronto, gate to gate, was 58 minutes long with a fairly good on time record. Currently, the flight between Chicago and Toronto is about an hour and 30 minutes gate to gate with a similar on-time record. A lot of airlines are still flying planes that are 30 years old and should fly at the roughly the same speed (with newer planes capable of flying faster). Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that the distance between cities is increasing as the earth expands, which is why its taking longer to fly between cities. However, a more detailed analysis may yield data that cities farther apart originally haven't moved as far apart as cities that were closer to each other. For instance, the flight from LA and Hong Kong might be only 45 minutes longer, whereas flights from New York to Boston are 20-30 minutes longer than they were 20-30 years ago. This discrepency might be attributed to plate techtonics and continental drift.

[Lazy Boy]

"But isn’t the mass of earth increasing? People are being born and new trees are growing every day."

Here we go; now there's a yahoo somwhere telling his friends that the mass of earth is increasing because the Dilbert guy said so with a good example...

I'll bet you that if you started a mock pyramid scheme you'd have some people sending you money.

Lazy Boy

[Thing]

For those that think plants turn light into mass ... the photosynthesis reaction is ...

6 CO2(gas) + 6 H2O(liquid) + photons → C6H12O6(aqueous) + 6 O2(gas)

... light energy is required to drive the reaction, but the mass going in is the same as the mass coming out. Really.

[Satyam]

Well mass is always constant right ..... new people being born and new trees shooting up aren't signs of mass growing. They are just other forms of matter(C, H2 and what nots) which assembled together in correct proportions to form the child or the tree ..... so no matter/mass remains constant ... doesnt grow.

[Noclue]

"But isn’t the mass of earth increasing? People are being born and new trees are growing every day."

And the other day I built this really big castle and tower out of my blocks. And then I built a big ship out of Lego. And my hair keeps growing. I hope I'm not adding too much mass to the Earth. I don't want to squish that poor turtle the Earth is sitting on.

[dsg]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for giving us Wally back, his hair was really starting to bother me. Also, his eyes were kind of creepy.

Thanks again,
dsg

[Martin]

I wonder why you had to pack Hay-soos off so soon ? Was quite enjoying that line of humour - surely you could've milked it a lil more ?

[Scott]

hi scott. nothing to do with your post, but did you notice that the link to your now almost three year old Dilbert blog on Dilbert.com still marks "new"?

[Paul Sand]

Scott, neither you nor the commenters so far have mentioned the Neal Adams connection. Another famous cartoonist, also named Adams. Hmmm. Uncanny coincidence, or ... well, it's probably just an uncanny coincidence.

[Lars Kjær]

organic growth does not mean an increase in mass, you might notice that babies eat more than they poop- that actually do a gasfication of the food (water and CO2) plant do it the other way around, binding gas into solids- overall- same mass- however meteor influx might (but thats small) while space shuttel launches count the other way, but thats also small.

[BuyStuff]

Of course! So obvious! That means that when things get further away form me, I'm really just shrinking! I guess Fr. Dougal was right after all...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98hO97ky-sA

[pingeee]

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/03/12/woman.stuck.on.toilet.ap/index.html

[BobNL]

Umm.. you probably know this but Einstein starts his eplanation of gravity by saying that an object which is being moved at an accelerating speed (e.g. you on the growing earth) behaves in exactly the same way as if it was under the influence of gravitation.

[sambobly]

The earth picks up approximately 13 million tonnes of debris every day from meteorites. There's your increase in mass.

[chuck]

One question about the video: where did all the water come from?

According to the video, the earth was smaller, and consisted entirely of land (with some small seas). Then, as the earth expanded in size, the areas where the Pacific, Atlantic and other oceans currently exist were spread out. But where did the billions of tons of water come from to cover over 2/3 of the planet?

[patti]

Patti says:
I am expanding my once narrow thoughts..

In California. my son's "attached garage" has moved away from his home. We tried to figure this out and now I realize that.. it is from the earth EXPANDING! This expansion has caused many attached garages to become un-attached. Some may call it earthquake. But I beg to differ.
These garages were yanked from their attachment by an expansive force and then separated from their mother-home.

You don't believe in the expansion theory?
You say that you never noticed it?
WELLLLL??
Have you ever been to Vegas? Have you ever noticed how something that seems close to you (like the Stratosphere casino. or the Luxor) seems much farther away than you thought it was ..when you actually try to get there?? WELL??? THAT is the earths expansion happening before your very eyes! Have you noticed that getting to work takes much longer on some days? Well, that is because the road expanded.

I have also noticed that because of this expansion, there is a type of shopping-mall cover-up.. or. Conspiracy.
We had many enclosed malls being built, but for some reason.. we see them NOT "enclosed" these days.
What we DO see is.. outdoor...plaza strips. No one will tell us WHY we are now forced to shop in long strips. But I believe it is due to the fact that the mall's circle was pulled away into separate long shopping strips.
I believe that these were once enclosed circular malls which have now been separated and ..pulled-apart!
If you do not believe me.. just take a look at the strip plazas that have cropped up FROM NO WHERE!
Where are our malls? their centers? where are their food courts? their stages?

Being from Florida, I use to think differently. I use to believe in a completely different theory.

I use to believe that since we have sink holes here, other countries were stealing our dirt! I believed in a "displacement theory" . I once believed that man made gravitational forces pulled our Florida earth through the earths center and up through the opposite side... building those opposite areas with our own wonderful Florida ....dirt!!
I believed that movement and friction caused volcanic activity which in turn exploded and mounded masses of Florida dirt to those other areas.
Now I realize that the "displacement theory" was wrong. We are just experiencing "earth expansion", which keeps moving our dirt around...not displacement. It all makes sense now.... it truly does.
I cannot wait to see my home and land expand. If we keep our rulers and tapes nearby.. we should see an increase in our square footage. I am all for THAT!
I am also hoping for some waterfront property.. just as soon as those waters appear!

[AAP]

The problem with the increasing mass theory is that if you add mass to one object, you must do so for all objects in the universe, so as to keep everything the same relative size/mass. That means that the total amount of energy in the universe is decreasing, as that would be the only way to get extra mass. I would think we would notice the drop-off in the amount of activity of objects.
Besides, how does this explain orbits? If there's no gravity, wouldn't the planets just expand into each other?

[Jason Dumler]

There are so many problems (logic and science fact type things) that it makes my brain hurt to try and piece together what you were saying.

* if everything in the universe were increasing in mass/size/everything else at the same rate...then nothing would be changing, everything would be the same relative to everything else.
* the universe itself is expanding...but that doesn't mean all the bits of the universe are getting bigger, just that the outside edge of the universe is getting bigger, all the bits are getting farther apart.
* expanding theory of gravity?
* there's no proof that the mass of the earth is increasing...if anything, we're converting the mass of the earth to heat, so it's losing mass, not gaining.

I like the conspiracy theories too, if for no other reason than they just might be true. The only problem with an expanding earth is that people of the same mass would be getting lighter since they would be farther from the center of mass of the earth. I don't know how much bigger the earth would need to be for this to be noticed, and I have no proof that it's not happening...but I'm not getting any lighter, I know that. Wait...I am 10 pounds lighter than I was 3 years ago...

[Brian Dean]

"My theory of gravity held that if you and the earth were the only things in existence, and you both grew at the same time, you wouldn’t notice the growth because all the reference points are growing too."

How clever! And if you were to explain this proof to Isaac Newton, he would concur that you could not be disproven.

But alas, some guy called Einstein came along to ruin your theory.

You see, according to Einstein's relativity, now some of the most well-accepted and well-proven theories of the last century, there is a constant that NEVER changes. The speed of light in a vacuum. No matter what the effect of gravity are, light will always travel at the same rate in a vacuum (space without matter, (air, in laymen's terms) not Oreck or DirtDevil). Scientists use this data as a fundamental constant. It can be used to detect the mass of a star (through general relativity, and light's doppler effect) and a bunch of other nifty stuff that most people don't understand. For this post I will ignore the complications of actual linear scaling for matter, and its impossibilities in an accurate geometric fashion (since matter would expand radially, not linearly). Now, for this to go on "undetectably" the earth would have to expand in such a way that gravity remains the same. Easy enough, right?

No. And this is where Newton would disagree with you as well. You see, people know of Newton's three laws of motion, but there is also Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. This states that the acceleration due to gravity is equal to the mass of the object of reference (for instance, the earth) divided by the SQUARE of the distance between the centers of mass of the two objects. This is expressed in math as a = (G*M)/(r^2), where G is the constant, equal to 6.11x10^-11, when using units of kilograms, meters, and seconds (most everyone in science does, except NASA propulsion engineers apparently). The point that I am getting at, is that if the radius of the earth were to increase at a rate X, the mass of the earth must increase at a rate X^2, which would mean that the earth would be getting more dense, even as it expanded.

Now, out of gravitation, into electromagnetism! Most of matter, even dense matter, is empty space, at the atomic level (most people don't understand this). This is because the outer electrons orbiting the nuclei of the atoms, are repelling the other electrons, creating a lot of empty space. For the earth to get more dense, the force of these electrons would have to decrease. Now you are challenging the permittivity of free space, ε, equal to 8.85 × 10^−12) which is a constant used in electrostatics. I won't go into too much detail on this.

Point is, this is perhaps the most unscientific theories ever. Stick with the "universe is a doughnut" theory. At least that can't be definitively disproven.

[nick]

you are the man Scott

I had an astronomy teacher at Amherst two years ago who asked us to design an experiment that could prove Newton's gravitational constant has changed over time.

this is what I said:
go down into the ocean and do some magic that tells you where meteors have hit and how long ago they hit (there is probably a non-magic way to do this but I don't know it). Then you measure the depths of the craters and adjust for other variables and solve for the constant.

My teacher seemed pretty convinced that gravity wasn't what it used to be (maybe that's why huge animals like dinosaurs were able to live back in the day) but had no sweet way to prove it.

It seems like 'the expanding of the earth' could mean a lot of different things.

[Rabbit]

Auctually the earth is expanding in size due to global warming. As the earth heats up the density of the fluid in the core of the earth decreases, so the same amount of molten core material takes up more space. Sunlight asorbition can also be a contributing factor to this global warming/global expansion process.

That's my expert opinion...

[Kevin Kunreuther]

Phew! That explains the mass in my pants ... not that one!

[macuga]

What a bunch of horse-hooey.

[charlie]

Yeah I remember your expanding object theory of gravity from reading the dilbert future. At the time, it seemed very clever... but not so much anymore. If objects are increasing in size, how can you explain orbits? The moon would eventually "grow into" the earth, instead of circling around forever like it does now.

[Clarence]

Gee- and here I was thinking everything you write is just a big hallucination. Duh. I think this is just about the most boring, lonesome existence I have ever experienced. Just thought you should know.

[John Doyle]

You might be interested in this picture showing all the water in the world and all the air in the world made up into little globes at the same scale as Earth. Fascinating: http://blog.phiffer.org/post/27344630

[Arron]

We do gain dust from space... But increasing mass can't explain continental drift. Subduction in the Pacific rules that out. On the other hand, I think I've heard the theory of everything expanding used for something else: An extrapolation of the Big Bang Theory, in fact - the Big Rip... According to the theory, the universe expands, but the matter in the universe also expands (NOT an increase in mass, but a uniform *decrease* in density), until eventually, the atoms themselves rip apart...

[Dave]

"It's pronounced Hoo-Das".

[doodaddy]

You mentioned orbits, but how do you explain them with an expanding earth? It seems that expansion can explain gravity for two objects that are not moving perpendicular to one another. But what causes the moon to "come back around" as it passes the earth.

[Tony Chung]

Thanks Scott... Now I have an explanation whenever people notice that I've been gaining weight... I can just say I've been suffering mass expansion.

Saturday's strip provided another theory for my expanding mass. Whenever two or more people gathered in the name of Jesus, food was always served.

Cheers!

[brian]

I don't think the planet is gaining in mass as it expands in one area it contacts on another place
e.g. in the last 6 months my stomach has grown but my hairline has continued its retreat to the back of my head (and down my back).

punch his pilot lol

strip has been brilliant recently

[Mark]

Had a look at the vid. Oh boy.

Does this fellow have a theory as to where this extra mass came from? Why it forms in changing areas so as to give an expanding (and yet unwrinkled) continental system?

He missed out showing the areas where at each point there had to be growth in the proto-oceanic areas (and where, in order to get the rotation, the growth had to be reversed in places: where did that go???).

Your expanding theory of gravity was a good example of how science would be done. The theory you had explained some features. The next step would be to calculate what the "rule" is that it follows. Then to find out where this rule does not apply, and/or see if it really does follow this rule everywhere. Your system was simple enough to show most people how to follow this procedure.

This mock-up fails in that holding the idea takes too much. You'd need to work out where these landmasses move in 3d on an expanding sphere. Not easy. Some serious topology needed.

However, the problems that can be seen at this simple remote are:

1) where did the water come from?
2) where did the extra mass come from?
3) what caused the mass to modify the areas it did?
4) Why isn't the solid ground still sharply curved?

and if you know a little about the earth

5) why is it that the shape of the earth is an oblate speroid with a shape that would be right for the expected rotation of the earth when the earth cooled (the earth slowed down in rotation because of the moon) if it has been expanding all this time?

[brian]

I don't think the planet is gaining in mass as it expands in one area it contacts on another place
e.g. in the last 6 months my stomach has grown but my hairline has continued its retreat to the back of my head (and down my back).

punch his pilot lol

strip has been brilliant recently

[B]

Doesn't it say only that the EARTH is expanding? That leaves a whole lot of wiggle room for other things to *decrease* in mass (like extinct animals, Republican brain cells, upper-atmospheric ozone, rain forests, etc.), at least in the aggregate, and still stay on Newton's good side.

[L. Silva]

If the earth is expanding and that makes for more gravitational pull does that mean I really didn't gain that weight?

[Liliggyracin]

Heres an experiment put together a bucket of dirt plant one seed of anything you want. Once the seed germinates and grows it will eventually produce more seeds take those seeds and let the plant die in the bucket. Crumble it up and bury it so it decomposes in the bucket then replant the seeds 1 by 1 eventually you will have a full bucket of dirt because well the plants make dirt through decomposition. Could it be possible that the earth is getting bigger through the same principal?

[taylor]

For those who keep saying "mass has to be conserved"... Mass can be conserved if the density is dropping. Ever see lava rock? Pumice? Pretty light stuff. Interior of Earth? Much, much denser. So, if the whole shebang is expanding, perhaps the whole planet is getting fluffed up. Now, and this is the interesting part: So what?

[dork]

lay off the doobie :)

Thanks for the comments

I got it affirmed that plants dont convert energy into matter and learnt that nuclear plants convert matter into energy and that causes mass loss.

I'd get an utility belt like batman and have a nuclear reactor feeding off my belly fat to run whenever I can't find my weewee. I'd sell the enery, make money and use it to buy more cookies and chips.

[RavenBlack]

Everything expanding wouldn't necessarily involve increases in mass. If all the elementary particles (and concommitantly their various fields) were expanding, and there was no gravitic 'attraction' acting between objects, the results would look very much like gravity. We wouldn't see expansion because our eyes and instruments would be expanding just like everything else - it's not that hard to visualise in 2D, by having a series of objects expanding on a screen at a rate which increases proportional to the size. The camera is panning 'back' at a rate which means the objects individually remain the same size on screen. If the objects' centers of mass remain stationary (in coordinates, *not* on screen) they will swiftly appear to attract towards each other and collide.

However, you couldn't get an orbit from this.

"People are being born and new trees are growing every day." - that doesn't require dust from space. People eat stuff off trees, crap it back out, the trees grow from the crap, get cut down to make paper, which gets burnt, the ashes act as fertilizer, trees grow from the ashes... Cycles of constant mass.

Though I believe we *do* hit a few hydrogen particles on our travels through space, I guess we balance that out by shooting rockets into space that spew fuel out the back.

[Tanya]

Scott, I would LOVE to see you post this crazy story... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080312/ap_on_re_us/woman_in_bathroom

[Scott Metzger]

Yes, I believe the earth is getting larger.
Archeology would not be possible if the earth was not getting larger. Its common sense that older stuff can be found when you dig down into the earth.

How is this possible?
E = MC squared

The sun's energy is being converted into mass by plants. Some of the matter produced by plants gets converted back to energy eventually, but a lot of it just stays as one type of matter or another.

[Scott]

As a physicist, your expanding earth theories are Booooooguuuuus. Plants gain mass by using the energy from photosyntesis to chemically combine CO2 from the air and other elements from the soil and turn them into plant matter. The mass comes from the air (far from massless) and earth. The expanding earth theory, in combination with the changing laws of Physics are on the same level as the "God did it" theory.

On another note, I recently learned that the mass of protons, neutrons, and other subatomic particles is far greater (by an order of magnitude or more) than the combined mass of the quarks that they are composed of. This implies that most of the mass in these particles is the associated with the binding energy that holds the quarks together. That means that everything that we think of as "solid" is just energy. Not a surprise since Einstein pointed it out, but kinda cool to think about anyway.

[Tristan]

Something true because it's on Youtube? Lol, half the things on Youtube are not true lol, great post I enjoyed reading it :)

[patti]

Patti to VICO DAN:
Okay. Where Rrrrrrr YOuuuuuu? I'm blogging my butt off.. and?? where did you go ( I know you wonder..where did "I" go) Come baaack and blog...before the earth swells and bursts or somethin'...Geesh.. I give up! Are you lost?

[mb]

I'd like to point out a common misuse of the word "theory" in your post. In the scientific method, "a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations, and is predictive, logical, and testable." A hypothesis is "a suggested explanation for a phenomenon or of a reasoned proposal suggesting a possible correlation between multiple phenomena." So, it would be better to call this the Expanding Earth Hypothesis.

[Bill B]

Great post! I can easily see most of the people I run into believing it. It led me to a video on the Earth's secret places. YouTube can be so addictive. I have to take issue with one reply: energy the earth and it's inhabitants absorb does increase the mass. Physical and chemical reactions result in a mass change, but it's so small that even the most sensitive instruments can't detect it. Nuclear reactions involve far more energy and the change becomes measurable.
Dancing monkeys always lose weight. Sitting monkeys get fat. Isn't it obvious?

[Big Al]

a growing baby eats more than it shits... its mass isn't coming out of nowhere...

[PaS]

WCE: WTF??

[Julie]

WHAT.....YOU MEAN THE EARTH ISN'T GROWING??????

[Sondra]

So who is manufacturing all the water to fill the oceans?

[rjf]

"That would imply the mass appeared out of nowhere, and religious faith is the only thing that allows for that."

It's funny how many people think that science doesn't mix with religion. My belief in God is one that says he doesn't do magic. He has to live by the same physical laws that we do, but He does have a better understanding of what those laws are. God cannot create something from nothing.

[Pat]

An expanding earth. That's great news. Finally, a place to bury the 6 Billion people who die in the next 100 years.

(It's not a great response, but what do you expect for 5 seconds of thought)

[Dave Benner]

Wow Scott, you're an idiot today. The objects in the universe aren't growing (duh), the empty space between the objects are just evaporating. Obviously.

[aj]

one thing that no one has pointed out to this guy where did all the water go/come from of the earth was that much smaller then most of it would have been covered in water all the dinosaurs would have drowned lol.

i have always wondered why south america always looks like it fits into africa so perfectly but still

if this was 100% true there would be ways to test the circumference of the earth from space even over the time we have had sat alights up there should be some increase

interesting theory and very plausible but like everything the truth is probably somewhere in between

the earth had to condense out of matter when the universe/galaxy/solar system were created etc then it probably expanded again but when did this start n stop etc

[Daniel Sixkiller]

Let me lead you down the primrose path (or between the cubicles to the water cooler). February 2008 you commented:

Beauty as God
“Human attraction feels entirely different from gravity. But remember that all the laws of physics seem entirely different from each other, but there has long been a belief they could all be explained or connected by a so-called unified field theory.” Further: “I observed that people are attracted to particular mates based on individual concepts of beauty. But they are also attracted to certain styles of clothes, cars, music and so on. We see beauty in lots of things. And we observe that gravity and magnetism and other natural forces are some form of attraction. Every bit of reality is experiencing some form of attraction to some other bits of reality.” Then today:

Expanding Earth Theory
“My new favorite, that I stumbled across the other day, is that Earth is increasing in size, and that expansion is the only plausible explanation for what looks like the continental drift. But isn’t the mass of earth increasing? People are being born and new trees are growing every day. Perhaps that increase in mass is borrowed from other places, such as dust landing here from space, but clearly some objects are gaining mass, as the expanding matter theory of gravity requires, and the source of that gain is not obvious to the eye.” Further: “This interests me because years ago I proposed a thought experiment about gravity, where I noted that if all matter in the universe were expanding, you would appear to be attracted to other objects when all that was happening is that those objects were growing and closing the space gaps between them.”

Attraction, Expansion, Unified Field Theory…either the depth of your understanding about everything from office relationships to the laws of the universe is beyond grasping by mere mortals or I should get back to work.

[infidel]

You've got it all wrong. Aside from the fact that you've confused mass, weight, and volume into one meaningless mishmash, what really is expanding is the universe itself. At cosmological distances we see everything redshifted (even the light leftover from the Phenominal Space Kablooie) meaning we can measure how fast something is moving away from us. If recent measurements pan out and the universe's expansion continues to accelerate then there will come a point where the most distant objects in the universe will disappear from our view because the intervening space is expanding faster than the photons can travel through it. Eventually space would be expanding so rapidly that closer and closer objects would disappear forever until a point when individual atoms could not combine into molecules because the intervening space has separated them.

Now *there's* a thought experiment for ya :-D

[~C4Chaos]

one thing you neglect to mention that the Growing (or Expanding) Earth theory is from a comics artist. yeah, that's right, a comics artist!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growing_Earth_Theory

~C

[Mark]

[Sure, if you trust your expanding instruments to measure stuff in a universe where the laws of physics are continuously adjusting. -- Scott]

So how does the measurement of gravity work in your theory? Is it *just* the right way of changing to make it *look* like gravity is based on r^2?

That gets us to the idea that the universe was created in toto 3 seconds ago with your memories created to the illusion that there has been a history before that.

At best you're deluded but only because you don't have a theory (where you have a mechanism for the change and a way to see if that is the REAL mechanism and not another one).

At worst you're trolling for dollars (worst because that sells your time when you're trying to appear to be reaching out to people: and trolling instead is lying about what you're doing).

[Phelps]

Plant a seed in 100 pounds of dirt in a pot, let it grow, and dirt + plant will be significantly more than 100 pounds.

Yeah, there will be a significant mass added from water vapor in the atmosphere. It isn't running a nuclear reactor off sunlight.

[ed]

We need global warming to melt the extra water to keep the oceans filled! Otherwise, as the space between the land masses expands the ocean water will be spread out further thus reducing its depth.

Thank God for global warming keeping our oceans filled for us.

[Mark]

Oh dear.

Your reasoning that the earth is getting heavier is that it *must* be getting heavier.

That's a tautology. Circular reasoning (or, as Dilbert prefers to think of it: an argument with no loose ends).

And your problem with the alternative theory of gravity is that it would not explain why the orbits act as they do: there's no need for orbitals when "gravity" is just the gaps between things getting smaller.

And, since the orbital mechanics is how the force of gravity was discovered (Keplers' law and later Newton's laws), this is a damn strong proof of gravity: you only get Keplers' law [oval orbits with the sun at one focus and an orbit sweeping out equal areas over equal times] if there's a force between the masses that cause an attractive force depending on their distance apart.

[Greg]

The Earth getting bigger is fun to think about but as you get into details, our mainstream theories seem more credible. Granted we don't really know anything so we'll eventually come up with something better (like we are all shrinking).

Regarding your comment that "if you and the earth were the only things in existence, and you both grew at the same time, you wouldn’t notice the growth because all the reference points are growing too": you cannot have more than one entity and claim that any reference point has been eliminated. As the two objects grow, so will the gravitational force created around the two objects (which creates two more reference points because gravity is not exactly an aspect of either of our original entities, but a change to the space around them). So the objects should move toward each other, and therefore, a person would notice this movement.

Now you might counter and state that the distance between the objects can also grow to compensate for this increased gravitational affect. This works with whatever model you want to apply (Newtonian physics, relativity, or whatever) that we currently use. The problem here is that the rate of change in distance would not be equitable to the rate of change in growth to maintain the same level of force. So a person would eventually notice that the distance between him/her and the planet is changing.

Now for an unobservant person, this might be true. We've had wars without people noticing anything going on. I guess since we are pretending we could get rid of space, which would also do away with gravity, but the person would probably notice they are going insane outside of any context. Kind of like listening to a presidential State of the Union address. So any way you frame it, the person will probably notice.

I can only surmise that you threw out that "people being born and new trees are growing" bit to intentionally elicit responses, but I can't see why. We wouldn't expe