 |
| Titel |
Expanding Earth and declining gravity: a chapter in the recent history of geophysics |
| VerfasserIn |
H. Kragh |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
|
| Sprache |
Englisch
|
| ISSN |
2190-5010
|
| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: History of Geo- and Space Sciences ; 6, no. 1 ; Nr. 6, no. 1 (2015-05-05), S.45-55 |
| Datensatznummer |
250115434
|
| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/hgss-6-45-2015.pdf |
|
|
|
|
|
| Zusammenfassung |
| Although speculative ideas of an expanding Earth can be
found before World War II, it was only in the 1950s and 1960s that the
theory attracted serious attention among a minority of earth scientists.
While some of the proponents of the expanding Earth adopted an empiricist
attitude by disregarding the physical cause of the assumed expansion, others
argued that the cause, either fully or in part, was of cosmological origin.
They referred to the possibility that the gravitational constant was slowly
decreasing in time, as first suggested by P. Dirac in 1937. As a result of a
stronger gravitation in the past, the ancient Earth would have been smaller
than today. The gravitational argument for an expanding Earth was proposed
by P. Jordan and L. Egyed in the 1950s and during the next 2 decades it
was discussed by several physicists, astronomers and earth scientists. Among
those who for a period felt attracted by "gravitational expansionism" were
A. Holmes, J. Tuzo Wilson and F. Hoyle. The paper examines the idea of a
varying gravitational constant and its impact on geophysics in the period
from about 1955 to the mid-1970s. |
| |
|
| Teil von |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|