Saturday, December 05, 2009

Expanding Earth Theory and Pre-Cambrian Era: Part V

I have divided the discussion of Expanding Earth model for pre-Cambrian period in short postings: 5 altogether. In the first posting I discussedd the notions of super-continents, super-oceans, and glaciations during Neoproterozoic period with short coments inspired by R/2 scenario. In second posting I summarized the dominating Snowball model for the climate during Neoproterozoic period in the same spirit. In the third posting I dicussed TGD Expanding Earth view about super-continents, super-oceans and glaciations and compares it with Snowball Earth scenario. Fourth posting was devoted to paleomagnetic tests for R/2 scenario. This posting will discuss the Expanding Earth scenario about how life escaped to the underground lakes and seas created during the expansion and returned back in the beginning of Cambrian era.

Did life go underground during pre-Cambrian era?

The basic idea of Expanding Earth model is that the life developed in underground seas and emerged to the surface of Earth in Cambrian explosion. The series of pre-Cambrian glaciations explains why the life escaped underground and how the underground seas were formed.

  1. If one believes that the reduction of gravitational binding energy was responsible the cooling, then the expansion of Earth could have begun at the same time as Sturtian glaciation (see this). On the other hand, the TGD estimate for the duration of the expansion period giving 1.1 Gyr, suggests that the breakup of the Rodinia, which began in the beginning of Proterozoic period corresponds to the beginning of the expansion. The simplest assumption is that the radius of R at the beginning of Cambrian period was not yet much larger than R/2 and continued to increase during Cambrian period and ended up around 100 My, when dinosaurs and other big animals had emerged (possibly as a response to the reduction of gravity). This means that there were land bridges connecting the separate continents.

  2. One must explain the scarcity of fossils during pre-Cambrian era. If the more primitive life forms at the surface of Earth did not have hard cells and left no fossils one can understand the absence of highly evolved fossils before Cambrian explosion (see this). If life-forms emerged cracks and underground seas there would be no fossils at the surface of Earth. In the case of volcanoes dead organisms would have ended to gone to the bottom of the water containing volcano and burned away.

  3. The expansion had formed the underground pockets and fractures made possible for the water to flow from the surface to the pockets. Life would have evolved in fractures and pockets. The first multicellular fossils appeared during Ediacaran period (segmented worms, fronds, disks, or immobile bags) (see this) and have little resemblance to recent life forms and their relationship with Cambrian life forms is also unclear. Ediacaran life forms could have migrated from the fractures and Cambrian fossils from from the underground seas and lakes. The highly evolved life-forms in Cambrian explosion could have emerged from underground seas through fractures.

One can make also questions about the underground life.

  1. The obvious question concerns the sources of metabolic energy in underground seas. In absence of solar radiation photosynthesis was not possible plants were absent. The lowest levels in the metabolic hierarchy would have received their metabolic energy from the thermal or chemical energy of Earth crust or from volcanoes. The basic distinction between plants and animals might be that the primitive forms of plants developed at the surface of Earth and those of animals in underground seas.

  2. At first it seems strange that the Cambrian life-forms had eyes although there was no solar radiation in the underground seas. This is actually not a problem. These life-forms had excellent reasons for possessing eyes and in absence of sun-light the life forms had to invent lamp. Indeed, many life forms in deep sea and sea trenches produce their own light (see this). It would be interesting to try to identify from Cambrian fossils the body parts which could have served as the light source.

For details see the new chapter Expanding Earth Model and Pre-Cambrian Evolution of Continents, Climate, and Life of "Genes and Memes".

7 comments:

Ulla said...

Hi Matti
I found a discussion on the topic, look at http://www.worldsci.org/pdf/events/NewConcGlobalTech2004ConfReports.pdf
Interesting, lots of scientists discussing this...

“New Concepts in Global Tectonics:
Emphasis on Some Fundamental
Questions in Geology”,I cit. This workshop was attended by thirtyseven participants from 14 different countries (USA, Canada, Brazil, Australia, Japan, China, Russia, Greece, Poland, Czech
Republic, Germany, Norway, and Italy).
The scientific aim was that of discussing together the diverse hypotheses of global tectonics
alternatives to that of plate tectonics. According to the unanimous opinion of the participants, plate tectonics is unable to explain the substantial volume of new facts which have accumulated in recent years
without any internal contradictions and inadequacies.

Dan Bridges: At the end of the Cretaceous there was major worldwide structural and volcanic
activity combined with the development of six large explosive-volcanic structures (concentriclines), resulting from an extremely large and rapid period of Earth expansion. To
generate the magnitude of expansion, highpressured ultradense material lingering from the Big Bang is invoked.

Cliff Ollier: Mountain building theories that associate mountain building with folding are inadequate. This has enormous consequences for general geological theory, but is certainly not on the time scale proposed by plate tectonics, for
seafloor spreading and subduction are presumed to have been going on for 200 Ma at least. Also Giusy Lavecchia talked against the prevailing theory. She is a fulltime professor in structural geology, http://www.worldsci.org/php/index.php?tab0=Scientists&tab1=Scientists&tab2=Display&id=936

Stavros Tassos: paleoclimatic, paleomagnetic, space geodesy, and gravity data, are consistent
with Earth expansion, while the expansion rate is still an open issue.

Klaus Vogel: the contested theory of Earth expansion explains global tectonics in a simple manner without continental drift and subduction. In principle the continents remain in their configuration to each other. The distances enlarge by radial uplift due to the growing radius and in agreement with the pattern of seafloor spreading.

Looks like we really have to reconsider this:-)

Cheers Matti

Ulla said...

Look at http://www.worldsci.org/php/index.php?tab0=Abstracts&tab1=Display&id=1178&tab=2

Old, from 1988.

Ulla said...

Neiman, V. B. 1984: Geological-Geophysical Proofs and Possible Causes of Earth Expansion, http://www.worldsci.org/php/index.php?tab0=Scientists&tab1=Scientists&tab2=Display&id=991

Ulla said...

Sorry for this, they just bubble up now. This is very actual,
http://www.worldsci.org/php/index.php?tab0=Events&tab1=Display&id=276

Matti Pitkänen said...

Amazing amount of data exists supporting Expanding Earth hypothesis. To me the case is more or less settled.

For mainstream physicists basing his thinking on dogmas rather than facts this is of course not the case. This fellow has absorbed reductionism in his spine and will never concur to consider the possibility that geology could directly involve some new physics. And a direct connection between geology and quantum cosmology! No!!

This fellow is however ready to take seriously the idea about super-continents splitting and reassembling periodically: something comparable to a spontaneous assembly of a broken egg.

Ulla said...

One more:
Neal Adams has a beautiful site with movies, http://www.nealadams.com/morescience.html

He says to the kids: show this to your teacher and ask for their opinions. I must say that if any pupil had done that to me a couple of years ago I would have laghed. Things change:-)

Ulla said...

I have studied this climate heating and found something that might belong to this expanding Earth discussion. About HAARP-technology. They are actually cooking our atmosphere. It can have implications also for the fate of our Earth if this what you say is true.

I have written a story about it at http://zone-reflex.blogspot.com/2009/12/vader-kanslor-och-kroppens-fysiologi.html
Unfortunately in swedish, but the links are mostly in english. This is really a frightening story.

It was many years ago I first heard about it, but then more as kind of an electromagnetic war that even can change our feelings and our perception. This will be my next project. That they was cooking the atmosphere had never come into my mind.

Obama has the guts to accuse other countries then for not doing what should be done. He is the most responsible for our greenhouse climate as president of USA. This was never discussed in Copenhagen.

What a world! How can we be mislead in this way? How can we not see?