Australian geologist Sam Carey, in the 1930s, explored the continental drift theory of Alfred Wegener, which in those days was regarded as junk science. Carey took the trouble to build a model of a globe on which he could move around the continents as part of Wegener's theory was the single land mass known as Pangaea. He realised the continents would fit together if the Earth was smaller. If it was shrunk enough it all slotted together like a jigsaw puzzle – but it would mean doing away with the ocean basins. See the animation at www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kL7qDeI05U of the continents coming together as the earth shrinks
At http://geology.about.com/od/platetectonics/a/Expanding-Earth-Animation.htm … Carey, once hooked on the expansion idea spread the message for the rest of his life. As a geologist he knew more than most about rock formations as they appear on opposite sides of the oceans. In his lifetime he was listened to, without enthusiasm perhaps, but mainstream did not have the means to counter his apostasy – that is, until the 1950s and 1960s and the discovery of magnetic stripes on the sea floor. At that point Plate Tectonics was born – but why did it not embrace continental drift?
Carey's theory was trumped by Plate Tectonics, described in the link (above) as 'more fruitful' – but is that because it best fits the gradualist notion of earth history. The 'About' author, strictly mainstream, admits the picture of an expanding earth is hard to shake until you learn to see it differently and then the power of the animation disappears. In other words, once you are inducted into the Plate Tectonics theory you can look at the animation and see it in a different light – but is that reality, or an illusion?
The 'About' author says that no oceanic crust anywhere in the world is older than 200 million years ago. This is a blip on the rump of earth history – which is over 4 billion years. Hence, we may be slightly suspicious at this point – what would it mean if the geology of the Earth is just a fraction in age of what the uniformitarian or gradualist models claim?
Plate Tectonics is a way to get round the 200 million year limit – and this is proved by the animations the 'About' author links to at emvc.geol.ucsb.edu as Plate Tectonics is based on the idea that oceanic crust is constantly recycled, swept downwards into the mantle by subduction. Without Plate Tectonics that is not at all necessary. Not only that, Plate Tectonics can recycle oceanic crust by subduction but is also able to constantly rearrange the continents. This is what made me think about Plate Tectonics, after reading a story of a scientist sitting in front of a computer screen moving pieces of crust around and rearranging them to fit his theoretical model. He was moving pieces of crust, as in little pieces, not whole blocks of crust – from continent to continent and hemisphere to hemisphere. There is no real evidence that the continents have been split up into little pieces – this can only happen on a computer simulation. All the evidence is that the roots of the continents penetrate much deeper into the mantle than the younger oceanic crust. It's like a wisdom tooth in relation to a baby's tooth – one has long roots that take an effort by the dentist to extract – while the latter virtually falls out at puberty.
The 'About' author then says the expanding earth model is an optical illusion. Look at the animation again and see what you think. He says the optical illusion stems from a conceptual illusion (but the same argument could be made of the Plate Tectonics model). Are we being hoodwinked by upside down logic?
Look at both animations and see what you think. Whilst the expansion model is interesting and optically pleasing, there are things about Plate Tectonics that are equally persuasive. However, we may wonder why no fragment of older oceanic crust exists – is subduction that effective, able to erase all evidence of the planet prior to 200 million years ago?
See also http://tutjana-mikaela.hubpages.com/hub/earth-expanding