Thursday, August 17, 2023

Anomalously high rates of tectonic plate motion and the TGD view of Cambrian explosion

The popular Arstechnica article (see this) tells that the motion between plates was surprisingly fast. The rate of the tectonic motion as relative rate for the distance increase between plates was surprisingly fast: even about 4 times the recent one.

The TGD view of expanding Earth relies on the prediction of cosmic expansion as a sequence of fast periods of expansion for astrophysical objects.

  1. The model predicts that the tectonic plates were created in rather fast radial expansion of Earth: radius increased by a factor 2. Cracks giving rise plates were formed because rock is not flexible material.
  2. The model explains the Cambrian explosion: advanced photosynthesising multicellulars emerged from underground oceans as the oxygenated water bursted to the surface. The TGD view of dark matter allows to circumvent the obvious objections against the model and conforms with the recent surprising findings (see this and this).
  3. The fast radial expansion caused a fast increase of the distances between plates. The velocity v of this recession would have been v=dR/dt×ΔΦ, where ΔΦ is the angular distance between the plates and dR/dt is the radial expansion rate.
  4. The duration of Cambrian Explosion was roughly Δ T=30 million years. Using Earth radius 6,371 km one obtains the estimate dR/dt = R/Δ T ≈ 20 cm/year. v is obtained from this by multiplying with Δ Φ≤2π. The largest rate mentioned in the popular article is v=64 cm/year. The order of magnitude is correct and the rate would have been higher than the average during the fastest periods. Note that this contribution to the rate is always positive and could provide a test for the TGD view.

    The estimate for v must involve a large enough angle Δ Φ and a long enough time period so that Δ Φ is expected to be a considerable fraction of π. For ΔΦ slightly below π, the estimate is practically exact but this is probably an accident.

  5. Note that the predicted contribution to v is always positive and could provide a test for the TGD view.
A fascinating, and admittedly frightening, question, which just now occurred to me, is whether the Cambrian explosion was gravitational expansion analogous to cosmic expansion in which the metric distances between points doubled! This would have required the scaling of the the spatial part of metric by a factor 4. Could this make sense or does it kill the basic idea?
  1. In zero energy ontology (ZEO), light-cone proper time a serves in the role of the cosmic scale factor of either half-cone of the causal diamond (CD) having interpretation as empty cosmology. "Big" state function reductions (BSFRs), serving as TGD counterparts of the ordinary SFRs, change the arrow of time and a pair of BSFRs would be behind quantum tunnelling in the TGD Universe.

    In the TGD framework quantum coherence and BSFRs are possible even in astrophysical scales. Could the increase of the radius of Earth be quantum tunnelling be realized as a pair of BSFRs.

  2. Can one imagine a local "mini" Big Bang for the CD inside which Earth's space-time surface belongs and a scaling of light-cone proper time a by a factor 2 in astrophysical quantum quantum tunnelling? The value of the light-cone proper time a, characterizing the cosmotemporal position of Earth in a double BSFR, would have increased by factor 2 The spatial scaling by a factor 2 conforms with the p-adic length scale hypothesis stating that p-adic length scales coming as powers of 2 are of special importance.
  3. One can try to form a more quantitative view of the situation. Note that the size scale of the initial CD before explosion would be T/2, where T is the distance between the tips of the CD would be about 30 million years. The Cambrian explosion occurred about Ti=540 million years ago. If Ti corresponds to the cm of CD, the future tip of the initial CD would be at 570 million years. CD size would be scaled by factor 2 and the end of the cm of CD would correspond to Tf=570 million years.

    The quantum average space-time surface would be replaced by a new one in double BSFR and would be modified already 60 million years before Tf. This time would correspond to 630 million years. As explained, some multicellular plant fossils have been found with an age of about 600 million years. Could this replacement of geometric past explain them?

See the article Expanding Earth hypothesis and Pre-Cambrian Earth of the chapter Quantum gravitation and quantum biology in TGD Universe.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

For the lists of articles (most of them published in journals founded by Huping Hu) and books about TGD see this.

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