Why is the Earth Round?

[Stripe]

First I'd ask how does this posit explain the observable effect of continental drift and plate tectonics?

Then I'd look at the numbers. You know, that weird maths stuff that we use to calculate stuff?

The eruption of mt st helens moved between 1-3 cubic KM of material.
It left a crater about 500m across
That event was roughly 3x10^16 J

La Garita Caldera is about 35x75 km
That event was roughly 1.0×10^21 J

The Chixulub event was 4.0×10^23 J
Its crater was under 200km
The chixulub event goes something like this


Now let's get to the nitty gritty.
It's been a while since I've mathed, so I will gladly stand corrected if I carried a zero somewhere.

The Atlantic ocean is between 2800 and 6000 km wide.

Let's give it a minimum threshold and say 3000km wide.

That impact would be roughtly 1 x 10^28 Joules

What could possibly cause an impact that large?
well...A 100km wide chunk of solid iron that hits the earth at 72km/s at a 90 degree angle would make a crater that big, about 3km deep.
Maybe galactus clipped one of his toenails too close, who knows.
But craters don't just appear wtih no ancillary effects do they?

The earth's gravitational binding energy is anywhere between -1.3 and -2.242×10^32 J

An impact large enough to create a crater the width and depth of the atlantic basin would barely disrupt the mass of the earth. The earth might cough and shrug its shoulders a bit. the difference between 1x10^28 and 1x10^32 is.....bigger than four.

For anything living on the surface of the earth, the event you're talking about would make chixulub look like a sneeze.

An impact that large would release enough thermal radiation to immolate everything flammable that was in line of sight. Immolate means set on fire, by the way. It wouldn't happen to everything on that side of the world, just the stuff that wasn't vaporized or set on fire by the 3000km wide fireball, and if half of the landmass of the earth being on fire doesn't float your boat, the 2000 m/s air blast (Minus oxygen, remember, everything's on fire?) would kill anything more advanced than a plant (and those are already on fire, remember?)

Did I mention the fires?

Oh, forgot, the 120 meters of debris landing on you.

Sounds like fun.

You meaning the entire surface of the earth, not, well, you. Can't be picky with 120 meters of global debris.

And the global richter 12 earthquake. Richter only goes up to ten you say? Well, richter says sod off.

And if you survive that, and dig your way out, with your oxygen bottle and your spf 2000 sunscreen, I'm sure the lenses will fall out of your glasses and you won't be able to read anything entertaining. That didn't catch on fire. And wasn't blown away. And not buried. And not shaken to death.

But yeah, i'm sure that happened when humanity was around. Joe remembers it like it was yesterday.

Joe?

JOE?!

The Atlantic Basin wasn't formed from an impact crater.

 

[)O( Hytegia )O(]

The Atlantic Basin wasn't formed from an impact crater.

Evidence, or you're lying.

How's that for a one-liner?

 

[ImprobableJoe]

The Atlantic Basin wasn't formed from an impact crater.

Based on what professional expertise? And how does that professional expertise inform your other views?

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Stripe:

Provide a means of testing your hypothesis.

Testing what aspect?

fucking any of it. Stop stalling.

 

[Stripe]

any of it.

To test the idea that gravity and sphericity are linked you can look at any large enough hole on the Earth or Moon (the hole needs to be larger on the Moon). The floor of the hole is under stress from beneath and tends to buckle upwards. Open cast mines, craters, the original floor of the Grand Canyon and the central rises on the ocean basins are all evidence for the fact that gravity induces sphericity.

 

[Stripe]

Evidence, or you're lying.

How's that for a one-liner?

You could just read Scalyblue's post. :roll:

 

[sgrunterundt]

The Atlantic Basin wasn't formed from an impact crater.

Yay. Progress.

But... a minute ago I thought you claimed that a lot of mass had been removed from the Earth, and the only mechanism you put forward was an impact. If it is not a crater, then were do you propose this "hole" came from?

To test the idea that gravity and sphericity are linked you can look at any large enough hole on the Earth or Moon (the hole needs to be larger on the Moon). The floor of the hole is under stress from beneath and tends to buckle upwards. Open cast mines, craters, the original floor of the Grand Canyon and the central rises on the ocean basins are all evidence for the fact that gravity induces sphericity.

Why do you keep giving evidence for the things no one disputes? Yes gravity draws matter towards the center making the earth tend towards a sphere and releasing energy in the process. I think we all agree on that. Over the course of the formation of the earth 10^32J has been released this way, some gradually, some in big impacts.

How will you test the idea that the earth was significantly more non-spherical recently, and that the ocean basins are only remnants of this?

 

[Stripe]

Yay. Progress.

Yeah .. Again... :roll:

But... a minute ago I thought you claimed that a lot of mass had been removed from the Earth, and the only mechanism you put forward was an impact. If it is not a crater, then were do you propose this "hole" came from?

An eruption .. Of sorts...

Why do you keep giving evidence for the things no one disputes?

Why do people keep demanding evidence for things they do not dispute?

How will you test the idea that the earth was significantly more non-spherical recently, and that the ocean basins are only remnants of this?

Well, that is an unrepeatable, historical event. I can only share the idea as an explanation for what happened. Then we might look for evidence that would falsify the idea. Evidence for would be the basins and their uplift/subsidence, but I must first assume the event happened in order to use those as evidence for it.

 

[Bearcules]

Let me save everyone some time...

The Atlantic basin was caused by the fountains of the deep during the flood and ejected enough matter to coalesce into the moon.

There.

 

[australopithecus]

An eruption .. Of sorts...

EVIDENCE??

Why do people keep demanding evidence for things they do not dispute?

Because you're so intellectually dishonest that by association with you even things which are evident should be questioned. You could call ice cold and I'd still doubt the claim. Provide your evidence or concede you have none.

 

[Stripe]

Let me save everyone some time...

The Atlantic basin was caused by the fountains of the deep during the flood and ejected enough matter to coalesce into the moon.

There.

Wrong.

Close, but wrong.

Nice avatar, however.

 

[Stripe]

An eruption .. Of sorts...

EVIDENCE??

Why do people keep demanding evidence for things they do not dispute?

Because you're so intellectually dishonest that by association with you even things which are evident should be questioned. You could call ice cold and I'd still doubt the claim. Provide your evidence or concede you have none.

If you were following along, this aspect is not something I am asserting.

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

How much "non-spherical" it needs to be?

Good question! It's not an easy question to answer as the shape of the hole will affect the response. A deep and narrow hole will generate more response than an wide and shallow one of the same mass.

What is the size of the tallest possible mountain?

Again, something difficult to quantify, but worth thinking about.

How much does gravity reshape?

How much what?

How much of the shape is actually the responsability of earths gravity as compared to the moons gravity?

The Moon causes tides in the Earth's crust of a couple of centimeters.

How much is it due to the diurnal motion?

The rotation of the Earth flattens it by a few meters.

How exactly is this heat generated?

By friction. When the Earth reforms, rock must slide over rock.

Where?

Everywhere that gravity can overcome the shear stress of the rock.

(tip: the center of the earth is not the right answer)

It's not the only answer....

How much heat would it be produced?For how long?

Depends on the size and distribution of the hole.

does it realease more energy near the beggining of the activity or the end?

The beginning.

What reasons there are that make it "reasonable"?

What factors make it unreasonable?

What would you expect to see if your hypothesis was correct?

Large scale gravity settling features on opposite sides of the Earth.

How much?

That is the evidence we would look at to determine what happened and when.

What evidence are you expecting to see?

Large scale gravity settling features on opposite sides of the Earth.

How much?

No preconceived amount.

What is the causal link between the observation you can make an the hypotesis formulated?

Gravity

Could you also obtain the same observations due to other factors?

I can't think of anything...

Does the fact that they are different mean anything?

It means we are justified in looking for an explanation.

You tryed, but you actually haven't answered any of it.
When I ask for "how much", the answer must contain a number or a function that returns a number.
For instance the first question, how non-spherical it needs to be?
Lets take a look a 2 distinct bodies:

The main difference between the 2 is size, while the first one to a certain degree of aproximation can be seen as spherical, the second one however is what we call a potatoid (generic random potatoe shape).
This sort of gives you clues on what to look for.
The first thing you have to consider is what type of forces is each point is subject to.
The second thing is how do solid materials get reshaped under a force system.

Part I
The main forces acting upon the materials are gravity, pressure and intermolucular tension (whichgives the material rigidity).

a) To correctly account for the force of gravity, you must use a model for gravity, newtons Law is fine. However the most familiar form:
F=GMm/r^2 is not aplicable since we are not necessarily talking about 2 spherical bodies with a defined distance but rather the contribution of a single body with units of mass distributed over a volume over a single unit of mass. Plus it does matter the direction of the force caused by a unit of mass, because not all units of mass contribute with a forces in the same direction.
So the adjusted formula fro the vectorial form is: F_=GMm*r_/|r|^3
and the adjusted formula for the mass diferentials is: F'_(X,Y,Z)= int(v; G.Q(V).q(X,Y,Z).m.r_/|r|^3 dv), where Q(V) is a mass density function of the body and q(X,Y,Z) is the density of the point being calculated. And this gives a function not of force but rather a density of force for the point X,Y,Z.
Are you starting to get the picture? If you are not, this is what you get for the gavity distribution of earth (compliments of NASA):


b) Now we need to know some stuff about the materials and how they behave to correctly model the pressure and strains. this in itself would take an entire semester to explain, but I will try to be short.
There are 2 main interesting properties associated to most common materials, that being the Young modulus (and Shear Modulus) that describe how he mateial deform and the yield strenght (both tensil and shear are equiered) that describe when does the material start to deform in a plastic fashion and then you will also need how exactly does the material deform plasticly. This would all be nice if the temperatures were constant, they aren't and this properties change depending on the temperature, so you got to know that as well.
The calculations are rather complicated to perform altough possible to compute given that you have gotten a model for the destribution of forces (obtained in a) and a model for the properties of the material plus its geometric distribution.
As a visual example, a similar analysis done for beams would look something like this:

Now given the size of the earth I can make certain aproximations to be able to calculate a rough estimate without going trough much computational detail (something that you couldn't do for instance in the case of the asteroid). However I do not have time to do it right now, nor is it my point.
My point is, this is the sort of detail that has to go trough someones mind when dealing with this sort of problems, they are light years more complicated then "it is not round therefore it will deform due to gravity",and I find it particularly disturbing that you would ask that something "will do x" when you don't even know if x fulfill the requierments for x to happen or how would you even go about checking that.

 

[Inferno]

Wrong.

Close, but wrong.

THEN TELL US WHAT DID!!!!!
Either present a coherent hypothesis, backing up everything you say with evidence or go somewhere else.

 

[sgrunterundt]

But... a minute ago I thought you claimed that a lot of mass had been removed from the Earth, and the only mechanism you put forward was an impact. If it is not a crater, then were do you propose this "hole" came from?

An eruption .. Of sorts....

Okay. Can you detail your hypothesis a bit more? Were do you propose the energy came from?

Why do people keep demanding evidence for things they do not dispute?

You have made no factual claims aside from "gravity tends to make objects spherical"?

Well, that is an unrepeatable, historical event. I can only share the idea as an explanation for what happened. Then we might look for evidence that would falsify the idea. Evidence for would be the basins and their uplift/subsidence, but I must first assume the event happened in order to use those as evidence for it.

Okay. Of course you are not required to recreate the event in order to test the hypothesis, historians, geologists and cosmologists alike study the past without necessarily recreating it. And it is perfectly valid to adopt a working hypothesis - entertain the idea without accepting it yet. That is how science works. So lets for the moment pretend this idea is true. What sort of residual movement would we expect to find in the basins? What sorts of rocks? Do we find anything that would contradict it?

Just so we are on the same page, is this a somewhat accurate representation of your idea?:

 

[Stripe]

My point is, this is the sort of detail that has to go trough someones mind when dealing with this sort of problems, they are light years more complicated then "it is not round therefore it will deform due to gravity",and I find it particularly disturbing that you would ask that something "will do x" when you don't even know if x fulfill the requierments for x to happen or how would you even go about checking that.

If you create a hole in the continental USA the size of 1/4 the Moon, the Earth will reform to a more spherical shape due to gravity. This will generate friction and heat mostly at the core of the Earth.

How big the hole has to be before this would happen and how big the hole would have to be to generate the heat flux we see are very good questions. Like you say they aren't very easy questions to answer, but with the assumption of this process as the cause of geothermal heat we could constrain the age and magnitude of the event.

 

[Stripe]

Okay. Of course you are not required to recreate the event in order to test the hypothesis, historians, geologists and cosmologists alike study the past without necessarily recreating it. And it is perfectly valid to adopt a working hypothesis - entertain the idea without accepting it yet. That is how science works. So lets for the moment pretend this idea is true. What sort of residual movement would we expect to find in the basins? What sorts of rocks? Do we find anything that would contradict it?

Just so we are on the same page, is this a somewhat accurate representation of your idea?:

Your oceans are the wrong way around, but that's essentially correct. And nicely rendered, might I add.

Actually, I think it's far easier to look at the Moon. For the Moon the emoval of mass is easy to explain. A series of meteor impacts on the near side. The reformation is easier to study. No water or sedimentary deposits. And the subsidence on the far side is not affected by the process that removed the mass, as it is on Earth.

Have you ever heard of the Aitken Basin?

 

[nasher168]

If you create a hole in the continental USA the size of 1/4 the Moon, the Earth will reform to a more spherical shape due to gravity. This will generate friction and heat mostly at the core of the Earth.

Why would it be mostly at the core? Can you provide a study or experiment demonstrating this?

Our model tells us EXACTLY why it's at the core.
Your model should, surely, predict heat sort of smeared around the Earth's interior with hotspots around the Pacific and Atlantic, and perhaps even mainly concentrated near the surface because, of course, heat rises.

 

[Stripe]

If you create a hole in the continental USA the size of 1/4 the Moon, the Earth will reform to a more spherical shape due to gravity. This will generate friction and heat mostly at the core of the Earth.

Why would it be mostly at the core? Can you provide a study or experiment demonstrating this?

Our model tells us EXACTLY why it's at the core.
Your model should, surely, predict heat sort of smeared around the Earth's interior with hotspots around the Pacific and Atlantic, and perhaps even mainly concentrated near the surface because, of course, heat rises.

Friction is greater under greater pressure.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

any of it.

To test the idea that gravity and sphericity are linked you can look at any large enough hole on the Earth or Moon (the hole needs to be larger on the Moon). The floor of the hole is under stress from beneath and tends to buckle upwards. Open cast mines, craters, the original floor of the Grand Canyon and the central rises on the ocean basins are all evidence for the fact that gravity induces sphericity.

Oh Hytegia's various gods... no, YOUR hypothesis. You know the one we've been talking about. This is not your idea, you did not come up with it, and no one here is arguing against it. Also, this is not a test.

Now for the last time, how would we test for your Atlantic Ejaculate hypothesis? How would we determine if it were an accurate representation of reality or not? Because if it is unfalsifiable, then it has bigger problems then simply being hopelessly scientifically illiterate, stupid, and requiring magic.