[Dr David Thork]

In this thread, I would like to examine Round Earth Theory, by taking the unusual step of proposing an alternate round earth theory for the formation of the earth. You may either side with me to help me flesh out my theory (more difficult), or side against me (easier) to protect a core belief of Round Earth Theory. In essence, I'm giving you a brand new earth theory to discuss. There are no automatic teams in this debate. If Tom Bishop wishes to defend plate tectonics, he is welcome to do so. If Gary Green wishes to back Thork's Mud Pie Theory (TMPT), that is also fine. The aim is to thoroughly examine the science behind the creation of a round earth, so that you improve your understanding or hone your debating skills and that will be possible whichever side you take.

Anything I post in blue is an agreed fact of science
Anything I post in red is an area of science where TMPT is superior and would improve our understanding of the world.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

I have never liked the theory of plate tectonics since I first learned about it in school. Some things did not sit well with me, and they never improved as I got older. I am not alone in having my doubts about this sketchy theory, in fact small groups of scientists across the world also share my scepticism.
http://www.davidpratt.info/ncgt-jse.htm
However, they haven't proposed a better alternative. Today I will.

I will start with what I dislike about plate tectonics.

Continental drift.


All the land is together in one lump. It then all decides to split up. No explanation given as to why it would do this. I am only left with 'malevolent plumes of underground magma'. In order to have enough heat, we also have to make the earth radioactive in its core ... a place we can't actually detect radio activity because we can't get at it. - is iron radio active? I'm adding in how much of what now?

If this isn't bad enough, because when scientists rewind the clock back to get to Pangea, they have only used up 200 million years of 6.4 billion. they also notice some of the rock they have, is similar to other rock elsewhere on earth, and it doesn't fit their Pangea starting positions. In a stretch of the imagination, they theorise that the continents must all clump together and split up over and over again. A list of these fantasy continents below.

Supercontinent name   Age (Mya: millions years ago)
Vaalbara   ~3,636–2,803
Ur   ~2,803–2,408
Kenorland   ~2,720–2,114
Arctica   ~2,114–1,995
Atlantica   ~1,991-1,124
Columbia (Nuna)   ~1,820–1,350
Rodinia   ~1,130–750
Pannotia   ~633-573
Gondwana   ~596-578
Laurasia and Gondwana   ~472-451
Pangaea   ~336-173

There is no reason given for this deciding to clump together and then deciding to split over and over. It doesn't have a name, it doesn't have a mechanism. Much like multi-verse sci-fi scientists, plate tectonic scientists have theorised multiple splits and coming togethers, having observed just one.

My second objection is due to the moon landings. (Yes I can envoke that as evidence in this thread). The rock brought back from the moon, is the exact same as that found on earth. This led scientists to theorise earth was hit by another planet which left us with a moon. They call the planet that hit earth, Theia.



I want you to note the date that this impact happened ...

Theia (/ˈθiːə/) is a hypothesized ancient planetary-mass object in the early Solar System that, according to the giant impact hypothesis, collided with another planetary-mass object, Gaia (the early Earth) around 4.5 billion years ago.

It is interesting that the impact happened and we start that as the age of the earth ... and yet according to the theory, the earth already existed in the form of a planet called Gaia. But no date for that. The age of the sun is 4.6 billion years ... maybe I have 100 million years to work with?

Thork's Mud Pie Theory

One of the other things that annoys me about the current theory is, if Theia hit Gaia ... where did it hit? Like where is the crater ... or even any evidence that such an impact happened? If I can find where a meteor hit earth 3 billion years ago
https://www.space.com/16366-oldest-meteorite-crater-earth-found.html
Why can't I work out where an entire planet hit earth just 1.5 billion years earlier? Something isn't right. But relax, I'm going to tell you how it happened.

As the Gaia formed and cooled, it makes sense that the densest materials will fall to the centre, followed by the next most dense and so on in layers, with the lightest elements and compounds on the top.


I propose that Gaia was a sterile ocean world. Perfectly smooth and round. It contains no life, no continental crust and it is stable ... it has formed a cooled crust, there are no earthquakes or volcanoes. There is no energy to generate them (I'll elaborate on that in a while.)

Theia is just a bigger version of the moon. All rock right the way down. It is made entirely of what is now continental crust. NASA says they are the same type of rock.

Now, the density of Oceanic crust is about 3.0 grams per cubic centimeter as opposed to continental crust which has a density of about 2.7 grams per cubic centimeter. Gaia also has an iron core.
So I have a small light weight planet, hitting a much bigger harder planet. Using Zetetic theory I went into my garden this morning.

I hurled a mud pie at my wall. If Gaia is my wall (hard and heavy) and my mud pie is Theia ...

I just created Pangea.

However, Pangea is a crescent shape, not a round splat.


Back to my wall. If I throw another mud pie, but this time not straight on. Instead at a glancing blow of 45 degrees from the direction of the red arrow...

Now I get my crescent.

Try this yourself. I'm in the middle of a heatwave and the ground is very dry, so my mud pies are a bit crumbly. But having been a small boy once, I can tell you the general shape of a mud pie thrown at my neighbours car from the right about 45 degrees angle is


I have my Pangea.

I now know where the earth was hit by another planet and can see the evidence ... I'm stood on it.
I know Neil Armstrong was not the first man to walk on the moon, that honour goes to a man named Adam.
I know earth was hit by a glancing blow and can tell from which angle and using the relative densities of those two planets + the known sizes of the continents can calculate at what speed due to the shape of my mud pie crescent and how much stuck to my wall (Gaia).
I have an explanation for the starting shape of the continents.
I have a genesis event, that now gives me life on earth. (I'll elaborate in a moment).


If I go back to my green diagram of Pangea above, the continents don't quite fit, so they add land between them so they do. This is all lost coast land. Sand is Continental crust, not oceanic crust ... Now I have explained where all the sand that covers the ocean came from.

As an average over the centuries, we have only ever lost land. Any new land created by volcanoes is more than cancelled by erosion. This is the thing that binds my theory. Explained below by the most excellent Prof Brian Cox. Its only a 5 min video. Very informative.


So, entropy makes sandcastles collapse. Things tend towards the highest state of entropy. So why do I have continental drift? Because the sandcastle is collapsing into the ocean. My mud pie has made the earth bulge on one side. And my earth is trying to become round again. Look again at pangea.

The continents are spreading out! evenly. So that the continental crust is sitting evenly on the oceanic crust. Entropy is driving plate tectonics, not malevolent plumes of magma. I know we lose land. I can see the continents spreading, the land will eventually all end up as sand under the sea. I now know how the earth will look in billions of years time. Continental crust will float on Oceanic Crust as it is less dense.



The earth is trying to make itself round again, and now I know this ...
I can predict where the forces are using entropy and can predict earthquakes because I know exactly where the earth will move next in order to become more round than it already is and I'm no longer at the mercy of malevolent plumes of magma that I have no idea how much force they apply. I'm using gravity and mass.
I'm putting put fires all over the place with this theory. But there's more.
Politicians can stick climate change taxes up their backsides because of course sea level is rising. It always has. It is inevitable ... the sandcastle is collapsing into the sea.
We also know earth used to have lots more volcanic activity than it does today from things like ice cores. My theory supports this as the earth would have been its least round straight after I have Pangea. The most entropy occurs right away. It can't be explained as well with moving magma plumes that seem to move for their own sake.

Now I have a theory where the continents only split once. The reason plate tectonics suggest that it must of happened many times is because some of the rock in once place on earth is like rock from another, but they don't meet back up at pangea, so they bodge another complete rearrangement to get those rocks near each other in one of the other iterations.

I would also agree those rocks must have once been together ... but not on earth, within Theia before the impact. Now they can not be together anymore as we find them on earth. I don't need this silly together splitting together spliting nonsense. In fact I can use those rocks to rebuild the model of Theia before the impact!

I also now know what causes the genesis event.

Life happens right after the collision 4.5 billion years ago.


My sterile ocean world which was just water on top of rock, suddenly has sand under the sea, land and coastline. I now have weather, I now have ocean currents, I have rates of change as nutrients can be pushed from cold to warm places, and with a bit more erosion I have soil.


----

So, you have a smorgasbord of topics to choose from. Plate tectonics, continental drift, super continents, giant impact hypothesis, entropy, geology, evolution, earthquakes, age of the earth ... and you can also choose to create this new world with me, or rip it to bits. If you got this far, thank you, I hope your response will be thoughtful as an OP like this takes a considerable investment of time.

[ICanScienceThat]

There's some pretty good stuff in here. I'm not sure which "side" I'm on here, but I'll try to help you with a tweak here or there.

You don't want me to point out where you've diverged from accepted science simply because "it doesn't sit well with you." That isn't really how we do science, but you know that. I'll leave it at that.

I've also wondered if perhaps Pangea was the result of the Theia impact. I have some "accepted" science that may help you refine...

First, throwing mud pies at the wall does not scale well with astronomical speeds. Look at the moon, and you will not see any craters from "glancing blows". As it turns out, (and yes we have tried this experimentally), if you hit a planet with a meteor travelling at meteor speeds, it always leaves a round crater. The tl;dr is the kinetic energy of the meteor is pretty much always high enough to cause the meteor to explode on impact leaving a round crater - regardless of the angle it came in at. It is the explosion that leaves the round crater.

Second, we also expect that a large impact will leave a crater at the impact site, and will raise mountains on the opposite side of the planet.

Third, consider once more that the Moon and the Earth appear to be made of the same material. Keep that in mind as you think about this next one... An extremely large impact such as Theia would have been, would have enough energy to melt the entire crust of the planet. It is theorized that this impact basically liquefied both bodies and sent up a huge chunk of debris that was composed of bits of each of them.

So I propose that you consider, what if Pangea was on the opposite side of the impact - the exit wound if you will. The impact site created a huge hole where massive amounts of material were flung into orbit. This cooled leaving the pangea side slightly raised leaving the lop-sided planet. Water condensed and became the world ocean. After that, Pangea broke up.

That always seemed like a reasonable idea to me... but at this point, I think it would be wise to check some dates. Exactly when do we think Theia arrived? When was it that Pangea existed? Do we have anything like a reasonable timeline here?

[Dr David Thork]

I hadn't considered my continental crust was an exit wound. However I'm then going to have lots of debris inside the centre of the earth that needs to bubble its way out as it weighs less. At that point I expect lots of islands like Hawaii, not a super continent and igneous intrusions need to be made of continental crust ... which they are not. I need the material to stay on the surface.

I'm also using a much larger thing than a meteor. It is going to slow as it compresses. It won't just explode ...

I think I'm going to get a lump of debris left on earth, and the moon which will be the bits will have to reform

[Tumeni]

You posted on thing in blue, as a 'science fact', and I disagree with it.

"The lunar regolith is distinctly different from terrestrial materials. For one thing, its mineral composition is limited. Fewer than a hundred minerals have been found on the Moon, compared to several thousand on Earth (see Chapter 5). Furthermore, continuous meteoroid impact has converted the lunar surface materials into a well graded silty sand that has reached a “steady state” in thickness, particle size distribution, and other properties at most locations on the Moon. Hence, the limited particle types and sizes, the absence of a lunar atmosphere, and the lack of water and organic material in the regolith constrain the physical properties of  the lunar surface material to relatively narrow, well-defined ranges. ....  etc etc"

Section 9 of The Lunar Sourcebook

https://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/books/lunar_sourcebook/pdf/LunarSourceBook.pdf

The 'References' section, which tells you where the data came from, who was responsible for the data, which academic institution they were working at, and where their work was published, starts at page 655.

By all means, take your time over it. 

[Dr David Thork]

The researchers analyzed seven moon rock samples collected during the Apollo 12, 15 and 17 lunar missions. They also examined one lunar meteorite — a rock that a cosmic impact knocked off the moon, which later crashed on Earth.

The researchers focused on ratios between different isotopes of oxygen in the rocks. Isotopes of an element have differing numbers of neutrons from one another — for instance, oxygen-16 has eight neutrons in its nucleus, while oxygen-17 has nine. [Violent Birth of the Moon Explained (Infographic)]

The ratio of oxygen-17 to other oxygen isotopes typically gets smaller the bigger planets and moons get. This means that different planets and moons usually have distinct isotope signatures.

However, the researchers found that Earth and the moon have indistinguishable oxygen isotope ratios, within 5 parts per million when it comes to oxygen-17.

[Tumeni]

53 minutes to respond. So you're not going to take my suggestion to "take your time" over the lunar sourcebook, then?

The researchers cited one common attribute that suggests a common source, not that "The rock brought back from the moon is the exact same as that found on earth. "

[Dr David Thork]

53 minutes to respond. So you're not going to take my suggestion to "take your time" over the lunar sourcebook, then?

Am I going to read a 778 page book because you asked? No. This is a debate. Not homework. You tell me which bits are relevant and I will read those. This is like you starting a thread on the existence of God and me insisting you read the bible first.

[Tumeni]

53 minutes to respond. So you're not going to take my suggestion to "take your time" over the lunar sourcebook, then?

Am I going to read a 778 page book because you asked? No. This is a debate. Not homework. You tell me which bits are relevant and I will read those. This is like you starting a thread on the existence of God and me insisting you read the bible first.

Told you already.

Section 9, in combination with the references section.

You don't read the references from start to finish, you REFER to them when prompted to by Section 9. But I do suggest you look over the references and ponder all those involved, and what they've done.

[JHelzer]

I like this video for visualizing plate tectonics.


It is a time-lapse video of a lava lake with cooled crust over the top of the liquid lava.  The parameters of this lava lake are just right to produce the effect of crust plates moving around just like what we learn in school about the continental plates of the Earth.  We can see expansion and subduction happening in the video.  It is really cool and a great small scale demonstration of what is believed to be happening with the continental plates of our Earth.