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Is there expansion with constant or increasing mass?

Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 11:26 pm
by Florian
According to James Maxlow's quantification based on the age of oceanic and continental lithosphere, the radius of Earth was about half the present size during the triassic period, 250 My ago (1). This implies that the volume of Earth was 8 fold smaller. Knowing that the average density of Earth is 5.5, if the increase in size was at constant size, the average density of Earth would have been about 44 or 2 times the density of the metal with highest density, Osmium (d=22.6). At constant mass and half-radius, surface gravity would have been (mass of earth)*G/paleoradius^2 = 6E24*6.67E-11/3200000^2 = 39 m/s2. Such high surface gravity is not compatible with triassic fauna and flora and refutes the hypothesis of an increase in size at constant mass.

(1)
"Quantification of an Archaean to Recent Earth Expansion Process Using Global Geological and Geophysical Data Sets" J. Maxlow, 2001, PhD thesis, Curtin University