EP302: The Earth-Expansion Model Part A -- The Death of Plate Tectonics
Surfing a paradigm shift: Up to 1995


David Noel
<davidn@aoi.com.au>
Ben Franklin Centre for Theoretical Research
PO Box 27, Subiaco, WA 6008, Australia.








The development of Earth-Knowledge Over centuries and millennia, the accumulation of knowledge about our Earth has seen great steps forward, on a path to greater understanding. But this development has, in the lifetimes of many alive today, been forced off the true path by a grave error.

As well as tracing the path that the pursuit of Earth-Knowledge has followed in the past, we look at how and where this path has been diverted down a dead end by the concept of Tectonic Plates. These are shown to have no valid representation of actual Earth processes.

As a an aid to understanding how this, and other, paths of scientific enquiry have gone astray, an analogy has been developed -- the Wide-Load Convoy model. In this model, a given direction of scientific enquiry is represented as a convoy of vehicles travelling towards their destination along a road route. This convoy is headed by a Driver who follows the directions of a Pilot. Advance Crews range ahead of the Pilot, preparing the following convoy for a safe passage along the selected route.

The Earth and paradigm shifts During the long history of man's thoughts about the nature of the world in which we live, it is natural enough that people's views have undergone change. Sometimes the changes have been large, sometimes small. Very occasionally, the changes have been great enough to be classed as a paradigm shift -- and we have already seen one such shift.

In the distant past, and with some people continuing into modern times, the general view was that the Earth was flat -- all the known world lay on a saucer, a single plane. To accommodate these views within some obvious observations of the real world, there were many ingenious suggestions. An example was that the Earth was borne upon elephants, and these were themselves standing on the back of a giant tortoise.
Fig. EP302-F1. Concept of the Earth as a disc borne by elephants. From [11].

But real observations and measurements, such as those of the skilled astronomers of ancient Babylonia in the BC millennia, led to the belief that the world was a sphere. It's possible that the stone circles of even more ancient peoples may have been astronomical structures, which gave data which could lead to this conclusion.

In Ancient Greek times, the mathematician Thales of Miletus knew about the Earth being a sphere, and was able to predict an eclipse of the Sun in 585 BC, based on precise measurements [12]. The shadow of an upright stick in northern Egypt at midday was longer than that of an exactly similar stick in southern Egypt at the same moment. Using simple geometry, it was possible to calculate the radius of a spherical Earth, with quite fair accuracy.



Fig. EP302-F2. Thales of Miletus predicted an eclipse of the Sun in 585 BC. From [12].

When longer-haul ocean-going ships were developed in the Middle Ages, it began to be possible for sailors to map more and more of the surface of our spherical planet. According to work by Gavin Menzies, the Chinese had already built great fleets, some of which had circumnavigated the globe, before the 1400s [13]. It is likely that they mapped their travels, and were the source of an early mapping of Antarctica, which figured in a 1532 map published in Europe [17].

So in Renaissance Europe, when Columbus set off to find China by sailing to the West, the first great paradigm shift concerning the Earth had already taken place. Learned men in all walks of life now accepted that the World had the shape of a sphere, rather than a flat plate.

The second Great Paradigm Shift The first Great Paradigm Shift regarding the Earth had established that the Earth was spherical, rather than flat. The early 1800s saw the beginning of the second Great Paradigm Shift, which has established that the Earth is not fixed in diameter, but has expanded greatly in past geological history.

As with the Flat Earth Paradigm Shift, the current Shift, to recognize that the Earth is expanding, has a long and sometimes controversial passage. It is only now, in the early 2000s, that Expanding Earth is emerging from (sometimes bitter) instances of opposition and derision.

Although expansion of the Earth is mentioned in the ancient texts some 3000 years ago (in the Zend-Avesta, the sacred book of the Parsees, followers of Zoroaster) [13], perhaps the earliest suggestion of this expansion in modern times was in a 1859 book published by Alfred Drayson, The Earth We Inhabit: its past, present, and probable future .


Fig. EP302-F3. Alfred Drayson. From [16].

Drayson was a professional soldier in the British Army, but had a huge range of interests. He published at least 19 books [15], not only on military and scientific matters, but also many real-life adventure accounts, and about games such as billiards and whist. He also held patents on "Improvements to underwater telegraph cables" and on "An apparatus for cooling wort and other liquids". He retired with the rank of general.

Drayson suggested that the Earth was expanding, and estimated its rate of growth. Below is a reproduction from Drayson's book. He says "perhaps it [the Earth] was once very small, perhaps as small as Fig.1., whilst the present earth is the size of the larger circle." It is interesting that the proportions shown in Drayson's diagram are very close to those currently assumed for an expanded and original Earth.


Fig. EP302-F4. Present and unexpanded Earth cross-sections, according to Drayson [14].

Much of Drayson's evidence for expansion does not stand up to examination in the light of modern knowledge, and he enormously overestimated the rate of expansion, at around 6000 cm/yr, as against the current estimate, one thousandth of the size. But it must be remembered that in Drayson's time, the great age of the Earth had not yet been established -- the accepted value then was perhaps 40,000 years, so naturally the rates for associated phenomena would be well out.

Some of Drayson's observations are still valid. He noted unexplained fractures in deep undersea cables. In his day, these cables were clad in rigid iron. If the forces rupturing an undersea cable applied along its whole length, then expansion could have been at the rate estimated by Drayson. In fact they presumably only applied at mid-ocean ridges or so-called "plate boundaries", only at the places where the fractures actually occurred.

But before going further into Earth Expansion history, we should look at another related meme which developed in parallel with EE, the concept of Continental Drift.

Continental Drift The topic is what is now called Continental Drift, the place is Paris, and the time is 1858. In that year Antonio Snider, an American working in Paris, published a book, La Creation et Ses Mysteres Devoile (Creation and its mysteries revealed).

This book drew attention to the remarkably good match between the west coast of Africa and the east coast of South America. Snider suggested that this good match was because Africa and South America were once a single continent, which had been pulled apart in some way to form the present coasts [14]. He gave a drawing of the combined continent, showing also Europe and North America joined, and even Australia joined to eastern Africa.


Fig. EP302-F5. Snider's reassembly of the continents. From [25].

Alfred Wegener Snider's work was lost sight of in later years, but the topic was revived in 1915 when the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener published another book on the topic of how the continents were formed, Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The emergence of the continents and oceans). Wegener's work, unlike that of Snider, attracted considerable attention, and quite a lot of supporting comment. It really explained a lot, and if you could only accept the possibility that the continents could actually move relative to one another, the logic of the proposal seemed clear.


Fig. EP302-F6. Alfred Wegener'. From [37].

Alfred Wegener died in 1930 on the Greenland inland ice sheet, just as the 4th edition of his book on continental drift theory had been published [37].


Fig. EP302-F7. Wegener's picture of continental drift. From [25].

The Hilgenburg Globes The work that Wegener had done was being followed by a German engineer, Christoph Hilgenberg. Hilgenberg decided to construct a series of globes of the Earth at different stages of its expansion, and wrote a book which depicted these globes. With four models of globes, Hilgenberg was the first to show how all continental shelves would adapt to fit together perfectly if the diameter of the Earth was about half of its current size.

Hilgenberg had started writing his publication Vom wachsenden Erdball (The expansion of the Globe) when Wegener was still alive. He always thought of his work as a continuation of Wegener's. When Wegener died suddenly in 1930, Hilgenberg wanted to dedicate Vom wachsenden Erdball to him.


Fig. EP302-F8. Hilgenberg globes. From [36].

Hilgenberg was the youngest of four children. Immediately after his final exams in 1914, Hilgenberg was called for military service . That same year, at the outbreak of the First World War, Hilgenberg was sent to the front line. The war left him with permanent hearing loss and a gunshot wound to the knee [36].


Fig. EP302-F9. Photo of Ott Christoph Hilgenberg taken in 1975 by his daughter Helge. From [36].

After the war, he gained a position as an assistant at TH, the Technical University of Berlin, and later, as the leader of a series of geophysical surveys in the United States, he worked closely with geologists and geophysicists to interpret the signals coming from underground in geological prospecting for locating oil fields.

On his return to the University of Berlin in 1929 he undertook experiments on the behaviour of the rock and of various materials. Here his studies were supported by various professors of TH, who understood the importance of his research to improve methods for research of natural resources.

From 1934 until 1938 Hilgenberg was an assistant at the TH Institute of Kinetics in Berlin. Refusing to join the NSDAP (Nazi party), he abandoned any possibility of an academic career. During the Second World War, Berlin Hilgenberg worked at the TH library. In 1945 he kept watch on the TH buildings during the Battle of Berlin and received a bullet in the left arm.

After the war he alone -- with a truck -- evacuated from the Soviet zone thousands of books belonging to the TH Berlin, now called the Technical University (TU). Thanks to good contacts, he managed to recover 10,000 technical books stored on land occupied by the British army.

After 1947 he was employed as a librarian at the old State Library in the eastern sector of Berlin. He completed his doctoral thesis Die Bruchstruktur der sialischen Erdkruste (Fragmentation of sialic crust) in 1948. Because of his stay in West Berlin, his work in East Berlin ended in 1950. Until the end of his life, he remained an independently-thinking scientist [36].

The original Hilgenberg globes no longer exist. Dr Giancarlo Scalera of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV) in Rome has rebuilt the Globe models, which can be seen at the Geophysical Museum of Rocca di Papa near Rome. Hilgenberg himself died in 1976.

Bullard After Wegener's and Hilgenberg's work in the 1930s, interest in Continental Drift again faded. It did not pick up again until 1964, when Sir Edward Bullard published a paper in a Symposium on Continental Drift which included a computer-based fit of the coasts of South and North America against Africa and Europe. As this work was computer-based, of course it had to be right, and from that point on the concept of Continental Drift finally began to achieve general public acceptance; it only took a little more than 100 years!


Fig. EP302-F10. Bullard's reconstruction of the continents. From [29].

The Continental Drift concept, like Expanding Earth, had earlier pre-echos. In the 1500s the Spanish and Portuguese had mapped much of the Atlantic coasts, and the good fit between Africa and South America was noted back in 1620, by the English philosopher and statesman Sir Francis Bacon.

Pangaea and Continental Drift The essence of Continental Drift is the idea that the continents drifted to their current positions from the splitting-apart of a single giant continent, called Pangaea (meaning all-Earth), many millions of years in the past.

Different people had somewhat different ideas about just how the different continents could be stuck back together to re-form Pangaea. Invariably, South America and Africa would be joined, with North America above South America, and Europe abutting on North America. The following shows one such representation.


Fig. EP302-F11. One reconstruction of Pangaea. From [28].

But reconstructions tended to vary when it came to the former positions of Australia, India, Antarctica, and all the lands currently around the Pacific. In making reconstructions, workers did not just use the shapes of current coastlines, but also evidence from the distribution of fossil animal and plant groups.


Fig. EP302-F12. Fossil evidence for Continental Drift. From [30].

When the occurrences of certain fossil groups in southern Africa, South America, India, Australia, and Antarctica were studied, it was found that their distributions seemed to link together these lands. These fossils included two land reptiles, a freshwater reptile, and an ancient fern, Glossopteris.

A summary of the position is in this extract from [21]. "Close examination of a globe often results in the observation that most of the continents seem to fit together like a puzzle: the west African coastline seems to snuggle nicely into the east coast of South America and the Caribbean sea; and a similar fit appears across the Pacific. The fit is even more striking when the submerged continental shelves are compared rather than the coastlines.

In 1912 Alfred Wegener noticed the same thing and proposed that the continents were once compressed into a single protocontinent which he called Pangaea (meaning "all lands"), and over time they have drifted apart into their current distribution. He believed that Pangaea was intact until the late Carboniferous period, about 300 million years ago, when it began to break up and drift apart. However, Wegener's hypothesis lacked a geological mechanism to explain how the continents could drift across the earth's surface as he proposed.

Searching for evidence to further develop his theory of continental drift, Wegener came across a paleontological paper suggesting that a land bridge had once connected Africa with Brazil. This proposed land bridge was an attempt to explain the well known paleontological observation that the same fossilized plants and animals from the same time period were found in South America and Africa.

The same was true for fossils found in Europe and North America, and Madagascar and India. Many of these organisms could not have traveled across the vast oceans that currently exist. Wegener's drift theory seemed more plausible than land bridges connecting all of the continents.

But that in itself was not enough to support his idea. Another observation favoring continental drift was the presence of evidence for continental glaciation in the Pennsylvanian period. Striae left by the scraping of glaciers over the land surface indicated that Africa and South America had been close together at the time of this ancient ice age. The same scraping patterns can be found along the coasts of South America and South Africa."

Continental Drift and an Expanding Earth The concept that all the current continents were once joined together had thus become accepted by scientists generally, even though there were still points of disagreement. All the Continental-Drift reconstructions resulted in a single large, irregularly-shaped island surrounded by a single sea, which Wegener had called Panthalassa (meaning All-Sea).

There was no general agreement as to where the islands and continental coasts around the Pacific were formerly joined together. A worse problem arose with Panthalassa, the sea which was supposed to surround Pangaea. No geological evidence at all existed for the former presence of this giant ocean, which would have covered more than two-thirds of the surface of an Earth of the present size.

The Expanding Earth concept neatly solved all these problems. Instead of being a single island in a giant ocean, Pangaea was actually made up of all the past continents, fitted together to cover the entire surface of a small Earth. There was no Panthalassa.

There is very strong evidence that South America and Africa were once joined together along their Atlantic coasts. There is equally strong evidence that Australia and South America were once joined together along their Pacific coasts, and that Australia and Africa were once in contact along their Indian Ocean coasts. This is only possible on a smaller Earth.

There is more detail on the history of Earth Expansion and Continental Drift ideas in Continental Drift And Earth Expansion [NU003] [14].

Sea-Floor Spreading and mapping the Ocean Floors A giant advance in our knowledge of the biggest fraction of the Earth's surface, the beds of our oceans, began with work in the 1960s. This involved the construction and deployment of a specialized drill ship, the "Glomar Challenger", able to drill ocean floors lying deep below the sea surface.

Called DSDP, the Deep Sea Drilling Project, this was an American initiative with later international support and involvement. Here are some extracts from the Wikipedia article on DSDP [18].

"The initial contract between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Regents of the University of California was signed on June 24, 1966. This contract initiated the first phase of the DSDP, which was based in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

Global Marine, Inc. conducted the drilling operations. The Levingston Shipbuilding Company laid the keel of the Glomar Challenger on October 18, 1967, in Orange, Texas. It sailed down the Sabine River to the Gulf of Mexico, and after a period of testing, DSDP accepted the ship on August 11, 1968.

Scientific planning was conducted under the auspices of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES). The JOIDES advisory group consisted of 250 distinguished scientists from academic institutions, government agencies, and private industry from all over the world. Over the next 30 months, the second phase consisted of drilling and coring in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean as well as the Mediterranean and Red Sea. Technical and scientific reports followed during the period. The second phase of DSDP ended on August 11, 1972."


Fig. EP302-F13. The Glomar Challenger and its deep-sea drill rig. From [19].

"The success of the Glomar Challenger was almost immediate. On one of the sites with a water depth of 1,067 m, core samples revealed the existence of salt domes. Oil companies received samples after an agreement to publish their analysis. The potential of oil beneath deep ocean salt domes remains an important avenue for commercial development today.

As for the purpose of the scientific exploration, one of the most important discoveries was made when the crew drilled 17 holes at 10 different locations along an oceanic ridge between South America and Africa. The retrieved core samples provided strong proof for continental drift and seafloor renewal at rift zones. This confirmation of Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift strengthened the proposal of a single, ancient land mass, which is called Pangaea.

Another discovery was how youthful the ocean floor is in comparison to Earth's geologic history. After analysis of samples, scientists concluded that the ocean floor is probably no older than 200 million years. This is in comparison with the 4.5 billion-year age of the Earth."

Nature of the Ocean Floors The Glomar Challenger data revolutionized our ideas of the nature and form of the beds of the Earth's great oceans. As already mentioned, all the great ocean beds are less than about 200 million years old, a fraction of the Earth's age, now reckoned as around 4700 million years. In geological terms, this means that these oceans began forming at the end of the Triassic Period, with considerable development in the Jurassic Period.


Fig. EP302-F14. World map of the Ocean Floors. From [32].

The samples drawn from the ocean beds could be dated, using standard rock-dating techniques. When these dates were plotted on a map of the globe, they revealed an astonishing new picture of sea-bed formation.

Running mostly centrally along the middle of an ocean between two continents, are features called Mid-Ocean Ridges. Along these ridges, new crust is currently being created, rock of zero age. Moving off at right-angles to the ridges, rock is encountered of greater and greater age, reaching around 180 million years old at the edges of the continents.


Fig. EP302-F15. Ages of different parts of the beds of oceans. From [1].

Rocks older than 200 million years are only found on the continents, or on island fragments apparently broken off from the continents. All the ocean-bed rocks are younger than 200 million years, they are new crust developed within this time. The only reasonable deduction from this, is that the Earth has expanded over the last 200 million years, to accommodate this increase in its surface (roughly doubling its radius).

Another way of looking at this is to say that it is Earth-Expansion processes which have generated this new crust. In Part B we will come to a relatively new scenario which explains the fundamental reason for this expansion.

Mid-Ocean Ridges and Transform Faults In many locations, mid-ocean ridges are found to contain a gigantic cleft, or rift, 32-48 km wide and about 1.6 km deep, extending along the crest of the ridge. The ridge itself does not form a smooth path, but is instead offset in many places. The offsets are called fracture zones, or transform faults.


Fig. EP302-F16. Transform faults or offsets. From [5].

The figure demonstrates how the Glomar Challenger data has revealed unprecedented detail about more than two-thirds of the Earth's surface, previously almost unknown. The Earth-Expansion Model explains the shape and conformation of the mid-ocean ridges. As the continents pull apart, molten rock rises to fill the gaps.

Although the ridges look like mountain ranges, these ranges are actually in wide troughs or rifts, depressed below the general level of the surrounding ocean beds. These troughs are exactly what might be expected from a crustal area being pulled apart.

One area where a mid-ocean ridge actually crosses the land is in Iceland. If you look for it, you can see it on the world ocean-floor maps above.

Because of its shape, an active part of a mid-ocean ridge may show up as a "slot volcano" -- molten rock emerging from a trench, rather than from the cone seen on land volcanos.


Fig. EP302-F17. With 130 volcanoes, Iceland is one of the most intensely volcanic places in the world. Pictured is the Bardarbunga volcano during its last eruption in 2014. From [34].

Although rather harder to see, such "slot volcanos" have also been photographed at mid-ocean ridges in the deep sea.

Another "landed" mid-ocean ridge lies along the San Andreas Fault in California. This, also, can be identified on the world ocean-floor maps. Some parts of this fault look quite similar to the mid-ocean ridges depicted above, but on a smaller scale.


Fig. EP302-F18. Image of the San Andreas fault. From [33].

All this is entirely in accord with the concept of parts of parts of the Earth being split apart by processes expanding its surface. This "Sea-Floor Spreading" model has been analyzed to yield another rich hoard of information on Earth processes.

Sea-Floor Spreading So, beginning in the 1960s, all the world's ocean beds were surveyed and sea-floor rock samples taken. It was found that along "mid-ocean ridges" in the major oceans, new molten rock was being created and pushed aside by later activity. From dating of these rocks, it was established that they were being laid down in parallel stripes on either side of the ridges.

At the ridges themselves, the new rock was of age zero years. The stripes on either side were made up of rock which got older, the further from the ridge, and so appeared as if reflected in the ridge. The oldest sea-bed rocks found were only 180 million years old, young in geological terms, so none of today's deep oceans existed on the Earth 200 million years ago.


Fig. EP302-F19. Symmetrical rock stripes forming at mid-ocean ridges -- sites of seafloor spreading. From [3].

Additional information came from sea-bed rocks which contained magnetic minerals. When these cooled from the molten state, the magnetic minerals took on orientations according to the Earth's magnetic field of the time. Our planet's magnetic field varies in strength, direction, and polarity -- periodically, the North and South Magnetic Poles swap over. So these minerals gave an indication (paleo-geomagnetism) of the positions of the magnetic poles at the time of formation.

The hypothesis of sea-floor spreading was proposed by Harry Hess in the 1960s [26]. Geophysicist Frederick John Vine and Canadian geologist Lawrence W. Morley independently realized that if Hess's seafloor spreading theory was correct, then the rocks surrounding the mid-oceanic ridges should show symmetric patterns of magnetization reversals.

Some colleagues were skeptical of the hypothesis because of the numerous assumptions made -- seafloor spreading, geomagnetic reversals, and remnant magnetism -- all concepts that at that time were not widely accepted. The Vine-Matthews hypothesis describes the magnetic reversals of oceanic crust. Further evidence for this hypothesis came from the remnant magnetization of lavas from land sites, and from a remarkably symmetric profile from the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge.

In summary, the Vine-Matthews hypothesis correlates the symmetric magnetic patterns seen on the seafloor with geomagnetic field reversals. At mid-ocean ridges, new crust is created by the injection, extrusion, and solidification of magma. After the magma has cooled through the Curie point, ferromagnetism becomes possible and the magnetic minerals in the newly formed crust orient themselves with the current background geomagnetic field [26]. Lithospheric creation at the ridge is considered continuous and symmetrical as the new crust pushes the old crust out laterally and equally on either side of the ridge.


Fig. EP302-F20. Sea-floor spreading. From [31].

The graphic shows expansion occurring as molten rock is pushed up into the ridge from below. In actual fact, the process is somewhat different -- it seems rather that the exposed rock is being melted through friction, during the deformation which occurs as the Earth expands. The actual mechanism is not yet well defined.

The Klaus Vogel reconstructions In 1983 the German engineer Klaus Vogel published a comprehensive set of scaled small Earth models, or "terrella" (meaning small Earths), as he referred to them [37]. These models were at various diameters, including a unique representation of a 55 percent reassembled globe inside a transparent plastic sphere of the present-day Earth. Each of Vogel's models is unique in that his work coincided with the first publication of seafloor mapping, that is, he was using the Glomar Challenger data as it became available.


Fig. EP302-F21. Klaus Vogel. From [36].

For the first time, this mapping enabled Vogel to accurately constrain both continental and seafloor crustal assemblages back in time, without having to resort to arbitrary fragmentation of the continents, or to visual fitting-together of the various crustal plates.

The following graphic shows Vogel's 1983 "terrella" models at various stages of expansion, commencing on the far left with a continental reconstruction, without continental shelves, at 40 percent of the present Earth radius. A 55 percent radius model is also shown within a transparent sphere of the present day Earth at the right, demonstrating a radial motion of Earth expansion.


Fig. EP302-F22. Vogel models. From [35].

It's important to note that Vogel's method did not involve any subjective judgements as to where different parts should be put. Instead, sea-floor of a given age (for example, the last 2 million years) was just subtracted from the rest, and what was left just pushed together on a slightly smaller globe. Scientifically, this represents a safer and more reliable approach.

This is a very important point to take note of because all previous model makers, while having enough foresight and courage to remove seafloor crusts, were faced with the less than envious task of having to visually fit-together the remaining continental crusts [35]. Their visual fitting was done without the benefit of being able to accurately constrain or reposition the remaining crustal fragments back in time.

Also, the prevailing geological viewpoint during the 20th century, and to a lesser extent still remaining today, was that each of the continental crusts acted as rigid bodies. In other words, the crusts were considered to be solid, immovable rock incapable of any form of distortion other than fragmentation due to faulting and earthquake activity. The early small Earth model makers were then faced with the additional fixation that continental crusts were brittle and hence needed to be fragmented like an egg shell in order to be reassembled on a smaller size globe when moving back in time.

Vogel was an engineer, so he was not as fixated on geological protocol as most geologists at the time were. Because of this, he was able to construct stunning models with a high degree of precision. Each of his models demonstrated a greater dispersion of the southern continents, compared to those in the northern hemisphere, and he also noted a marked westward movement of all the northern continents relative to the southern continents.

Vogel's models demonstrated that, in general, the continents tended to move out radially from their ancient positions to reach their modern positions. Vogel commented that this is "A strange coincidence for any theory, except that of expansion of the Earth".

Experts and Amateurs It is also worth pointing out that all the players mentioned so far, as contributing to Continental Drift or Earth-Expansion advances, were not themselves regarded as experts in these fields. Wegener was a meteorologist. Hilgenberg was a research assistant. Vogel was an engineer.



With the development of a topic, and increasing knowledge of what it contains, it is only very occasionally that an established expert in the field will come up with a fundamental new way at looking at their topic. It is even rarer that they will be bold enough to stand up for the change in the face of criticism -- most of their audiences will not wish to see the status quo disturbed. Such a rare exception was the case with Warren Carey.

Samuel Warren Carey According to [40], Carey is considered by most to be the modern father of the "Earth Expansion" theory. He was born in New South Wales and attended the University of Sydney in 1929. He was encouraged to study Geology as his fourth subject, a department still under the influence of retired Professor Edgeworth David.

He started a student Geology club and earned high distinctions at the University. He received his MSc in 1934. It was at this time that Carey read the 1924 translation of Wegener's The Origin of Continents and Oceans, the book largely responsible for introducing the concept of continental drift to English-speaking academics. He was to become a key figure in advancing this concept and plate tectonic models that followed.

. . .
Fig. EP302-F23. Samuel Warren Carey at various ages. From [39] and [40].

Carey was a highly regarded contributor to geology and his many contributions to the emerging theories and proposals were often in advance of the accepted view. Maps and data produced from his field work in New Guinea were sought after by engineers and fellows. He backed the moving of continents proposed by Alfred Wegener.

In 1946, he became the founding Professor of Geology at the University of Tasmania. His work there was highly regarded, and it influenced many later geologists, in particular James Maxlow. With the Earth-Expansion model, he remained in conflict with establishment geologists elsewhere. He retired from the University of Tasmania in 1976.

Carey developed his expanding earth model independently of the prior work by Ott Christoph Hilgenberg, who proposed a similar model in his 1933 publication Vom wachsenden Erdball ("The Expanding Earth"). Carey only learned of Hilgenberg's work in 1956.


Fig. EP302-F24. Warren Carey and Klaus Vogel discussing an Expanding Earth model in 1988. From [38].

After formal retirement in 1976, Carey worked on a book which covered the Earth-Expansion model, and also looked at the conflicts and rejections which it had generated in establishment quarters. His book, Theories of the Earth and Universe: A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences, was published in 1988 by Springer [42]. When I looked, the Amazon site listed some of the reviews by readers of this book. Here is an extract from one:

"This is an amazing book. It is well written and is a balance between popular reading and scientific lucidity to influence professionals. It has been clearly overlooked and unanswered. The basic premise is that Wegener's "Continental Displacement" theory is correct, but not due to current "Plate Tectonic" reasoning. That theory makes a universally popular but faulty assumption that the Earth has had a consistent diameter. Carey, as an expert geologist, shows and directs to numerous other sources that the earth has significantly expanded from perhaps 55% of its present size within the past 200 million years. This book is as far reaching in its portent as any great scholar's, such as Darwin. The professor died in 2002 and this work is a 6-decade legacy. Brilliant for taking such a stand."

I have met Warren Carey, he was kind enough to invite my wife and I to lunch when he was in Perth. He was a charismatic figure, with an interesting history -- during World War 2 he was an army Captain in the commando-type special forces unit, Z Force, developing a bold plan using small teams to mine ships in an enemy harbour. This operation (Scorpion) became obsolete but Carey secretly tested his plan by infiltrating Townsville harbour, placing dummy limpet mines on American ships. Carey had no toes.

Nuteeriat Although I have some geological background, I came into the Expanding Earth area from quite a different interest -- that of nut trees. I did editorial work for the West Australian Nut & Tree Crop Association, which published some of my writing in the area.

The first of relevance was a paper given at ACOTANC-3, the 3rd Australasian Conference on Tree and Nut Crops, held in May 1986 in Auckland, New Zealand [44]. The paper was called Nut tree distributions and the expansion of the Earth, and gave a brief introduction to the Earth-Expansion concept, followed by some detailed maps of where some families of nut-bearing trees were distributed.


Fig. EP302-F25. Distribution map of Canarium species. From [44].

In a way, this was a considerable extension of the earlier observations about how the southern continents must have been linked in the past, as shown by the distribution of fossils of some early plants and animals.

The pattern revealed by these distribution maps was unequivocal. Each map clearly connected two or more continents, now widely separated, just by pushing together the parts of the distribution. Just as others had demonstrated from quite different grounds, there were clear links not just between South America and Africa, and North America and Europe, but also between Asia and North America, Australia and South America, and Australia and Africa.

This approach is quite powerful. It is stronger than that of fitting continents together by appearance, or by matching geological features, because it is based on the subjects' DNA. Geological matching could be by chance. Matching by DNA cannot be by chance.

In the years after the ACOTANC conference, I greatly extended the work to cover not only nut tree distributions, but also distributions of many other plant families, and further consequences of Earth Expansion on many other areas of Earth-Knowledge. This resulted in the 1989 publication of a book, Nuteeriat: Nut Trees, the Expanding Earth, Rottnest Island and All That ... , initially in print form [46], and later put on the Web at http://www.aoi.com.au/matrix/Nuteeriat.htm.

As mentioned, this treatment went on well beyond topics concerning Earth Expansion. Some of the chapter headings were: How Plants Spread and Change; Continental Drift and Earth Expansion; The Distributions of Nut Trees; How the Earth Fell Apart; Putting the Earth Back Together; Making Mountains out of Movements; Inside the Earth; The Rolling Oceans; The Earth's Atmosphere; Death of the Dinosaurs; The Origins of Fossil Fuels; Geoprospecting and Mineral Riches; The Moon and the Planets; The Cosmic Engines; and Looking Back -- the Final Synthesis.

The current article, Part A, is limited to the history and acceptance of the second Great Paradigm Shift, that the Earth has not been fixed in size, but has expanded greatly over geological time. Topics beyond this, including major consequences which stem from the Earth-Expansion Model, such as those in later parts of Nuteeriat, will be found in Part B.

The forerunner to the present article, Fixed-Earth and Expanding-Earth Theories -- Time for a Paradigm Shift? [49], attracted considerable attention -- in mid 2017 it had had over 68,000 visits. To make the more extensive material in Nuteeriat more accessible, in 2014 the various chapters in the original book were re-worked into a series of Web articles, the NU0XX series [50].

The NU0XX series has essentially the same content as the original book, changes being limited to inserting necessary linkages, with minor tweaks to formats.

As an example, in The Distributions Of Nut Trees [NU004] [48], a distribution map is given for Omphalea species.


Fig. EP302-F26. Distribution map of Omphalea species. From [48].

The annotation to this map says: "Links between central Africa, Madagascar, the Malesian islands, northern Australia, and Central America are shown by the range of Omphalea, which contains many edible nuts such as the Jamaica Cobnut, and the Candoo nut from Queensland. The range extends some 28,000 km. It is a relatively narrow, long strip, stretching almost three-quarters of the way around the planet -- a shape virtually impossible to explain by mechanisms such as winds and ocean currents".

During my period of examination of the distributions of plants, I had come to look at about 100,000 species, a fair fraction of those known to exist over the whole planet. If you would like to plot the distribution of a plant family which interests you, an invaluable aid is Mabberley's The Plant-Book [47]. This lists every plant genus known (genus is the first part of a plant name, such as Canarium), with the number of its known species and the areas where they grow, and of course cross-references.

Plant-distribution studies can usually re-link the plants of a given family, currently spread over thousands of kilometres, to within about 200 kilometres. A useful technique is to look at a local flora (a list of plants native to a particular area), and check in Mabberley where its close relatives are located. For example, a flora of the Seychelles islands off the coast of Africa will list an elephant-apple in the genus Dillenia. Look up Dillenia in Mabberley, and you will find that most of the 60 Dillenia species are in South-East Asia, with one in India.

Sometimes the links are even closer. I have come across 3 plant species in quite unrelated genera, each of which is thought to be native to two areas on opposite sides of the Pacific, now thousands of kilometres apart. One was in New Guinea and in Mexico; another was in New Zealand and Chile.

Summing up the Earth-Expansion Model I hope that the story so far makes the essence of the Earth-Expansion Model clear, and that if you followed it without existing bias the inevitability of the reasoning is convincing. There is a facility at the end of the article where you can point out anything you think is in error, or unclear.


Fig. EP302-F27. The Expanding Earth. From [45].

Unfortunately, though, many today have been fed with an erroneous Fixed-Earth story which has permeated the public consciousness and taken over text-books, even in primary schools. Let's have a quick look at that fallacy.

The Great Tectonic Plate Blunder When the phenomenon of Sea-floor Spreading was discovered, it left no doubt that extra surface was being created on the Earth. The current article shows how it is just a consequence of the Earth expanding. However, the idea that the Earth could be expanding was abhorrent to those of the old school, the latter-day Fixed-Earthers, and they came up with an alternative idea for where the extra surface went to.

According to these pundits, while new surface was being created at mid-ocean ridges, old surface was simultaneously disappearing back into depths of the Earth at so-called "Subduction Zones". These zones were said to be at the edges of vast "Tectonic Plates", and the name of their model was "Plate Tectonics".


Fig. EP302-F28. Tectonic Plates on the Earth. From [51].

The Tectonic Plate model says that the surface of the Earth, including its seabeds, is divided up into about 15 or 20 huge "Plates", each of which is an individual item. At the Plate Boundaries where two plates adjoin, new surface may be being created by Sea-floor Spreading. However, old surface is being continually lost at the opposite side of the Plate, because it is diving under the surface of the next adjoining Plate, usually under a land continent.

The model has it that the great plates move and rotate, with their motion creating earthquakes along their boundaries. Movement is driven by giant convection currents, like those in a boiling saucepan of water, but within the Mantle, the layer immediately below the Earth's Crust. These currents are supposedly driven by heat rising up from within the planet. "Heat plumes" are supposedly rising up from molten rock deep within, to emerge as volcanos.

This model is full of giant holes, things in contravention of both physics and commonsense. Adherents of the Tectonic Plate theory cannot point to any specific places on Earth where crust is actually diving back down into the interior. They cannot identify any source of the immense energies needed. They cannot explain how convection currents, a feature of liquids, are possible in the solid rock of the Mantle.

Any casual observer can see that their picture of giant rotating surface plates just does not match with all the Ocean Floor maps and data like that shown above. A more informed observer, familiar with rock mechanics, will know that the behaviour implied in Plate Tectonics, with its streams of molten rock moving preferentially in a uniform medium, just does not make sense.

There exists ample solid evidence that the Plate Tectonics model is not a viable one. Those wishing to confirm this may consult Warren Carey's book Theories of the Earth and Universe, or the forerunner of this article, Fixed-Earth and Expanding-Earth Theories. But the puzzle still remains, as to how such a giant blunder could have embedded itself into the accepted picture of the Earth.

A scientific model is a representation of how a set of circumstances or reactions operates in the real world. If the representation reflects reality well, it is a good model, and the rules say it should continue to be used to explain, describe and predict within its scope. If the model does not explain some aspects properly, it should be modified to do so, and if this cannot be done, and a better model becomes available, it should be replaced.

Unfortunately for the world, a bad model sometimes becomes embedded in the pervading world-view, and it takes enormous effort to overcome apathy and indifference to replace it.




If areas of science can be represented by scientific models, so also can the progress of new scientific ideas in becoming incorporated into the intellectual data-bank we use to look at the world. Let us go on now to make a model or analogy of a thrust of scientific ideas, such as the development of Earth-Knowledge.

Crossing the Blue Mountains European settlement of Australia began with the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove, in 1788. The new settlers soon made use of much of the fertile parts of the coastal plain. But running along parallel to the coast was the considerable obstacle of the Blue Mountain range, which prevented easy access to the interior.


Fig. EP302-F29. 1880 engraving of Crossing The Blue Mountains. From [22].

Natural curiosity combined with the need for expanded stock pastures led to efforts to enter and cross the mountains, which were characterized by steep valleys and cliffs between high ridges. In 1813, an expedition led by Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth penetrated into the range [22]. Their technique was to travel along ridge tops, rather than descend into the deep valleys, which lacked easy ways out.

Because the early explorers could only carry sufficient provisions to last them for a limited number of days journey, out and return, some expeditions sent out advance parties to carry and leave caches of provisions at staging points along the way.

Even now, the main roads through the Blue Mountains area still follow the ridge-tops. And of course there are some smaller feeder roads which do plunge down into the valleys, but the longer-distance traveller will avoid these.

The Wide-Load Convoy as an analogy for Routes of Scientific Advancement We move on now to more modern times, and look at a transport analogy for a given thrust of scientific progress. Imagine you are an industrial user who has bought a chemical plant setup from an overseas builder, and you need to get it from the port to your site inland.

As landed from the ship, the installation is in the form of sub-assemblies of various sizes, some large enough that they will need wide trailers to carry them, some the full width of the available road.

You may have seen one of these wide-load convoys under movement along your road system. As well as the wide-load trailers themselves, there will be a Pilot vehicle travelling in front of the first trailer. The Driver of the lead trailer does not concern himself about which way to turn, where to pass from one section to the next -- he just goes where the Pilot indicates.

Ahead of the main convoy, there will be various Advance Teams, each checking on heights and widths of bridges passing over the roadway, lifting electric cables passing overhead so that the loads clear them, sawing back trees at the road margins, and moving light poles and other road furniture which which might hinder movement of the slowly-crawling oncoming behemoth.

The analogy invoked here is for the slow progression of our knowledge about the Earth. The Convoy is made up many, sometimes cumbrous, parts, and the way forward is dependent on the agile Advance Parties which dart back and forth, trying to ensure a smooth passage.

How the Wide-Load Convoy went off the road It goes without saying, that in the successful movement of such a convoy, it's essential that the Pilot knows at all times what the Advance Crews are up to, and exactly where the next stretch of road to be tackled by the Convoy lies. If the Pilot were to mistakenly indicate to the Driver where they should turn, and the Convoy moved off the main route and down into a side road, the situation would rapidly become snarled up and need complex correction.

It's an unfortunate thing that in the current progress of the Earth-Knowledge Convoy or scientific advance, that the pilot has somehow directed the Convoy down a side road, into a narrow valley. A lot of corrective action will be needed to get back on to the main route.

I can speak with some authority about this derailment, because, with Nuteeriat, I was a member of one of the Advance Crews. It was with surprise and dismay that we witnessed diversion of the Earth-Knowledge convoy down a side-road labelled "Plate Tectonics". Who was the Pilot to blame for that?

This derailment of scientific progress is not an isolated case. Before searching for the Pilot who directed Earth-Knowledge down the wrong route, we can look at another instance where progress has been blocked by an unfortunate diversion -- the case of CMBR, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.

The CMBR story CMBR, Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, was first observed inadvertently in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at the Bell Telephone Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. The radiation was acting as a source of excess noise in a radio receiver they were building.

Penzias and Wilson were investigating the microwave radio emissions from the Milky Way and other natural sources. They had a very sensitive detector connected to a large horn-shaped antenna, previously used for satellite communication. When the two scientists tuned their equipment to the microwave portion of the spectrum, they discovered an annoying background static that wouldn't go away.

No matter where they pointed the antenna, or when, the microwave static was the same. They spent months running down every possible cause for the static, including pigeon droppings inside the antenna, but they couldn't find a source or a solution [23].


Fig. EP302-F30. The Holmdel, N.J., horn antenna on which Penzias and Wilson (seen in the photo) discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965. From [24].

Penzias and Wilson won a well-deserved Nobel Prize for their discovery. CMBR is not a minor feature of the Universe -- the Universe is flooded with radiant energy at wavelengths other than light, and CMBR makes up over 70% of this energy. Here was a new branch of science which could look forward to important advances.

Very unfortunately, the CMBR Convoy was almost immediately diverted onto the wrong path, and that has stultified our understanding of the area. The unfortunate Pilot in this case was Robert Dicke,

Hijacked by a Big-Banger While Penzias and Wilson were carrying out the 1965 research at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey, a physicist at nearby Princeton University, Robert H Dicke, was doing theoretical work on the Big Bang model of the Universe proposed by George Gamow, Ralph Alpher, and Robert Herman rather earlier, in 1948.

Robert Dicke came to the conclusion that if the Big Bang had occurred, it would have left behind residual radiation from the Big Bang which would still be present in the universe. He calculated that the lingering radiation should have a "temperature of about 10 K", shorthand for radiation from matter at about this temperature.

However Dicke did not believe that the radiation came from a cold source, instead he thought that it came from much more energetic radiation, produced during the Big Bang, which had been greatly stretched out and weakened by the expansion of the Universe postulated in the Big Bang theory.

And so to the unfortunate coincidence. Dicke was working at Princeton University, quite close to where Penzias and Wilson were working on their cosmic microwave discovery. He found out about their work, before it was published, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that their microwaves were his microwaves, stemming from the Big Bang.

The result was a pair of papers in the Astrophysical Journal, one by Penzias and Wilson detailing the observations, and one by Dicke, Peebles, Roll, and Wilkinson giving the cosmological interpretation. As a result of this coincidence, the physical source of CMBR never had the kind of scrutiny applied to other new data. Their interpretation was presented as a fait-accompli, no need to look further.

In modern times, however, many defects have been found in the ideas that galactic red-shifts imply that the Universe is expanding, that this started with a Big Bang, and that CMBR originated from this explosion. There is more on this topic at P2: The Oort Soup as the real origin of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation [23].

Who was the bad Tectonic-Plate pilot? But back now to look at how good earlier research was brought to a halt by an error which diverted it off-route. We're looking for the bad Earth-Knowledge Convoy pilot who sent the convoy off the proper route.

It's not easy to track down who coined or first used the terms Plate Tectonics, or Tectonic Plates. If you google something like "Who devised/ first used the term Plate Tectonics", there is no clear answer -- most answers just explain what the concept means, and say it is based on Wegener's work on Continental Drift.

But whether he invented the term or not, it seems pretty certain that the popularizer of the concept was a Canadian geologist called John Tuzo Wilson. Here is an extract from what Wikipedia says about him [27].


Fig. EP302-F31. John Tuzo Wilson. From [27].

"John Tuzo Wilson (1908-1993) was a Canadian geophysicist and geologist who achieved worldwide acclaim for his contributions to the theory of plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is the idea that the rigid outer layers of the Earth (crust and part of the upper mantle), the lithosphere, are broken up into numerous pieces or "plates" that move independently over the weaker asthenosphere. Wilson maintained that the Hawaiian Islands were created as a tectonic plate (extending across much of the Pacific Ocean) shifted to the northwest over a fixed hotspot, spawning a long series of volcanoes. He also conceived of the transform fault, a major plate boundary where two plates move past each other horizontally (e.g., the San Andreas Fault). His name was given to two young Canadian submarine volcanoes called the Tuzo Wilson Seamounts. The Wilson cycle of seabed expansion and contraction (also called the Supercontinent cycle) bears his name".

This single paragraph is remarkable in revealing three giant red-herrings diverting the search for progress in science, all in one go. It's already been shown how one great fallacy, Plate Tectonics, has been exposed. The other two red-herrings, Hotspots and the Supercontinent Cycle, will become obvious in Part B.

How to get the Earth-Knowledge Wide-Load Convoy back on route The effort needed to extricate the Earth-Knowledge Convoy from its entrenched situation, well off the proper route, is not minor. Jammed into an increasingly narrow streetscape, the Convoy has no possibility of turning round, of retreating to an earlier position where it could get back on the proper route. Even to advance just a little further, to the point where a new link back to the right road could be started, it would be necessary to demolish the buildings of some rich and powerful landholders.

Further progress in Earth-Knowledge requires the dumping of the Plate-Tectonics model, and its replacement by the Earth-Expansion Model. The latter can then be exposed to detailed criticism and analysis. If defects are found, the model should be modified, or if a better model is found, it should be replaced.

But the current Earth-Expansion Model opens up whole new areas of advancement, and gives answers to questions which have previously been unanswered. These questions and advances are described in Part B, The Earth-Expansion Model Part B -- Answers to A Hundred Puzzles.

I make extensive use of Wikipedia, an excellent source of current views about topics of the day. But Wikipedia is not a good vehicle for surfing a paradigm shift. Like the French Insulter from the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail, prancing on the ramparts of his castle in defiance of the forces gathering below, the status quo is not going to give up easily.

As late as 2017, the Wikipedia article on the Expanding Earth was still the creature of the Old Establishment, decrying Earth-Expansion with silent stabbings. The put-down includes a parting sting, by labelling the topic "Obsolete scientific theories".




* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

---

---

References and Links
[1]. Seafloor Spreading. http://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/seafloor-spreading/ .
[2]. David Noel. Nuteeriat: Nut Trees, the Expanding Earth, Rottnest Island, and All That... . http://www.aoi.com.au/NUSite/index.htm .
[3]. Evidence for Sea-Floor Spreading. http://www.phschool.com/itext/sci_exp/iText/products/0-13-181243-2/ch1/ch1_s4_3.html .
[4]. Elizabeth Goeke. Physics Lectures. http://snebulos.mit.edu/home/egoeke/lectures/phys/chp2-2.pdf .
[5]. Plate Tectonics. http://geology.uprm.edu/Morelock/plate.htm .
[6]. Pangaea. http://www.yourdictionary.com/pangaea .
[7]. James Maxlow. PhD thesis. http://adt.curtin.edu.au/theses/available/adt-WCU20020117.145715/unrestricted/01FRONT.pdf .
[8]. James Maxlow. From Masters thesis. http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/6520 .
[9]. Dennis McCarthy. The trans-Pacific zipper effect: disjunct sister taxa and matching geological outlines that link the Pacific margins. Journal of Biogeography, 30, 1545-1561, 2003 .
[10]. XT807: The Concore Model of planet and star interiors. http://www.aoi.com.au/Extracts/XT807.htm .
[11]. Flat Earth Cosmology and Images. https://aplanetruth.info/2015/04/14/flat-earth-cosmology-and-images/ .
[12]. DianaSummers. Who first Knew the Earth was Round?. https://www.slideshare.net/DianaSummers/who-first-knew-the-earth-was-round .
[13]. Gavin Menzies. 1421: The year China discovered the World. Bantam Books, 2003.
[14]. David Noel. Continental Drift And Earth Expansion [NU003]. http://www.aoi.com.au/NUSite/NU003.htm .
[15]. Alfred Wilks Drayson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wilks_Drayson .
[16]. Alfred Wilkes Drayson at the Royal Military Academy. http://themorganfamilyhistory.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/alfred-wilks-drayson-at-royal-military.html .
[17]. David Noel. Innerlandia -- The Unexplored Continent Within Your Body. http://www.aoi.com.au/bcw/Innerlandia/ .
[18]. Deep Sea Drilling Project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Sea_Drilling_Project .
[19]. Principles of Earth & Environmental Systems I. http://faculty.uml.edu/Nelson_Eby/87.201/material.htm .
[20]. Anne E Egger. Origins of Plate Tectonic Theory. http://www.visionlearning.com/en/library/Earth-Science/6/The-Origins-of-Plate-Tectonic-Theory/65
[21]. Plate Tectonics: The Rocky History of an Idea. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/techist.html .
[22]. 1813 crossing of the Blue Mountains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1813_crossing_of_the_Blue_Mountains .
[23]. David Noel. P2: The Oort Soup as the real origin of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. http://www.aoi.com.au/OortSoup/index.htm.
[24]. David Noel. P3: Living In The Universe: (What CMBR tells us about Dark Matter, and much more). http://www.aoi.com.au/Living/ .
[25]. Continental Drift to... ...plate tectonics. http://www.earth.lsa.umich.edu/~ruff/geo107.F98/Drift.to.Plates/tectonics.html .
[26]. Vine-Matthews-Morley hypothesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vine-Matthews-Morley_hypothesis .
[27]. John Tuzo Wilson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tuzo_Wilson .
[28]. Supercontinent cycle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercontinent_cycle .
[29]. Teddy Bullard. https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth520/content/l2_p20.html .
[30]. Drifting Continents. https://www.slideshare.net/allsaintsscience/7th-grade-ch-1-sec-3-drifting-continents .
[31]. Continental Drift. https://www.emaze.com/@AIZIWTTR/Plate-Tectonics-copy1 .
[32]. 1981 World Ocean Floor Map. http://www.natgeomaps.com/world-ocean-floor-map .
[33]. Jordan E. Rosenfeld. Don't Stand In The Doorway And Other Earthquake Myths. http://www.notey.com/@magazinegood_unofficial/external/10353585/yes-the-next-big-quake-is-"locked-loaded-and-ready-to-roll".html .
[34]. Four of Iceland's volcanoes are on the brink of erupting. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4203036/FOUR-Iceland-s-volcanos-brink-erupting.html .
[35]. Klaus Vogel. http://www.jamesmaxlow.com/klaus-vogel/ .
[36]. Ott Christoph Hilgenberg. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ott_Christoph_Hilgenberg#/media/File:Vom_wachsenden_Erdball.jpg .
[37]. Alfred Wegener (1880 to 1930). http://www.focusterra.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/archive/alfred-wegener-1880-to1930.html .
[38]. The Expanding/Growing Earth. http://historyofgeology.fieldofscience.com/2011/01/expandinggrowing-earth.html .
[39]. Samuel Warren Carey. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Warren_Carey .
[40]. Samuel Warren Carey. http://db.naturalphilosophy.org/member/?memberid=516 .
[41] Tectonica de expansion de la tierra, Samuel Warren Carey (Parte 2). https://elproyectomatriz.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/tectonica-de-expansion-de-la-tierra-samuel-warren-carey-parte-2/ .
[42]. S Warren Carey. Theories of the Earth and Universe: A History of Dogma in the Earth Sciences. Springer, Stanford, California, 1988. ISBN 3-540-00470-X.
[43]. A Farewell to the Globe Maker from Werdau/Saxony. http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/blog/a-farewell-to-the-globe-maker-from-werdausaxony/ .
[44]. David Noel. Nut tree distributions and the expansion of the Earth. http://wayback.archive-it.org/1941/20100524190351/http://www.wanatca.org.au/Q-Yearbook/Y11all.pdf .
[45]. Gipoteza rasshiryayushcheisya Zemli (Expanding Earth theory) https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/.
[46]. David Noel. Nuteeriat: Nut Trees, the Expanding Earth, Rottnest Island and All That ... .Subiaco, Cornucuopia Press, 1989. Available online at http://www.aoi.com.au/matrix/Nuteeriat.htm .
[47]. D J Mabberley. The Plant-Book: A portable dictionary of the vascular plants. 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press, 1997.
[48]. The Distributions Of Nut Trees [NU004]. http://www.aoi.com.au/NUSite/NU004.htm .
[49]. David Noel. Fixed-Earth and Expanding-Earth Theories -- Time for a Paradigm Shift?. http://www.aoi.com.au/bcw/FixedorExpandingEarth.htm .
[50]. David Noel. Nuteeriat: Nut Trees, the Expanding Earth, Rottnest Island, and All That....the Nuteeriat Home Page. http://www.aoi.com.au/NUSite/index.htm .
[51]. Plate Tectonics. https://quizizz.com/admin/quiz/57bb1359495c4fb1489abce9 .

---

Go to the EP Home Page

---

Placed on Web 2004 Dec 17. First revision 2004 Dec 18
Revised and expanded Version 2 placed on Web 2005 Feb 24
Counter added 2005 Feb 25. Technical html correction 2011 Nov 22.
Version 3 in EP format uploaded 2017 Jul 7.

---