Secular Increase in the Earth's LOD Strongly Implies that the Earth Might Be Expanding Radially on a Global Scale
Exactly 101 years ago, German scientist—Alfred Lothar Wegener, sailed against the prevailing wisdom of his day when he posited that not only have the Earth’s continental plates receded from each other over the course of the Earth’s history, but that they are currently in a state of motion relative to one another. To explain this, Wegener set forth the hypothesis that the Earth must be expanding as a whole. Wegener’s inability to provide an adequate explanation of the forces and energy source responsible for continental drift and the prevailing belief that the Earth was a rigid solid body resulted in the acrimonious dismissal of his theories. Today, that the continents are receding from each other is no longer a point of debate but a sacrosanct pillar of modern geology and geophysics. What is debatable is the energy source driving this phenomenon. An expanding Earth hypothesis is currently an idea that is not accepted on a general consensus level. Antiproponent of the expanding Earth mercilessly dismiss it as a pseudo or fringe science with their main point of rejection being the energy source to power this supposed expansion. Be that asit may, we show herein that from the well accepted law of conversation of spin angular momentum, Stephenson [1]’s result that over the last 2700 years or so, the length of the Earth’s day has undergone a change of about +17.00 μs/yr, this result invariably leads to the plausibility the Earth may very be expanding radially at a paltry rate of about +0.60 mm/yr. If correct, this simple fact, automatically move the expanding Earth hypothesis from the realm of pseudo or fringe science, to that of plausible science.
Palæomagnetism and the Ancient Radii of the Earth
Cox and Doell1, applying an earlier idea of mine2, have determined a probable value of the Permian palæo-radius of the Earth. That communication was commented upon by S. W. Carey3. In all probability, Carey's contention that the distance of the sampling localities has since increased due to tectonical events is correct. However, to estimate the amount of the increase in distance as suggested by Carey means substituting one hypothesis by another, since Carey's theory is itself a hypothesis which awaits detailed proof and which will perhaps be found invalid in its present formulation. Since the application of palæomagnetic measurements to the determination of palæo-radii is just a way of proving the expansion of the Earth without auxiliary assumptions, the introduction of such assumptions certainly detracts from the value of the method as a proof.
Secular increase of astronomical unit from analysis of the major planet motions, and its interpretation
AbstractFrom the analysis of all available radiometric measurements of distances between the Earth and the major planets (including observations of martian landers and orbiters over 1971–2003 with the errors of few meters) the positive secular trend in the Astronomical Unit AU is estimated as
$${{\rm d}\over{{\rm d}t}} {\rm AU} = 15 \pm 4 {\rm m/cy}$$ . The given uncertainty is the 10 times enlarged formal error of the least-squares estimate and so accounts for possible systematic errors of measurements and deficiencies of the mathematical model. The reliability of this estimate as well as its physical meaning are discussed. A priori most plausible attribution of this effect to the cosmological expansion of the Universe turns out inadequate. A model of the observables developed in the frame of the relativistic background metric of the uniform isotropic Universe shows that the corresponding dynamical perturbations in the major planet motions are completely canceled out by the Einstein effect of dependence of the rate of the observer’s clock (that keeps the proper time) on the gravitational field, though separately values of these two effects are quite large and attainable with the accuracy achieved. Another tentative source of the secular rate of AU is the loss of the solar mass due to the solar wind and electromagnetic radiation but it amounts in
$${{\rm d} \over {{\rm d} t}} {\rm AU}$$ only to 0.3 m/cy. Excluding other explanations that seem exotic (such as secular decrease of the gravitational constant) at present there is no satisfactory explanation of the detected secular increase of AU, at least in the frame of the considered uniform models of the Universe.