Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics

The Unification of Plate Tectonics and Earth Expansion Theories

Think about the planets of our Solar System. Earth consists of rock with a heavy iron-alloy core, like the other inner planets. The giant outer planets, on the other hand, presumably have rock-plus-alloy interiors, but these are surrounded by great shells of light gases, mainly hydrogen and helium, which are many, many times more massive than the underlying rock-plus-alloy. Scientists have spectrographically analyzed sunlight and found that the light elements, like hydrogen and helium, in the outer part of the Sun, are about 300 times more massive than the corresponding heavy rock-and-alloy-forming elements. There are really good reasons to believe that the inner planets formed originally from matter like that in the outer part of the Sun and may have originally formed as giant gaseous protoplanets.

There have long been mainly two ideas about how the planets of the Solar System formed. In the 1940s and 1950s the idea was discussed about planets “raining out” from inside of giant gaseous protoplanets. But that idea fell out of fashion and scientists began thinking of the primordial matter, not being dense protoplanets, but rather spread out into a very low-density “solar nebula”.

The idea of low-density planetary formation envisioned that dust would condense at fairly low temperatures, and then gather into progressively larger grains, and become rocks, then planetesimals, and ultimately planets. The gaseous components would just go away in an unspecified manner. This is the prevailing, popular view of planetary formation. But remember, popularity only measures popularity, not scientific correctness. So how can you know whether an idea is right or wrong? One way is to look for a contradiction, a consequence that is in conflict with what is observed.

J. Marvin Herndon made thermodynamic calculations on the nature of matter that would condense under such circumstances at low-temperatures/low-pressures and discovered a major contradiction: Most of the iron would end up being combined with oxygen. Calculations show that there would be insufficient iron metal to account for the massive cores of the inner planets, that are indicated by their bulk densities. So it’s back to square one, time to reconsider the “out of fashion” idea of planets “raining out” from inside of giant gaseous protoplanets.

Imagine reconstituting the Earth with all of its primordial light gases that were originally lost during the time the Solar System formed. You would thus be imagining a planet similar in mass to Jupiter, roughly 300 Earth-masses. What would the rock plus alloy Earth-kernel be like, surrounded by all that gaseous mass? Calculations show that it would be compressed to about 64% of its present diameter, as shown at right. Its surface area would be quite similar to the surface area presently occupied by the continents. In other words, the Earth would be capable of having a uniform shell of continental matter covering its entire surface, just as first envisioned by Otto Hilgenberg.

It is known that, at an early time during the formation of the Solar System, the gaseous components of primordial matter were stripped from the inner planets, not just the hydrogen and helium, but even the heavy gases like xenon.

Astronomers have observed that very young stars are often quite unstable, erupting with energetic outbursts, shedding matter into space as a super-intense solar wind. The Hubble Space Telescope image at left is of the outburst of the young, XZ-Tauri binary. The white crescent shows the position of the leading edge five years before. In five years the leading edge progressed 130 A.U. It seems reasonable to presume that similar  outbursts, although much less powerful, from our own young Sun stripped the gaseous envelopes from the rocky inner planets, as illustrated to the right.

Stripped of its great overburden of primordial gases, the compressed Earth would begin to decompress, like a ball that has been squeezed and then released. So, there in nature is a mechanism and a primary energy source for whole-Earth decompression, the stored energy of protoplanetary compression.

The initial whole-Earth decompression is expected to result in a global system of major primary cracks appearing in the rigid crust which persist and are identified as the global, mid-oceanic ridge system, just as explained by Earth expansion theory. But here the similarity with that theory ends. Herndon's Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics Theory sets forth a different mechanism for whole Earth dynamics which involves the formation of secondary decompression cracks and the in-filling of those cracks.

As the Earth subsequently decompresses and swells from within, the deep interior shells may be expected to adjust to changes in radius and curvature by plastic deformation. As the Earth decompresses, the area of the Earth’s rigid surface increases by the formation of secondary decompression cracks often located near the continental margins and presently identified as submarine trenches. These secondary decompression cracks are subsequently in-filled with basalt, extruded from the mid-oceanic ridges, which traverses the ocean floor by gravitational creep, ultimately plunging into secondary decompression cracks, thus emulating subduction.

The figure at left is a schematic representation of the basic idea behind Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics.

As the Earth decompresses and swells from within, basalt lava is squeezed out at the mid-oceanic ridge (at right of figure), and moves across the ocean floor, finally plunging into the secondary decompression crack (at left of figure) formed as the rigid-crust surface area increases because of the decompression swelling. The artwork could be better, and will be improved, but it gets the main idea across.

As viewed today from the Earth’s surface, the consequences of Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics appear very similar to those of plate tectonics, but with some profound differences. In fact, most of the evidence usually presented in support of plate tectonics also supports Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics. Just as in plate tectonics, one sees seafloor being produced at the mid-oceanic ridge, slowly moving across the ocean basin and disappearing into the Earth. But unlike plate tectonics, the basalt rock is not being re-cycled endlessly by convection; instead, it is simply in-filling secondary decompression cracks. From the surface it may be very difficult indeed to discriminate between plate tectonics and Whole-Earth Decompression Dynamics.  But what about satellite data?