Science Networks

Historical Studies
54

Helge Kragh

Varying Gravity
Dirac’s Legacy in
Cosmology and Geophysics
Science Networks. Historical Studies
Science Networks. Historical Studies
Founded by Erwin Hiebert and Hans Wußing
Volume 54

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Helge Kragh

Varying Gravity
Dirac’s Legacy in Cosmology and Geophysics
Helge Kragh
Niels Bohr Archive
Niels Bohr Institute
Copenhagen
Denmark

ISSN 1421-6329 ISSN 2296-6080 (electronic)

Science Networks. Historical Studies
ISBN 978-3-319-24377-1 ISBN 978-3-319-24379-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24379-5

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Preface

The reader will find here a historical investigation of a particular episode in the
history of twentieth-century science which principally involves an unorthodox
cosmological theory concerning the history of the universe and a no less unortho-
dox geological theory concerning the history of the Earth. By its very nature, the
subject under examination, various early attempts of integrating cosmology and
geophysics, is highly interdisciplinary. When Paul Dirac proposed that the gravi-
tational constant decreases over cosmic time, a proposal which dates from the late
1930s, no one thought it would have consequences for geophysics. Nor did anyone
think that the Earth might eventually be a testing ground for Dirac’s hypothesis.
After all, the domain and methods of geophysics were (and still are) very different
from those of physical cosmology and at the time the two communities of scientists
were entirely separate. As it happened, the audacious gravitation hypothesis was
first applied to paleoclimatology in the late 1940s and about a decade later it entered
geophysics as an argument for the expanding Earth.
The idea that the Earth has increased in size for at least 500 million years was at
the time a fairly popular alternative to the resuscitated theory of continental drift
that would soon be merged with mantle convection and sea floor spreading to
develop into mainstream plate tectonics. The chief focus of the book is on the
interconnection between the two hypotheses, but it also covers in some detail other
aspects of varying gravity and the expanding Earth. The subjects gave rise to a
considerable literature in physics, astronomy, cosmology, geology and geophysics,
much of it of an interdisciplinary nature. Altogether several hundred scientific
articles and a few books have been published on these subjects. However, from
today’s perspective, the efforts were wasted and may seem to have been just much
ado about nothing. The currently established view is that the force of gravity, as
given by the gravitational constant G, remains constant and that the radius of the
Earth has not increased measurably since its formation some 4.5 billion years ago.
In spite of this consensus view, there are still scientists cultivating either the
varying-gravity hypothesis or the expanding Earth hypothesis—or, in a few cases,

v
vi Preface

both hypotheses. But I largely keep to the historical ground, meaning the period up
to about 1980, and only briefly refer to the modern scene.
I came to this subject initially as a result of my earlier studies of Dirac’s physical
theories and my work on the history of modern cosmology generally. Only at a later
stage did I develop an interest in the history of the earth sciences in connection with
courses in the history and philosophy of science given to undergraduate geology
students at Aarhus University, Denmark. It was only then that I realized how
relatively important the varying-gravity hypothesis and expanding Earth models
were in the 1960s and 1970s. I recently published a couple of papers on the subject,
one in Physics in Perspective and another in History of Geo- and Space Sciences
(see the Bibliography). This book makes use of material from these papers but goes
much beyond them. I should also mention that I am not the first to cover the subject.
Paul Wesson examined it from a different and more scientific perspective in two
valuable books dating from 1978 to 1980. However, Wesson primarily addressed
his work to scientists and therefore paid little attention to the rich historical context
of his subject.
The book is organized into four chapters of which the first one is rather brief and
of an introductory nature, dealing essentially with developments before 1930.
Chapter 2 investigates in detail the idea of varying gravity from a cosmological
and physical perspective, starting with Dirac in 1937 and ending with the Jordan–
Brans–Dicke gravitation theories of the early 1960s. While geophysics plays almost
no role at all in this chapter, the expanding Earth is in the centre of Chap. 3 which
deals in particular with theories that applied varying gravity as a mechanism for the
assumed expansion of the Earth. The fourth chapter carries the story on until the
early 1980s, at a time when varying-gravity hypotheses had proliferated but the
expanding Earth hypothesis no longer enjoyed recognition from mainstream geo-
physicists. Although the approach of the book is neither biographical nor prosopo-
graphical, of course there are some scientists who appear more frequently than
others. They include well-known physicists such as Paul Dirac, Pascual Jordan and
Robert Dicke as well as the less well-known Hungarian geophysicist Lászlo Egyed.
Varying Gravity ends with a rather lengthy bibliography which we hope can be
useful to historians and scientists who might wish to explore further aspects of this
case study.

Copenhagen, Denmark Helge Kragh

August 2015
Contents

1 Introductory Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 The Heavens and the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Cosmology, Cosmogony, and Geology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Halm’s Expanding Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2 Varying Gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.1 Big G: The Gravitational Constant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Dirac and the Magic of Large Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3 Jordan’s Cosmological System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.4 “A Landmark in Human Thought” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.5 Paleoclimatology Enters Cosmology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.6 Offspring of Scalar–Tensor Gravitation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.7 A Machian Approach to Fundamental Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3 The Expanding Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.1 Drifting Continents and the Expansion Alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.3 Dicke and the Earth Sciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
3.4 Egyed and the New Expansion Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
3.5 Sympathizers of Expansionism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
3.6 Discussions Pro et contra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
4 After Plate Tectonics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.1 Steady-State Cosmology and the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.2 New Creation Cosmologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
4.3 Testing Varying Gravity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
4.4 Degeneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

vii
viii Contents

4.5 Two Revolutions in Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

4.6 Historiographical and Other Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Newton on the shape of the Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Fig. 2.1 Cavendish’s apparatus to measure the density of the Earth . . . . . . . . 17
Fig. 2.2 Dirac in 1936 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Fig. 2.3 Citations to Dirac’s 1938 paper on cosmology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Fig. 2.4 Jordan in conversation with Heisenberg and Delbrück . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Fig. 2.5 Jordan, Dirac and Blackett at the Niels Bohr Institute . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Fig. 2.6 Citations to Brans-Dicke paper of 1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Fig. 2.7 The Brans-Dicke universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Fig. 3.1 Fairbridge’s sketch of the expanding Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 63
Fig. 3.2 Monument erected by the Gravity Research Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Fig. 3.3 Jordan’s 1954 essay to the Gravity Research Foundation . . . . . . . . . . 71
Fig. 3.4 Dicke about 1960 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Fig. 3.5 The surface temperature of the Earth with varying gravity . . . . . . . . 103
Fig. 4.1 Owen’s exponentially expanding Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Fig. 4.2 Decreasing gravitational constant and surface gravity
acceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Fig. 4.3 Number of publications on varying-G theories . . .. . . .. . .. . . .. . .. . . .. 142
Fig. 4.4 Literature on the expanding Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

ix
ThiS is a FM Blank Page
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Citations to Dirac’s cosmological model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Table 3.1 Egyed’s expanding Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Table 3.2 Van Hilten’s rapidly expanding Earth . . .. . .. . .. . .. . . .. . .. . .. . .. . .. . 106
Table 4.1 Predictions of Dirac cosmologies . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . . . . .. . 124
Table 4.2 Earth expansion rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

xi
Chapter 1
Introductory Issues

Cosmology, the science of the universe at large, is of course very different from
geology, a science that in its traditional meaning deals with only a single object in
the vast universe, a planet called Earth. Yet the two sciences have interesting and
often surprising interconnections that today are cultivated by a growing number of
researchers. Both sciences—cosmology and the earth sciences—have changed
drastically since the days of the scientific revolution in the seventeenth century,
each in its own way and at different paces. In order to evaluate the events that
occurred in the post-World War II period it will be useful to survey some of the
earlier developments in a broad historical perspective. The survey in this chapter is
meant to be an introduction only. It covers various attempts in the period up to the
mid-1930s to think about the Earth in a cosmological perspective or otherwise to
establish bridges between the science of the universe and that of the Earth. Until
varying gravity entered the picture the two sciences had in common only the
chronological problem, namely, the age of the Earth as related to the age of the
universe.

1.1 The Heavens and the Earth

In the late seventeenth century, geology was often considered in what at the time
was seen as a cosmological perspective, such as illustrated by the popularity of
speculative “cosmogonies” principally dealing with the origin of the Earth. René
Descartes’ influential Principia Philosophiae from 1644 included a mechanical
theory of the origin and evolution of the Earth which he derived from his general
vortex theory of the universe. To him, cosmogony (in the sense of geogony, to use
an antiquated term) was scarcely distinct from astronomy and cosmology. Other
examples of this early tradition include classics such as Thomas Burnet’s The
Sacred Theory of the Earth from 1684, William Whiston’s New Theory of the

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 1

H. Kragh, Varying Gravity, Science Networks. Historical Studies 54,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24379-5_1
2 1 Introductory Issues

Fig. 1.1 Newton on the A cl

shape of the Earth
(Principia). According to
Newton, the proportion of
the gravitational force in A
from a sphere with radius
CA to that in A from the c q
actual Earth would be given
by the ratio 126/125.5.
P Q
C
From this and a few other
arguments he concluded
that the Earth was flattened
by the ratio 1/230

Earth from 1696, and Leibniz’s Protogaea published posthumously in 1749.1

These and other works from the period were as much about God and the Bible as
they were about the Earth. They were early examples of the powerful intellectual
tradition known as physico-theology or “natural theology” that would dominate
much scientific thinking until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
From the same period we have the first example ever of a fundamental physical
theory changing the picture of the Earth, namely, Newton’s successful prediction of
the shape of the Earth based on his new theory of gravitation. Since the theory of
gravitation was also the basis for Newtonian cosmology, the case can with some
justification be seen as an early instance of the connection between cosmology and
the earth sciences. In Book III of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
from 1687 Newton argued from mechanical principles that the rotating Earth must
have the form of a slightly flattened oblate spheroid (Fig. 1.1). He estimated that the
equatorial radius must exceed the polar radius by 1/229th part of the polar radius.
The claim was controversial because the shape of the Earth was expected to be a
prolate spheroid on the basis of Cartesian natural philosophy. Through the efforts of
Pierre-Louis Maupertuis, Alexis-Claude Clairaut and other French scientists in the
1730s, it appeared that geodesic measurements agreed with Newton’s prediction
at least in a qualitative sense: the Earth was indeed slightly flattened at the poles.2
The currently known flatness of the Earth is approximately 1 to 300, not far from
Newton’s value.
In Principia Newton also arrived at another result of great geophysical interest,
the first scientifically based estimate of the mean density of the Earth. He reasoned
as follows:
In whatever way the planets were formed, at the time when the mass was fluid, all heavier
matter made for the centre, away from the water. Accordingly, since the ordinary matter of
our earth at its surface is about twice as heavy as water, and a little lower down, in mines, is

1
See, for example, Laudan (1987) and Oldroyd (1996).
2
The case is detailed in Greenberg (1995) and Terrall (2002).
1.1 The Heavens and the Earth 3

found to be about three or four or even six times heavier than water, it is likely that the total
amount of matter in the earth is about five to six times greater than it would be if the whole
earth consisted of water.3

Although Newton’s estimate of a density between 5 and 6 g cm
3 was little more
than an educated guess, it happened to be correct.
During the next two centuries, geology was transformed into an arch-empirical,
inductive science dealing in a much more narrow way than previously with the
surface of the Earth and the natural causes for its changes. Yet the cosmological
aspects did not vanish completely. What is often regarded as a watershed in the
development of geology into a proper science, namely, the uniformitarian method-
ology introduced by James Hutton and Charles Lyell between the 1790s and the
1830s, was in part of a cosmological nature. According to the uniformitarian credo,
geological processes in the past were of the same kind as those observed today and
they occurred at about the same rate and intensity as we observe. In his efforts to
turn geology into a respectable science, Lyell insisted in his famous Principles of
Geology (1830–1833) that the past history of the Earth can only be understood in
terms of what is presently observed. Lyell explicitly based uniformitarianism on the
belief that the laws of nature cannot possibly change in time or space. In the first
volume of Principles from 1830 he rooted the new geology in “the permanency of
the laws of nature,” postulating that “their immutable constancy alone can enable us
. . . to arrive at the knowledge of general principles in the economy of our terrestrial
system.” A century later a few physicists would question the immutable constancy
of Newton’s law of gravitation, the very paradigm of natural law.
Lyell stressed that the new scientific geology was intimately related to the
physical sciences but also, and no less importantly, that it was a science of its
own which could not be subordinated either physics or other sciences. First and
foremost, geology was entirely distinct from the traditional cosmogony dealing
with the origin of the world. As Lyell wrote in the very beginning of Principles:
The identification of its [geology’s] objects with those of Cosmogony has been the most
common and serious source of confusion. The first who endeavoured to draw a clear line of
demarcation between these distinct departments, was Hutton, who declared that geology
was in no ways concerned “with questions as to the origin of things.” . . . We shall attempt
in the sequel of this work to demonstrate that geology differs as widely from cosmology, as
speculations concerning the creation of man differ from history.4

Indeed, strict uniformitarianism was non-directional with respect to the arrow of

time and for this reason alone it ruled out cosmogony. On the other hand, it did not
follow that Lyell’s geology was cosmologically irrelevant. For one thing, it implic-
itly entailed the notion of an eternal universe.
The uniformitarian principle would much later turn up in cosmological theory, in
particular in the steady-state theory of the universe introduced in 1948. There is
more than a superficial similarity between the geologists’ uniformitarian principle

3
Cohen (1999), p. 815.
4
Lyell (1830), p. 4. Available online as http://www.esp.org/books/lyell/principles/facsimile/
4 1 Introductory Issues

and the “perfect cosmological principle” on which steady-state cosmology was

founded.5 The ordinary cosmological principle, which can be traced back long
before the Einsteinian revolution in cosmology, states that on a very large scale the
universe is spatially uniform, that is, homogeneous and isotropic. According to the
perfect cosmological principle, a name due to Thomas Gold, the uniformity is also
temporally valid: no era in the history of the universe is distinct from any other era.
The perfect cosmological principle may seem to fit with the spirit of relativity
theory’s space-time symmetry, but what matters is that the principle disagrees with
what we know about the universe. Perfect it may be, but wrong it is. In any case, for
the large majority of geologists in the nineteenth century, Lyell included, the Earth
was more than enough to deal with. They saw no reason to include other celestial
bodies and even less to indulge into cosmological speculations.
Cosmology in the fin-de-siècle era remained foreign even to the majority of
astronomers, who in the spirit of positivism preferred to ignore questions about the
universe as a whole.6 Works on “cosmogony” were not uncommon, but in most
cases they dealt with the origin of the solar system or what the Dutch-British
physicist Dirk ter Haar much later called “microcosmogony.”7 Other work from
the period dealt with the mysterious spiral nebulae and their relation to the Milky
Way. Indeed, terms such as “world” or “cosmos” typically referred to our solar
system, usually discussed on the basis of Pierre Simon Laplace’s popular nebular
hypothesis or some modification of it. The material universe was often identified
with the Milky Way, and “with the infinite possibilities beyond, science has no
concern,” as the Irish astronomer and historian of astronomy Agnes Mary Clerke
summarily declared.8
Among the very few geologists in the Victorian period who adopted an astro-
nomical perspective on the Earth was the versatile, self-educated Scotsman James
Croll. Best known for his astronomical theory of terrestrial climate change, includ-
ing the ice ages, Croll provided a rare link between the geologists and the astro-
nomers. For example, his astronomically based theory directly influenced Lyell, the
leading geologist of his day.9 In 1885 Croll published a collection of essays under
the intriguing title Discussions on Climate and Cosmology.10 However, what he
discussed was in reality the influence of astronomical causes on the climate of the
Earth, and also subjects such as the age of the Earth, the nature and intensity of the
Sun’s heat, and the nature of the nebulae. He had nothing to say about cosmology in

5
On the perfect cosmological principle and its history, see Balashov (1994) and Kragh (1996),
pp. 182–183. See also Toulmin (1962) for an interesting case of a late-eighteenth-century
geological author adopting a version of the perfect cosmological principle. More about the
steady-state theory of the universe follows in Sect. 4.1.
6
Merleau-Ponty (1983), Kragh (2008), pp. 152–157.
7
ter Haar (1950), p. 132.
8
Clerke (1890), p. 368. Of course, cosmology was not absent from pre-Einstein astronomy. For
reviews, see North (1965) and Kragh (2007b).
9
Fleming (2005).
10
Croll (1885).
1.1 The Heavens and the Earth 5

the wider sense of the term, the science of the universe in its totality. Indeed, the
term “cosmology” only appeared in the book’s title and not at all in the text.
Four years later Croll published another book in which he developed a cosmo-
gonical impact theory that differed from the standard Laplace picture by assuming
an initial state of dark bodies colliding at high velocities. His theory not only
contradicted the nebular hypothesis but also the widely accepted Helmholtz–Kelvin
gravitational theory of the origin of the Sun’s heat. According to this theory the Sun
was composed of compressible gases that through progressive contraction gener-
ated the heat and light that poured into space. “Are the facts of geology reconcilable
with the theory?” Croll asked, referring to the theory of Kelvin (William Thomson)
and Hermann von Helmholtz. He concluded that this was not the case.11 At the end
of his book he briefly considered the cosmological consequences of his own impact
theory, which “on purely scientific grounds” led to an absolute beginning of the
evolutionary universe. According to Croll, it followed that the universe would
continue its evolution forever, whereas the thermal equilibrium state known as
the “heat death” would never occur.
The heat death (W€armetod in German) was perhaps the only truly cosmological
phenomenon which entered both astronomy and the earth sciences in the period
1880–1920. The much-discussed problem was claimed to be a strict consequence of
the second law of thermodynamics as stated in different versions by Kelvin and
Rudolf Clausius in the mid-nineteenth century. According to the second law the
entropy of the universe would continue to increase, eventually leading to an
irreversible cessation of all physical processes—a dead universe including of
course a dead Earth. Moreover, it apparently followed that the universe must
have had a beginning in time corresponding to some minimum entropy.12 Charles
Darwin was among the naturalists of the Victorian era who worried about the
relationship between biological evolution and the cosmic increase in entropy. He
found it “intolerable” that the Sun and the planets would one day be doomed to
annihilation.13
The twin problems of evolution and entropy were occasionally considered
within the research tradition known as “cosmical physics,” an interdisciplinary
branch of science flourishing in the period from about 1890 to 1915 but with
roots back to Alexander von Humboldt’s influential Kosmos published in five
volumes between 1845 and 1862. Cosmical physics, comprising elements of geo-
physics, meteorology and solar-terrestrial physics (including magnetic storms and
the aurora borealis), was an ambitious attempt at synthetizing those parts of
astronomy and the earth sciences that could be understood on the basis of the

11
Croll (1889), p. 37.
12
See Kragh (2008) for details and sources concerning the “entropic creation” argument.
13
In his autobiography published in 1887, five years after his death, Darwin referred to “the view
now held by most physicists, namely, that the sun with all the planets will in time grow too cold for
life.” He further reflected on “the mystery of the beginning of all things” but decided that it was
“insoluble by us.” Quoted in Kragh (2008), p. 108. The autobiography is available online at http://
darwin-online.org.uk
6 1 Introductory Issues

laws of physics. A few of the cosmical physicists, including the Austrian meteo-
rologist Wilhelm Trabert, the Swedish physical chemist Svante Arrhenius, and the
Norwegian physicist Kristian Birkeland, adopted a cosmological perspective. For
example, contrary to mainstream geophysics Birkeland maintained that magnetic
storms and geomagnetism generally were influenced by magnetic disturbances in
space, an idea which he related to his electromagnetic conception of the universe.14
In his massive Lehrbuch der kosmischen Physik (Textbook of Cosmical Physics)
of 1903 as well as in his more popular Worlds in the Making of 1908, Arrhenius
included chapters on cosmology and cosmogony. His own cosmological theory
pictured an infinite stellar universe without a beginning or an end in time. The
dispersive effects of the second law were kept in check by postulating an exchange
of matter between stars and nebulae in the form of collisions, not unlike what Croll
had suggested. The contractive effects of gravity on a cosmic scale were likewise
kept in check by the expansive force of radiation pressure. Arrhenius’ theory was to
some extent inspired by geophysics in so far that it relied on the stellar radiation
pressure that he inferred from the aurora borealis.
While Arrhenius was not a geologist, the American Thomas Chamberlin was
professor of geology at the University of Chicago, the founder of the prestigious
Journal of Geology, and the author (together with Rollin D. Salisbury) of a widely
acclaimed textbook in geology. Together with his Chicago colleague, the astrono-
mer Forest Ray Moulton, he developed a strong alternative to the nebular hypoth-
esis of the formation of the Earth.15 Interestingly, his dissatisfaction with the
generally accepted nebular hypothesis was originally rooted in its geological rather
than astronomical consequences. A specialist in glacial geology, Chamberlin was
inspired to his “planetesimal theory” by considerations of the causes of glaciation
and climatic change. In a book published in 1916 he related how his studies of
glacial deposits in Wisconsin led him to the field of cosmogony. It occurred to him
that the Laplace theory—“this theory of a simple decline from a fiery origin to a
frigid end”—did not agree with the established record of glaciation in the past:
When the inquiry was pressed still farther back, and support for the postulate of a molten
globe was sought in the crust itself, it was not forthcoming. . . . But one further step
remained—to examine the cosmogonic postulates themselves. Could the earth ever have
had the vast hot atmosphere postulated? Was the earth’s gravity sufficient to hold so vast
and vaporous an envelope at such high temperatures and in such an intense state of
molecular activity as the old mode of genesis assigned? Was the gaseo-molten genesis a
reality? Thus I was already across the pass that leads from the land of rocks into a realm of
cosmogonic bogs and fens. . . . Strangely enough, the cold trail of the ice invasion had led
by this long and devious path into the nebulous field of genesis.16

14
Birkeland’s cosmological ideas, sometimes taken to be anticipations of modern “plasma cos-
mology,” are dealt with in Kragh (2013).
15
Brush (1996c), pp. 22–67, Fleming (2000).
16
Quoted in MacMillan (1929), p. 4. As the Chicago astronomer William MacMillan remarked in
his obituary of Chamberlin, the cosmogonical Chamberlin–Moulton hypothesis “furnished a
foundation for the geologists, which is in harmony with the evidences of their own science.”
1.2 Cosmology, Cosmogony, and Geology 7

The planetesimal theory that Chamberlin developed together with Moulton was
for a period highly regarded not only by geologists but also by American astron-
omers. For example, in 1914 Vesto Melvin Slipher at the Lowell Observatory
studied nebular spectra in order to test the Chamberlin–Moulton theory. This was
only two years after he had detected the first nebular redshifts, a discovery that
would have a revolutionary effect on cosmology.

1.2 Cosmology, Cosmogony, and Geology

Chamberlin was not the only professional geologist to consider connections

between cosmology (or cosmogony) and the earth sciences. “The age of the earth
may indeed claim an importance outside the geological science,” wrote the prom-
inent Irish geologist and physicist John Joly in a book of 1909. “For is it not the clue
to the chronological scale of our solar system and—for want of better—even of our
universe?”17 To Joly, the common element that connected the Earth and the
universe was radioactivity. The young British geologist and geophysicist Arthur
Holmes published in 1913 the first edition of his classic The Age of the Earth in
which he argued strongly for the use of radioactive methods in geochronology.
Inspired by Arrhenius he broadened the scope to include also the time-scale of the
universe as a whole. Estimating the oldest rocks to have an age about 1.7 billion
years, he contrasted the finite age of the Earth with the supposedly infinite age of the
universe. Holmes subscribed at the time to an eternal, ever-evolving cyclic universe
of a kind similar to the one Arrhenius had advocated:
If the development of the universe be everywhere towards equalisation of temperature
implied by the laws of thermodynamics, the question arises—why in the abundance of time
past, has this melancholy state not already overtaken us? . . . In the universe nothing is lost,
and perhaps its perfect mechanism is the solitary and only possible example of perpetual
motion. In its cyclic development we may find the secret of its eternity and discover that the
dismal theory of thermal extinction is, after all, but a limited truth.18

The death of heat was ruled out by fiat. As we shall see in Sect. 3.5, this was not
the last time that Holmes would use his geological expertise to deal with the
universe at large.
The ideas of Arrhenius, Chamberlin, Joly, and Holmes were interesting but did
little to strengthen the relationship between cosmology and the earth sciences
except on a rhetorical level. In so far that a connection between the Earth and the
heavens was admitted, still in the 1920s it was the more traditional one between
geology and astronomy focusing on the Earth as a planet. At the time cosmology
had changed dramatically as a result of new observations and, not least, the new
models of the universe founded on Einstein’s general theory of relativity. The

17
Joly (1909), p. 212.
18
Holmes (1913), p. 121.
8 1 Introductory Issues

famous astronomer Arthur Eddington was a specialist in Einstein’s mathematically

abstruse theory, including its cosmological aspects. Still, when he gave an address
on the astronomy-geology relationship to the venerable Geological Society of
London in 1922, he had nothing to say about cosmology in either its old or new
meaning. Perhaps in consideration of his audience he chose to cover more tradi-
tional subjects such as the origin of the solar system, the age of the Earth, the Earth–
Moon system, and the source of the Sun’s heat.19
In his address Eddington also referred to the existence of radioactive minerals in
the crust of the Earth. The presence of uranium and thorium, he said, indicated a
“winding-up process [that] must have occurred under physical conditions vastly
different from those in which we now observe only a running-down.” Rather than
locating the winding-up to a primordial state of the universe, he referred to “the
intense heat in the interior of the stars.” Eddington reasoned that the irreversible
decay of radioactive bodies might function as an arrow of time in a sense similar to
the entropic arrow of time. Arguments of this kind had been in the air for some time,
but without attracting much interest among physicists, chemists and geologists.20 It
was only after the discovery of the expanding universe that the idea of a radioactive
arrow of time became cosmologically significant.
To the Belgian pioneer cosmologist Georges Lemaı̂tre, a former student of
Eddington, the idea suggested a universe of finite age that had come into existence
in a radioactive inferno a period of time ago comparable to the half-lives of uranium
and thorium. The argument from radioactive decay played an important role in the
process that in 1931 led him to the hypothesis of an explosive universe originating
in a “primeval atom,” later referred to as the big-bang universe. As Lemaı̂tre
recalled,
The idea of this [primeval atom] hypothesis arose when it was noticed that natural
radioactivity is a physical process which disappears gradually and which can, therefore,
be expected to have been more important in earlier times. If it were not for a few elements
of average lifetimes comparable to TH [the Hubble time of the order 109 years], natural
radioactivity would be completely extinct now. It might be thought, therefore, that radio-
active elements did exist which are actually transformed into stable elements.21

The age of the Earth, a classic problem of geology, became of cosmological

importance with the recognition in the early 1930s that most cosmological models
based on the theory of general relativity resulted in an age of the universe less than
two billion years.22 For the class of so-called Friedmann models with zero

19
Eddington (1923).
20
See Kragh (2007a) for the early use of radioactive decay as a cosmic clock and generally the role
of radioactivity in astrophysics and cosmology in the period between 1910 and the early 1930s.
21
Lemaı̂tre (1949), p. 452.
22
On the notorious time-scale problem, see Kragh (1996), pp. 73–79 and Brush (2001). The
problem could be avoided if a positive cosmological constant was admitted, but this was a solution
that few astronomers and physicists found appealing. In the period from about 1930 to the 1990s it
was generally believed that Λ ¼ 0.
1.2 Cosmology, Cosmogony, and Geology 9

cosmological constant and non-zero density value (Λ ¼ 0, ρ > 0), the age t* will
always be smaller than the Hubble time T defined as the inverse of the Hubble
constant H:

t* ¼ αT ¼ α=H, α < 1:

Only for an empty universe will α ¼ 1, and even that does not help. The time-scale
problem was that there were objects in the universe older than two billion years and
hence older than the universe, which is obviously impossible. One of these objects
is the Earth, which in the mid-1930s was known to be at least 3 billion years old. By
comparison, with the accepted value of 1.8 billion years for the Hubble time, the
age of the flat Einstein-de Sitter universe (given by 2/3 times the Hubble time) came
out as 1.2 billion years. The time-scale problem did not rely crucially on the age of
the Earth as determined by geologists and geochemists, for the stars and galaxies
were thought to be much older still. Nonetheless, it was only the age of the Earth
that was reliably determined with some degree of precision, and for this reason this
geological datum held a special position in the cosmological discourse.23 It would
remain to do so until the 1950s, when it turned out that the Hubble time was much
greater than what had been previously assumed. The presently accepted value,
based on data from the Planck satellite, is T ¼ 13.82  109 years.
Although Einstein never looked for a connection between cosmological theory
and geophysics, for a time he had an interest in problems of a geophysical nature.
For example, between 1926 and 1933 he served on the editorial board of Gerlands
Beitr€age zur Geophysik edited by the Viennese climatologist Victor Conrad, a
former professor of cosmical physics. Einstein associated with several Berlin geo-
physicists and meteorologists, including Adolf Schmidt, Julius Bartels and Heinrich
Ficker. As early as 1919 he studied the changes in the Earth’s moment of inertia
caused by some of the partial tides of the Moon, and in 1926 he wrote a brief paper
on geomorphology.24 Near the end of his life Einstein corresponded with Charles
Hapgood, an American historian and amateur geologist who developed an unor-
thodox theory of the displacements of the crust of the Earth.25
Among the geophysical problems that attracted Einstein’s attention was the
origin of geomagnetism and the possibility that it might be ascribed to the rotation
of the Earth. At a meeting of the Swiss Physical Society in 1924, he suggested that
the magnetic fields of the Earth and the Sun might be explained on the assumption

23
Dehm (1949) is a useful review of the troubled situation at a time when the Hubble time was still
believed to be of the order of 2 billion years.
24
See Schr€oder and Treder (1997), according to whom “Albert Einstein initiated geophysical
research with his works and contributed to studies that were often interdisciplinary in character.”
25
For the Einstein–Hapgood connection and other aspects of Einstein’s interest in the earth
sciences, see Martinez-Frias et al. (2006).
10 1 Introductory Issues

that the numerical charge of the proton qp slightly exceeded that of the electron,
qe.26 Specifically he suggested




qp =qe
¼ 1 þ ε, ε ¼ 3  10
19 :

In favour of the hypothesis, Einstein pointed out the order-of-magnitude

relationship
pffiffiffiffi
εqe ffi m G;

where m is the electron’s mass. Einstein, who at the time tried to develop a unified
field theory, believed that such a connection between fundamental electrical and
gravitational quantities might be more than a mere coincidence. However,
Einstein’s charge-excess hypothesis was quickly shot down by two Swiss physicists
(A. Piccard and E. Kessler) who found experimentally that ε < 5  10
21. None-
theless, somewhat similar ideas of connections between gravity, electricity and
geomagnetism were later pursued by several other physicists, including Patrick
Blackett in England (see Sect. 2.3). Einstein did not publish his speculations
concerning a “gravomagnetic effect” in 1924, but he referred to them in an address
on the ether the same year and in 1928 he discussed the formula for the effect in a
communication to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.
To summarize, although geological data and reasoning were in a few cases
considered relevant to cosmology, or vice versa, before World War II the two
areas of science were essentially separate and particularly so if the term “cosmol-
ogy” is taken in its wide meaning as the science of the universe in its totality. By
and large, geochronology was the only exception. By contrast, there was much
interest in the astronomy-geology interface, especially as regards the ice ages and
other aspects of the past climate of the Earth.27 Among the celestial bodies, only the
Moon and the Sun were considered relevant for geophysics.
However, one more area deserves to be mentioned as an early link between
cosmology and the earth sciences, namely geochemistry. Even before the discovery
of the atomic nucleus many scientists speculated that the atoms of the chemical
elements were composite bodies that had evolved from a more primitive substance
in the cosmic past. One of the scientists was Croll, who dealt with the subject in a
book of 1889, Stellar Evolution and Its relation to Geological Time. The idea that
the stars were crucibles of “proto-elements” unknown on Earth was widespread and
not confined to astronomers, physicists and chemists. Impressed by the discovery of
the electron and radioactivity, in 1908 George F. Becker, a geologist of the US

26
On Einstein’s hypothesis and some other suggestions of charge inequality in a cosmological
context, see Kragh (1997). Around 1960 Raymond Lyttleton, Hermann Bondi and Fred Hoyle
developed an “electrical universe” model on this basis, arguing that it amounted to strong support
of a steady-state universe. At the time neither of them drew geophysical consequences from
cosmological theory, but they would do so about a decade later (see Sect. 4.1).
27
See the historical bibliography in http://www.aip.org/history/climate/bibdate.htm
1.3 Halm’s Expanding Earth 11

Geological Survey in San Francisco, published a paper on “Relations of Radioac-

tivity to Cosmogony and Geology.” Becker distinguished between elements found
on the Earth and those found in meteorites, the Sun, the stars and the nebulae. He
concluded that by charting in this way the distribution of the elements the plausi-
bility of the evolution hypothesis was increased and that his table pointed to “the
truth of the hypothesis that elements are evolved.”28
The first attempts to establish finite-age physical cosmologies appeared about
three decades later. These attempts, and especially those proposed by the German
physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker in the late 1930s, relied on the assumption
that the chemical elements were formed by nuclear processes in the early universe.
The abundance distribution of elements or isotopes was therefore of great impor-
tance to this kind of theory, which in the late 1940s was developed by George
Gamow in particular. The main test for Gamow’s nuclear-archaeological theory
was provided by the cosmic abundance data published in 1938 by the Norwegian
geologist and geochemist Victor Goldschmidt.29
The link between geochemistry and cosmology appears clearly in a textbook
written by two Finnish geologists, Kaleva Rankama and Ture Sahama, which
included a substantial chapter on nuclear physics and cosmology in relation to the
formation and distribution of the elements. While the explosion theory of Gamow
and his collaborators did not attract much attention outside a small group of nuclear
physicists, it was cautiously accepted by the two geologists according to whom “the
nuclides were not formed as a result of a frozen equilibrium state but rather in a
continuous, unfinished building-up process from a highly compressed overheated
neutron gas, which decayed into protons and electrons.”30 What Rankama and
Sahama described was an early version of the big bang.

1.3 Halm’s Expanding Earth

German-born Jakob K. E. Halm, a respected British-South African astronomer,

originally specialized in solar spectroscopy. After having moved from Edinburgh to
the Cape Observatory in South Africa, in 1911 he published an important paper in
which he suggested, as the first astronomer, a relationship between the mass of stars
and their luminosity and evolutionary state. This was the first version of the
mass-luminosity relation which was only fully clarified by Eddington thirteen
years later. Still in 1917 most astronomers thought that interstellar absorption was
negligible, but this year Halm concluded from studies of the distribution of stars

28
Becker (1908), p. 145. See also Kragh (2000).
29
On Goldschmidt’s research programme and the transition from geochemistry to cosmochemis-
try, see Kragh (2001).
30
Rankama and Sahama (1950), p. 70.
12 1 Introductory Issues

that light was absorbed along the galactic equator at a maximum amount
corresponding to 2.1 magnitudes per kiloparsec.31
According to Halm, the evolutionary history of the Earth was a problem that
invited astrophysical and not merely geophysical consideration. In a remarkable
paper of 1935 based on his presidential address to the South African Astronomical
Association, he used astrophysical reasoning to argue that the Earth was expanding,
contrary to the accepted view of a static or slightly contracting Earth. His approach
to the Earth was distinctly astrophysical and entirely different from the traditional
geological approach, which he criticized for being too limited and based on the
axiom of a slowly contracting Earth. Halm insisted that the evolution of the Earth
could only be understood on the basis of astrophysical theory and that such a
perspective inevitably led to a very different picture, namely that the Earth had
expanded through its entire history.
From thermodynamic considerations of stellar and planetary atmospheres Halm
obtained an equation which gave an invariant relation between the mean absolute
temperature Ts of a planet’s (or star’s) surface and its mean density ρ measured in
the unit g cm
3:

Ts
¼ constant ðCÞ
ρ8=21

We have found, he wrote, that

. . . for every star there comes a moment when its life as an active gaseous body comes to an
end. For reasons, the meaning of which we have not yet grasped, it is turned abruptly into a
rigid body, the rigor mortis of star life has set in. . . . Once this rigor mortis has set in, the
further fate of these star corpses is clearly defined by the condition in [the above] equation.
The star expands, and the ratio between cooling and expansion is strictly regulated in
accordance with [this] equation.32

Using available data for stellar and planetary surface temperatures, he noted that
white dwarfs and planets were characterized by approximately the same value,
namely C ¼ 145. The “fundamental equation” or “equation of evolution,” as he also
called it, could thus be written

T s ¼ 145  ρ0:38 :

Halm emphasized that the equation was valid for all celestial bodies ranging from
white dwarfs to the coolest planets. From the temperature-density law and certain
speculative assumptions concerning the size of atoms at very high pressure he
derived that “at the beginning of geological time” the radius of the Earth was
5430 km and its mean surface temperature about 63  C. The radius R of the
primitive Earth would thus be less than the present one by 941 km or “about

31
On Halm’s life and work, see Glass (2014).
32
Halm (1935a), p. 14.
1.3 Halm’s Expanding Earth 13

100 times the height of Mount Everest.” As to the average rate of expansion he
estimated it to be dR/dt ffi 1.6 mm years
1 or “about the thickness of a penny-
piece.”
Since Halm assumed the Earth’s mass to remain constant, in the geological past
the density and surface gravity of the Earth would have been considerably higher
than the present values. He estimated the original density to 9.13 g cm
3 or
3.46 g cm
3 larger than today. As to the surface temperature at two different epochs
at which the radius of the Earth was R1 and R2, respectively, he calculated
 1:14
T1 R2
¼ :
T2 R1

For the past climate it meant that an increase in radius of 1 % corresponded to a

3.7  C lower temperature. Contrary to later expansionists Halm argued that the
primitive Earth was entirely covered by water, the continents only arising along
with the expansion of the Earth.
Halm’s theory of the Earth as a slowly cooling and expanding rigid body offered
a new perspective on “the remarkable and fascinating suggestion regarding the
formation of the continents made recently by the German geologist Wegener.” At
the time Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift was not highly regarded and
rejected by a majority of geologists and palaeontologists. The major supporter of
drift in the 1930s was Halm’s compatriot, the South African geologist Alexander du
Toit. Halm’s theory evidently differed from Wegener’s, which assumed horizontal
plate displacements on an Earth of constant size. While Halm admitted that there
was no adequate physical force to move the continents in accordance with the drift
theory, he nonetheless thought that Wegener’s basic idea “is so strongly supported
by their [the continents’] present configurations that it cannot be lightly rejected.”
In agreement with Wegener, Halm believed that the continents derived from a
common supercontinent (Pangaea), only had this original continent split as a result
of the expansion. He did not think of the expanding Earth as an alternative to
continental drift, but rather as an improved version of it. “The single conception of
the Earth as an expanding body,” he wrote, “has based Wegener’s fascinating
theory on a sound physical principle and has opened new vistas of approach towards
the solution of the many problems which the history of our planet lays before us.”
Halm’s theory attracted very little attention, but some later proponents of
expansionism considered it a precursor of what in the 1960s emerged as the modern
expansion theory of the Earth and which will be dealt with in Chaps. 3 and 4.33
Although by 1935 the expansion of the universe was well known among astrono-
mers, Halm did not suggest a connection between planetary expansion and cosmic
expansion such as a few later expansionists would do. Indeed, he did not refer to the
latter phenomenon at all, and this for the simple reason that he did not believe in the
theory of the expanding universe. As he made clear in a companion article, he much

33
Carey (1988), p. 140.
14 1 Introductory Issues

preferred a classical explanation of the redshifts based on the static universe over
the “maze of abstruse speculations” that characterized the relativistic explanation.34
Halm consequently devised an explanation of the linear redshift-distance relation
which built on the assumption that an undisturbed wave of light may undergo
adiabatic expansion without violating energy conservation. Contrary to other
“tired-light” hypotheses of the period, Halm’s explanation did not appeal to inter-
action between light and matter, or between light and gravitational fields. Quantum
theory and Planck’s constant did not appear in his scheme, which was based solely
on a classical analysis of wave motion.

34
See Halm (1935b), which is reprinted in Kragh (2015d). The first tired-light hypothesis
accounting for Hubble’s redshift-distance relation was proposed by Fritz Zwicky as early as
August 1929, before the idea of an expanding universe was generally known.
Chapter 2
Varying Gravity

The unorthodox idea that the gravitational constant G varies slowly in time arose in
the late 1930s in the context of a cosmological theory proposed by the English
physicist Paul Dirac. The idea was received coolly, not only because it led to a
much too small age of the universe but also because it contradicted the general
theory of relativity and, on the top of that, was thought to be untestable. However,
Dirac’s idea was taken up and further developed by Pascual Jordan in Germany and
after World War II it slowly began to attract attention among physicists and
astronomers. In 1948 the hypothesis of varying gravity made its first connection
to the earth sciences in the form of an attempt, made by Edward Teller, to test the
hypothesis by means of a paleoclimatic argument. The test was inconclusive and
was initially ignored by the earth scientists.
Although varying gravity has no place in Einstein’s general theory of relativity it
is part of the “scalar–tensor” theories developed by Jordan, Carl Brans, Robert
Dicke and others. This chapter focuses on the contributions of Dirac, Jordan and
Dicke and their arguments for a gravitational constant decreasing over cosmic time.
In so far that these arguments were of a geophysical nature they will be dealt with in
more detail in Chap. 3.

2.1 Big G: The Gravitational Constant

The idea that the constant of gravitation G is not a true constant but varies in time
dates from the 1930s. It will be useful to look briefly at the earlier history of the
constant and the law of nature with which it is so firmly associated. Newton’s
famous law of universal gravitation dates back to Book III of the Principia from
1687. According to the standard formulation of this law—which was not Newton’s
formulation—two masses m and M separated by the distance r attract one another
by a force F given by

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 15

H. Kragh, Varying Gravity, Science Networks. Historical Studies 54,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24379-5_2
16 2 Varying Gravity

mM
F¼G :
r2

Here G is a gravitational constant with the same value everywhere in the universe.
Although Newton proposed the law on the basis of our solar system alone, he boldly
postulated its universal validity.
Newton’s law of gravitation is the first fundamental law of nature ever in the
history of science and it quickly came to be recognized as the foundation of celestial
mechanics and other branches of theoretical astronomy. It also played a crucial role
in early geodesy, geophysics, and gravity surveying. From a modern point of view
the important part of Newton’s law is “big G,” one of the first of the fundamental
constants of nature which are still today assigned this divine status. The first such
constant was the velocity of light c ffi 3  108 m s1 discovered in 1676 but only
recognized as a universal constant much later. In modern parlance big G is some-
times referred to as the “gravitational coupling coefficient” and stated in terms of a
very small dimensionless quantity, namely

2πm2
αG ¼ G ffi 1:8  1045 ;
hc

where m and h denote the electron’s mass and Planck’s constant, respectively.
However, one will look in vain for G or the term “gravitational constant” in
Principia or in other works from the early period. Newton and his successors in
the age of the Enlightenment saw the law of gravitation as a relation between
proportions and not between absolute quantities. In astronomical contexts the
absolute value of G was irrelevant, since only Gm or GM was important.1 The
goal of experimenters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was not to deter-
mine G but primarily to determine the mean density of the Earth, a quantity for
which the absolute value of G played no role.
Textbooks tell us that the English natural philosopher Henry Cavendish in a
celebrated experiment published in 1798 determined the value of G (Fig. 2.1). He
did not and had no intention of doing so. That Cavendish tried to measure G is
nothing but a myth, a textbook anachronism. He could have calculated G from the
measured density ρ of the Earth, its radius R and the surface acceleration g, which
quantities (assuming the Earth to be spherical) are related as

3 g
G¼ :
4π ρR

But Cavendish did not refer to G and neither did other physicists at the time. The

1
On pre-relativistic conceptions of the gravitational law and its associated constant, see Will
(1987), Ducheyne (2011), and Uzan and Lehoucq (2005), pp. 253–261. A detailed account of
experiments on gravitation until the 1890s is given in Mackenzie (1900). References to the
literature can be found in these sources.
2.1 Big G: The Gravitational Constant 17

Fig. 2.1 Cavendish’s torsion-balance apparatus designed to measure the mass of the Earth or
retrospectively the gravitational constant. Source: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
(1798), p. 526

title of his paper—his last one—was “Experiments to Determine the Density of the
Earth.” Using an improved version of an apparatus originally designed by John
Michell, an English clergyman and astronomer, Cavendish determined “to great
exactness” the mean density of the Earth to be 5.48 times the density of water.2
There was nothing in his analysis to require the gravitational constant, a quantity
which was of no relevance to his determination. Had Cavendish calculated G from
the experimental data obtained with his torsion balance he would have obtained
6.71  1011 m3 kg1 s2, a remarkably good result less than 1 % from its present
value.
Only in 1873 did two French physicists, Marie-Alfred Cornu and Jean-Baptiste
Baille, point out the importance of determining G in absolute terms. The title of
their paper referred specifically to “the constant of attraction” for which they used
the symbol f which at the time was common also among German physicists and
astronomers. For the mean density of the Earth the two Frenchmen arrived at the
value (5.530  0.030) g cm3.
It took another two decades until f or G became an established object of scientific
inquiry and soon regarded as more important than the Earth’s density. The British
physicist John H. Poynting at the Mason Science College, Birmingham, was among
the first to use the symbol G, argue for its fundamental nature, and actually

2
For details on Cavendish and his experiment, see Jungnickel and McCormmach (1999),
pp. 440–460.
18 2 Varying Gravity

measuring its value. In a paper of 1892 he reported G ¼ 6.6984  1011 m3 kg1 s2
corresponding to a mean density of the Earth of ρ ¼ 5.4934 g cm3. Three years
later his compatriot Charles V. Boys, a physicist at the Royal College of Science in
London, concluded from a series of careful experiments that
G ¼ 6.6579  1011 m3 kg1 s2 and ρ ¼ 5.5268 g cm3. The presently accepted
value of Newton’s constant is

G ¼ ð6:67384  0:00080Þ  1011 m3 kg1 s2 :

The quantity still remains the most difficult of the fundamental constants to
measure and the one known least accurately. This is not only because gravity is
such a weak force but also because the experimental apparatus cannot be shielded
from the gravitational influences of other bodies. While G is considered an
extremely important quantity, g (9.8067 m s2) and the mean density of the Earth
ρ (5.515 g cm3) is today of limited interest only.
The change in attitude in the late nineteenth century was spelled out by Boys in a
lecture of 1894 to the Royal Institution, where he described g to be merely “the
delight of the engineer and the practical man.” By contrast, G “represents that
mighty principle under the influence of which every star, planet, and satellite in the
universe pursues its allotted course.” Boys continued:
It is a mysterious power, which no man can explain; of its propagation through space, all
men are ignorant. It is in no way dependent on the accidental size or shape of the earth; if
the solar system ceased to exist it would remain unchanged. I cannot contemplate this
mystery, at which we ignorantly wonder, without thinking on the altar on Mars’ hill. When
will a St. Paul arise to declare it to us? Or is gravitation, like life, a mystery that can never be
solved?3

Some two decades later, a St. Paul did arise. Referring to Cavendish’s experi-
ment, Boys declared: “Owing to the universal character of the constant G, it seems
to me to be descending from the sublime to the ridiculous to describe the object of
this experiment as finding the mass of the earth or the mean density of the earth.”
On the theoretical side a prescient paper by the Irish physicist George Johnstone
Stoney deserves mention.4 In 1881 Stoney highlighted the significance of G by
raising it to a natural constant on par with other constants such as the elementary
charge e and the speed of light c. As to e, he derived the value from a corpuscular
interpretation of electrolytic experiments and proposed ten years later to call the
elementary charges “electrons.” By combining the three constants he proposed new
fundamental units for time, length and mass. For example, the Stoney unit for
length was the inconceivably small number

3
Boys (1894), p. 330.
4
Stoney (1881). See also Barrow (2002), pp. 18–23.
2.1 Big G: The Gravitational Constant 19

e pffiffiffiffi
lS ¼ G ffi 1037 m:
c2

The Stoney units were essentially the same as the better known Planck units first
introduced by Max Planck in 1899, at a time when he was not yet in possession of
the famous h constant named after him. The Planck length is 1.6  1035 m. At
about the same time there were several attempts to explain gravitation in terms of
electron theory or electromagnetism generally. However, none of the attempts came
even close to success and none of them questioned the constancy of G. On the other
hand, they resulted in the first values of the dimensionless ratio between the
gravitational and the electromagnetic interactions which a few decades later
would inspire Dirac to suggest a time-varying G. In 1882, at a time when the
electron had not yet been either named or discovered, the German astrophysicist
Carl Friedrich Z€ollner at Leipzig University derived the relation

e2
ffi 3  1040 :
Gm2

The quantity m refers to the mass of a hypothetical particle with the elementary
charge e. With the emergence of electron theory at the end of the century several
physicists investigated possible connections between electricity and gravitation.
Given that both forces vary inversely with the square of the distance it was tempting
to suppose some kind of connection. One of the physicists was the American
Bergen Davis at Columbia University, who in 1904 found the approximate value
8  1041 for Z€ ollner’s ratio. He based his derivation of the connection between
G and “the electrical constants of the ether” on the popular electromagnetic world
view. The early contributions of Z€ ollner and Davis are forgotten today, when the
dimensionless number of the order 1040 is often referred to as either Weyl’s or
Eddington’s number, referring to the German mathematician Hermann Weyl and
the British astronomer Arthur Eddington, respectively.5
The aim of most laboratory experiments on gravitation in the late nineteenth
century and the early twentieth century was to test if Newton’s law was valid at
relatively small distances and if it was independent of, for example, the composi-
tion of the masses or of the intervening medium. In an address of 1900, Poynting
stated that “the attempts to show that, under certain conditions, it [G] may not be
constant, have resulted so far in failure all along the line.”6 With these words
Poynting did not refer to the possibility that G might vary in time, a conjecture
which to my knowledge was absent from physics until the 1930s. Given that until
that time there was no generally accepted time frame of the universe this is perhaps
understandable. What could G possible vary with? It was only with the recognition

5
Davis (1904). For Z€ollner’s number, see Kragh (2012). Weyl first discussed the number 1040 in
1919 and Eddington in 1923.
6
Poynting (1920), p. 643. See also Ducheyne (2011), p. 2011.
20 2 Varying Gravity

of a cosmological arrow of time in the form of the expansion of the universe that the
question of a time-varying gravitational constant arose.

2.2 Dirac and the Magic of Large Numbers

In the late 1930s cosmological models based on the expanding solutions of

Einstein’s field equations were gaining ground.7 The canonical tensor equations
dating from 1917 and including the cosmological constant Λ are

1
Rμν  gμν R  Λgμν ¼ κT μν :
2

The equations express how the geometry of space-time relates to the content of
matter and energy as given by the energy-momentum tensor Tμν (μ,ν ¼ 1, 2, 3, 4).
The quantity Rμν is known as the Ricci tensor and R is a curvature invariant derived
from Rμν; the components of the fundamental tensor gμν are functions of the chosen
coordinates. Finally, the symbol κ denotes the Einstein gravitational constant which
is related to the Newtonian constant of gravitation G as

8π
κ¼ G:
c2

Although a minority of astronomers still defended a static picture of the universe,

the majority agreed that the universe is in a state of expansion and that the recession
rate of the galaxies corresponded to a value of the Hubble constant given by
H0 ffi 500 km s1 Mpc1 (1 Mpc ¼ 106 parsec ffi 3.1  1022 m).
Lemaı̂tre’s suggestion of a finite-age universe originating from a highly compact
“primeval atom” dates from 1931, but this kind of model was considered unattrac-
tive by most physicists and astronomers. To the extent there was a favoured model
of the universe, it was rather the Lemaı̂tre–Eddington model that assumed a gradual
expansion from a pre-existing static Einstein state. Moreover, not all agreed that
general relativity was the natural or only framework of cosmology. Edward Arthur
Milne’s alternative “kinematic theory” rested on very different conceptions of
space and time, including that space was just an abstract reference system and
therefore could have no curvature. For a decade or so Milne’s system attracted
much interest among British astronomers and physicists in particular (see further in
Sect. 2.4). Some of Milne’s ideas would continue to influence cosmological think-
ing decades after his death in 1950, but today they are largely forgotten.
The British theoretical physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was a Nobel laure-
ate of 1933 and famous for his fundamental contributions to quantum mechanics, a

7
The history of cosmology in the period is the subject of several books, including North (1965),
Kragh (1996), and Nussbaumer and Bieri (2009).
2.2 Dirac and the Magic of Large Numbers 21

Fig. 2.2 Paul A. M. Dirac.

Credit: Niels Bohr Archive,
Copenhagen

theory he co-founded with Werner Heisenberg and others in 1925 (Fig. 2.2). Three
years later he established a quantum wave equation for the electron in agreement
with the special theory of relativity and on the basis of this equation he predicted the
existence of the “antielectron” soon to be known as the positron. Although Dirac’s
entire work up to the mid-1930s had been in quantum theory he also had an interest
in Einstein’s general theory of relativity and its cosmological consequences.
Indeed, he was one of the first physicists to adopt Lemaı̂tre’s daring picture of a
universe with a violent beginning in time. In the spring of 1933 Dirac listened to a
talk Lemaı̂tre gave on his “primeval atom” theory in Cambridge and after the talk
he discussed the problems of cosmology with the Belgian physicist and priest.
Inspired by Lemaı̂tre, Milne and Eddington, in a brief note in Nature of February
1937 Dirac discussed the significance of two large dimensionless combinations of
constants of nature. In the CGS units used at the time the combinations were

T0 e2
ffi 2  10 39
and ffi 7  1038 :
e2 =mc3 GmM

The symbols e, c and G denote the elementary charge, the velocity of light in
vacuum and Newton’s gravitational constant, respectively. M is the proton’s mass
and m the electron’s mass, and T0 is the age of the universe since the “beginning
about 2  109 years ago, when all the spiral nebulae were shot out from a small
region of space, or perhaps from a point.”8 Dirac thought that the two very large
numbers of the order 1039 or 1040 must be related in a simple way, meaning that the
first expression must be roughly equal to the second. Further assuming that the
constants m, M, e and c are truly constant, it follows that the gravitational constant
decreases inversely with cosmic time:

8
Dirac (1937).
22 2 Varying Gravity

1 1 dG 1
G or  :
t G dt t

In his note of 1937 Dirac also referred to the quantity

ρ  c 3
N¼ ffi 1078 ;
M H

where c/H is the Hubble distance and ρ the average density of matter in the
universe, which he took to be 5  1031 g cm3. As Eddington had first observed,
the quantity is a measure of the number of protons (or nucleons) in the visible
universe. According to Dirac, it was no coincidence that this number N is close to
the square of the age of the universe measured in atomic time units. It implied, he
suggested, that protons would be created as the universe grew older, following

N  t2

Dirac proposed as a general principle that when two very large numbers of the order
1039 and 1078—or generally (1039)n, where n is a natural number—occur in nature,
they must be connected by a simple mathematical relation. This became known as
the Large Numbers Hypothesis (LNH), a name he only introduced in the 1970s and
which since then has stuck.9
The essence of Dirac’s hypothesis was that the laws of physics are evolutionary,
such as he stressed in a lecture he gave in Edinburgh in February 1939:
At the beginning of time the laws of Nature were probably very different from what they are
now. Thus we should consider the laws of Nature as continually changing with the epoch,
instead of as holding uniformly throughout space-time. . . . As we already have the laws of
Nature depending on the epoch, we should expect them also to depend on position in space,
in order to preserve the beautiful idea of the theory of relativity that there is a fundamental
similarity between space and time.10

In a follow-up paper to his note in Nature of 1937 Dirac developed his numer-
ological arguments into a quantitative cosmological model with testable conse-
quences. However, he now decided to drop the idea of accelerating creation of
matter with the sole argument that “there is no experimental justification for this

9
Dirac (1938) referred to the “Fundamental Principle.” He first spoke of the Large Numbers
Hypothesis in a talk given in 1972. See Dirac (1973a), p. 46. Pascual Jordan always referred to
“Dirac’s principle.” For more details on the history of the principle and Dirac’s cosmology, see
Kragh (1990), pp. 223–246 and also Barrow and Tipler (1986). Many of Dirac’s arguments
concerning the nature and use of the LNH were questionable and based on somewhat arbitrary
assumptions. See, for example, Klee (2002) for an interesting critical review. However, from the
point of view of the present book this is less relevant.
10
Dirac (1939), p. 128.
2.2 Dirac and the Magic of Large Numbers 23

assumption.”11 From the LNH he obtained for the scale factor R that it increased in
time according to

RðtÞ  t1=3 :

This implied a deceleration parameter of

 00 
RR
q0   0 ¼ 2:
R2 0

The symbols R0 and R00 denotes dR/dt and d2R/dt2, respectively. While at the time a
deceleration as high as q0 ¼ 2 was not ruled out by observation, the predicted age of
the universe was highly problematic. From Dirac’s theory it follows that the present
age relates to the Hubble constant H0 according to

T H 1 1
t0 ¼ ¼ H0 :
3 3

As Dirac noted with an understatement, this gave the “rather small” age of 7  108
years or less than one third of the age of the Earth as determined by radioactive
methods. Dirac’s value of t0 ¼ 7  108 years or TH ¼ 2.1  109 years is a little
puzzling since it corresponds to a Hubble constant H0 ¼ 465 km s1 Mpc1. In
1938 the accepted value, as determined by Edwin Hubble, was
H0 ¼ 540 km s1 Mpc1 or TH ¼ 1.8  109 years. No astronomical measurements
indicated a value less than 500 km s1 Mpc1. Dirac gave no source for his value.
Instead of considering the disagreement between the two time-scales a mortal blow
against his theory he vaguely suggested that the problem might be solved if the rate
of radioactive decay—on which geochronology relied—decreased in cosmic time.
Dirac further argued that the only geometry compatible with the LNH was flat or
Euclidean space and also that the LNH ruled out a non-zero cosmological constant.
He thus ended up with a model somewhat similar to the model that Einstein and
Willem de Sitter proposed in 1932 and in which the universe expands as

RðtÞ  t2=3 :

But whereas the Einstein–de Sitter model was a special case of the cosmological
field equations, Dirac’s was not. He realized that the assumption of G(t) was
incompatible with general relativity.
For the sake of completeness it should be mentioned that the American-Israeli
physicist Samuel Sambursky independently of Dirac considered the possibility of a
decreasing G.12 However, the main purpose of Sambursky’s paper was to offer a

11
Dirac (1938), p. 204.
12
Sambursky (1937).
24 2 Varying Gravity

static alternative to the expanding universe based on the assumption that Planck’s
constant h decreases exponentially with time. He suggested that a larger G in the
past implied that old stars had originally had a lower mass than ordinarily assumed.
Dirac’s cosmological model of 1938 resulted in two testable consequences. First,
the age of the universe was only about 700 million years; second, the gravitational
constant decreased according to

1 dG 3
¼  3H 0 ¼  :
G dt TH

With the value of H0 accepted at the time it meant a relative change of about 1010
per year, which was thought to be detectable only in principle. In his paper of 1938
Dirac did not mention this second consequence explicitly, but it follows directly
from his theory. In the subsequent discussions of Dirac’s theory the G(t) hypothesis
was in focus, whereas his expanding cosmological model received almost no
attention. The possibility of testing G(t) indirectly by means of its consequences
with respect to the Earth in the past was not mentioned by Dirac or others before
Edward Teller’s paper of 1948 to be considered in Sect. 2.5.
With only five citations in the period 1938–1947 (according to Web of Science)
Dirac’s cosmological paper of 1938 was not an immediate success (Fig. 2.3). He
could not possibly have foreseen the rich and diverse literature his theory would
eventually give rise to. Until 1978 Dirac’s paper received 165 citations in scientific
journals, a number which can be taken as a rough indication of the popularity of the
G(t) hypothesis in the period. Interestingly, a substantial part of the citations
appeared in the context of the geological sciences (Table 2.1).
In a letter of 1967 Gamow recalled Dirac’s suggestion of a varying G: “The first
criticism of this idea was made by [Niels] Bohr. I still remember him coming to my
room (I was visiting Copenhagen at that time) with the fresh issue of Nature in his

32

30

28

26

24

22

20

18

16

14

12

10

0
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015

Fig. 2.3 Citations to Dirac (1938). Credit: Web of Science

2.2 Dirac and the Magic of Large Numbers 25

Table 2.1 Citations to Dirac Main subject of journals and papers Number of citations
(1938) in the period
Physics 69
1938–1978
Astrophysics and cosmology 63
Earth and planetary sciences 33
Source: Web of Science

hands, saying: ‘Look what happens to people when they get married.’”13 Dirac’s
unorthodox theory was criticized on methodological grounds, but attracted little
scientific interest among physicists and even less among astronomers. Geophysi-
cists and other earth scientists either ignored it or, more likely, were unaware of it.14
According to the astrophysicist and philosopher Herbert Dingle, the G(t) theory was
a regrettable example of a “pseudo-science of invertebrate cosmythology.”15
Eddington was less vehement in his rejection, but not much kinder. Although part
of Dirac’s theory was inspired by Eddington’s ideas, he dismissed the theory as
“unnecessarily complicated and fantastic.”16 Varying constants of nature were
anathema to Eddington.
On the other hand, a few astrophysicists responded with interest to Dirac’s
hypothesis which they speculated might be useful in understanding the interior of
stars. Inspired by Dirac’s note in Nature, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar suggested
that the number of particles in a star might vary as t3/2.17 Daulat Singh Kothari,
another Indian astrophysicist, applied Dirac’s reasoning to the theory of white
dwarf stars,18 and in California the astronomer Fritz Zwicky did the same in the
case of the even denser neutron stars. As Zwicky pointed out, “[Dirac’s] hypothesis
must naturally be regarded as mere speculation unless it allows us to draw further
conclusions which are in agreement with observational facts.”19 While Zwicky
thought that such conclusions might be relevant to astrophysics neither he nor
others at the time thought of conclusions related to the past of the Earth. That
only came with Teller’s (1948) paper on the Earth’s paleoclimate and Jordan’s book
of 1952, where the expanding Earth and the varying-G hypothesis were first
connected. It was thus quite wrong, when a later geologist wrote that “Earth

13
Gamow to the American geophysicist Philip H. Abelson, 1 September 1967, reproduced in
Gamow (1967b), p. 767. On 2 January 1937 Dirac married Margit Wigner Balasz, the sister of the
Hungarian-American physicist Eugene Wigner.
14
The leading geophysicist Harold Jeffreys was aware of Dirac’s hypothesis as early as June 1937,
when he commented on the hypothetical-deductive methodology of Dirac, Milne and Eddington
(see Nature 141: 1004–1006). However, neither at this nor at later occasions did he mention the G
(t) hypothesis and its possible geological consequences.
15
Dingle (1937). See Kragh (1996), pp. 69–71 for Dingle’s attack on Dirac’s theory and other
fundamental theories which he accused of being rationalistic fantasies with no foundation in either
experiment or observation.
16
Eddington (1939), p. 234.
17
Chandrasekhar (1937).
18
Kothari (1938).
19
Zwicky (1939), p. 733.
26 2 Varying Gravity

scientists have been conscious of the possibility of Earth expansion ever since Dirac
. . . suggested that the gravitational constant may be slowly decreasing.”20
Among the few physicists who valued Dirac’s hypothesis was the young
Frenchman Jacques Solomon, who discussed Dirac’s article of 1938 shortly after
it had appeared.21 In an early investigation of quantum gravity Solomon mentioned
that together with Planck’s constant h and the proton’s mass M the gravitational
constant defined a length unit given by

h2
ffi 1027 cm:
GM3

This length, he pointed out, was of roughly the same order of magnitude as the
radius of the static Einstein universe as given by

1 c 1
RE ¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffi :
2 πG ρ

Noting that the Fermi constant GF in the theory of beta radioactivity was about
1013 (if expressed in the unit erg), Solomon further suggested that, according to
the LNH, GF might decrease with cosmic time according to

1
GF  :
t1=3

Since the decay constant λβ is proportional to the square of GF the suggestion

implied that beta-active substances would decay at a different rate in the past than
presently. Solomon argued that in this way the age of the Earth might be reconciled
with the age of the universe.

2.3 Jordan’s Cosmological System

The eminent German physicist Ernst Pascual Jordan had in 1925 been a co-founder
of the new quantum mechanics and a few years later, together with Dirac, he
established the foundation of quantum field theory (Fig. 2.4). Between 1929 and
1944 Jordan worked as professor at the University of Rostock. During this period he
increasingly turned toward less mainstream areas of science, including cosmology
and what he called “quantum biology,” an ambitious attempt to understand life on
the basis of quantum physics. Adding to his diminished scientific reputation and

20
Smith (1978).
21
Solomon (1938). Solomon, a Jew and a communist, was active in the French resistance
movement during the early years of World War II. He was executed by the Germans in 1942.
2.3 Jordan’s Cosmological System 27

Fig. 2.4 Pascual Jordan

(right) in conversation with
Werner Heisenberg (left)
and Max Delbrück in
Copenhagen 1936. Credit:
Niels Bohr Archive,
Copenhagen

estrangement from mainstream physics was his strong support for Hitler’s Third
Reich. Jordan joined the Nazi party in 1933 and after the German defeat in World
War II he had to go through a de-nazification process. Only in 1953 did he again
become a full professor of physics, this time in Hamburg. For quite some time his
reputation was tainted by his Nazi past. For example, as late as about 1960 the
American physicist Joshua Goldberg had misgivings about supporting Jordan with
funds from the U.S. Air Force because the German physicist “had been close to the
Nazi government.”22
“I am the only one who has been ready to take Dirac’s world model seriously . . .
and to consider its more precise formulation,” Jordan rightly commented in a book
of 1952. He described Dirac’s LNH and the resulting G(t) hypothesis as “one of the
great insights of our time.”23 Until captivated by Dirac’s LNH Jordan had worked
almost exclusively in quantum theory and paid no attention to the problems of
gravity and general relativity. The meeting with Dirac’s hypothesis changed his
research track dramatically, such as he recalled in a report from 1961:
My interest in general relativity arose when I became acquainted with Dirac’s cosmological
speculations, which lead him in 1937 to his hypothesis about cosmologically diminishing
gravitation. I have been then nearly the only one among physicists who was really
fascinated by Dirac’s idea and convinced by his arguments, and tried to think more about
them. . . . I felt myself necessitated to study more thoroughly general relativity, a branch of
modern physics to which before these events I had devoted only cursory attention, having
been busied with the fascinating problems of quantum mechanics or quantum field theory—
which I had to lay aside now in order to study gravitation.24

22
Goldberg (1992), p. 95. Goldberg was a leading physicist in the Aeronautical Research Labo-
ratories (ARL) established in 1955 by the U.S. Air Force. For Jordan and ARL, see Sect. 2.6.
Jordan was not invited to participate in the 1958 Solvay Congress on gravitation and cosmology.
One may speculate that one of the reasons was that his past as a Nazi was not easily forgotten in
formerly occupied Belgium.
23
Jordan (1952), p. 137.
24
Jordan (1961b), p. 2.
28 2 Varying Gravity

Jordan shared with Dirac that he was an early convert to Lemaı̂tre’s picture of an
exploding universe, which he endorsed even before he got involved with Dirac’s
LNH and its associated cosmological ideas. In a semi-popular book of 1936 Jordan
wrote as follows:
Ten billion years ago—Lemaı̂tre especially deserves credit because of the closer execution
of this representation—the initially small universe arose from an original explosion. Not
only atoms, stars and Milky Way systems but also space and time were born at that time.
Since then the universe has been growing, growing with the furious velocity which we
detect in the flight of the spiral nebulae.25

In a series of papers starting the following year Jordan developed his own
cosmological system that incorporated some of the numerological ideas of Edding-
ton and Dirac, including the assumption of a decreasing gravitational constant.26
However, contrary to Dirac he maintained the conclusion of a spontaneous creation
of matter following N ~ t2. In a booklet of 1947 titled Die Herkunft der Sterne (The
Origin of the Stars), Jordan gave a comprehensive survey of his cosmological and
astrophysical ideas based on what he called “Dirac’s principle.” A popular sum-
mary account appeared the same year.27
Rather than hydrogen atoms being formed individually and continually through-
out space, Jordan proposed the more radical idea that entire stars and galaxies were
formed ex nihilo along with the expansion of space.28 While the mass of the
universe increased as t2, he concluded that the mass of an individual star would
increase as t3/2. This was not to be understood in the sense that a star continuously
became heavier, but in the sense that the later in the history of the universe a star
was formed the heavier it would be.
According to Jordan, a star would start its life as a spontaneously created droplet
of matter with density equal to that of an atomic nucleus, ρ ffi 2  1014 g cm3. Such
a nuclear droplet he identified with a supernova, which initially would have a radius
of only 1 mm. (There is some similarity between Jordan’s ideas and the later
concept of the hypothetical “white holes” as time-reversed black holes.) However,
as pointed out by Hermann Bondi, the rate of supernova formation following from
the scenario was much too high.29 Although Jordan’s picture of the stellar universe
was clearly speculative, he maintained that it agreed with “the epistemological

25
Jordan (1936), p. 152. The book appeared in an English translation as Physics of the 20th
Century (New York: Philosophical Library, 1944). On Jordan’s cosmological theories and refer-
ences to his work in this area, see Kragh (2004), pp. 175–185.
26
Jordan (1937, 1939, 1944).
27
Jordan (1947a, b).
28
As expressed by Singh (1970), p. 233, in Jordan’s theory stars came “literally out of the blue like
Athena leaping forth from Zeus’s brain mature and in complete armour.” On the request of his
former professor Max Born, Jordan wrote a summary article in English of his work in cosmology
and astrophysics. See Jordan (1949) and also the critical review of Jordan’s theory in North (1965),
pp. 205–208.
29
Bondi (1952), p. 164.
2.3 Jordan’s Cosmological System 29

requirements of positivism.”30 Perhaps it did, but if so it was not enough to

convince the majority of physicists and astronomers of its soundness. Very few
shared the view of Paul Couderc, an astronomer at the Paris Observatory, according
to whom Jordan’s cosmology was of “undeniable elegance.”31
The world model that Jordan arrived at was indebted to Lemaı̂tre as well as to
Dirac, but he developed it in his own way. The correspondence between the
research interests of Jordan and Dirac is remarkable. Not only did the two physicists
develop much of quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory in parallel,
Jordan (collaborating with Eugene Wigner) also came close to the relativistic wave
equation of the electron that Dirac published in early 1928. They both accepted
Lemaı̂tre’s model of the universe at an early time. When Dirac proposed the
existence of magnetic monopoles in 1931, Jordan was the only physicist to take
up the theory and develop it further. The same kind of interaction at a distance
occurred in the case of Dirac’s G(t) cosmology.
According to Jordan there once had been an Urexplosion (primeval explosion)—
a kind of big bang—and since then the universe had expanded linearly with time
(R ¼ ct), implying that the age of the universe equals the Hubble time. Like
Lemaı̂tre, but contrary to Dirac, Jordan argued that cosmic space must have a
small positive curvature and therefore be finite. On the other hand, he followed
Dirac and most other cosmologists in putting the cosmological constant equal to
zero. Jordan’s Urexplosion was not really an explosive event of Lemaı̂tre’s type, for
it started in an incredibly small and empty space out of which a pair of neutrons was
produced. Only with the expansion of space did matter in the form of atoms, and
eventually stars and galaxies, come into existence.
The continual creation of matter might seem to rule out a description of the
universe in terms of general relativity, but Jordan suggested that energy was in fact
conserved during the entire cosmic process. Reviving an Eddington-inspired idea
first proposed by the Austrian physicist Arthur Haas,32 Jordan argued that the mass
increase caused by the creation of new matter m was exactly compensated for by the
increase in negative potential energy due to the expansion. If the mass of the
universe contained within the Hubble radius R ¼ cT is denoted M the Haas–Jordan
requirement can be written as

GmM
mc2  ¼ 0:
R

Thus, the universe was born with zero total energy and would remain in a zero
energy state in agreement with the law of energy conservation.33 The positive rest

30
Jordan (1944), p. 190.
31
“The construction erected by Pascual Jordan is of undeniable elegance, and at any rate suggests
a simple and brilliant interpretation of the expansion.” Couderc (1952), p. 225.
32
Haas (1936). Arthur Erich Haas was at the time professor of physics at Notre Dame University in
Indiana. An account of his work in speculative cosmology can be found in Kragh (2004),
pp. 189–194.
33
Jordan (1939, p. 66, 1949, p. 638).
30 2 Varying Gravity

energy of a new star mc2 cancels the negative gravitational energy due to it.
The Haas-Jordan idea of a zero-energy universe has a curious history. It was first
suggested by Haas in 1936 and then by Jordan (citing Haas) in 1939. Thirty-three
years later the idea was independently reintroduced by Edward Teller, who
discussed it on the basis of Dirac’s cosmological theory. The following year
Edward Tryon, a physicist at the City University of New York, once again “dis-
covered” the zero-energy closed universe, this time in the context of quantum
cosmology. Tryon ascribed the idea to a topological argument made by the relativist
Peter Bergmann. A few years later it was “rediscovered” by S. Warren Carey (see
Sect. 4.1) and in modern cosmology the idea is popular in various inflation
scenarios of the early universe. Teller, Tryon, Carey as well as most other scientists
seem to have been unaware of their predecessors. Based on reasoning related to
Mach’s principle the British physicist Dennis Sciama proposed the same idea in
1953, if in the approximate form GM/Rc2 ffi 1.34 In this form it was also discussed
by several other physicists, both in relation to relativistic models and the steady-
state theory. As we shall see in Sect. 2.7, the relation played an important role for
Robert Dicke in his attempt to revise and extend general relativity theory.
The greater part of Jordan’s cosmological and astrophysical ideas were devel-
oped during or shortly after World War II and for this reason alone they were not
well known among Western scientists. However, they did attract some attention in
Germany where they were taken up by several astronomers and physicists. One of
them was the astronomer Paul ten Bruggencate, director of the G€ottingen Univer-
sity Observatory, who was in contact with Jordan and had an interest in problems of
a cosmological nature. In 1945 Bruggencate published a paper in the proceedings of
the G€ ottingen Academy of Sciences in which he examined for the first time the
luminosity, age and energy production of the Sun on the Dirac–Jordan assumption
of G ~ 1/t.35 Assuming an age of the universe of 6.5  109 years he calculated from
Jordan’s theory the plausible age of 3.6  109 years for the Sun. Bruggencate also
calculated in his little-known paper how the Sun’s luminosity would depend on its
age, finding that in the past the Sun would have been considerably brighter than
today. He briefly referred to the possible consequences for the history of the Earth
but without recognizing that a brighter sun might cause problems with regard to the
Earth’s climate in the geological past.
As mentioned, in 1938 Dirac hinted that the age problem might be solved if one
assumed radioactive decay to vary with the epoch. In the same year Jordan
suggested that the Fermi constant of weak interactions might depend on G and
therefore vary in time.36 The idea of a possible connection between beta decay and
gravitation was aired by several physicists in the 1930s, including notables such as

34
Teller (1972), Tryon (1973), Carey (1978), Sciama (1953).
35
ten Bruggencate (1948), which originally appeared in the proceedings of the G€
ottingen Acad-
emy in 1945.
36
Jordan (1938). As mentioned, in the same year Solomon suggested a similar idea.
2.3 Jordan’s Cosmological System 31

Wolfgang Pauli, Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr. According to Pauli, “present-day
classical field theories, including the relativistic theory of gravitation, do not give a
satisfactory interpretation of the essentially positive character of the constant κ
[¼8πG/c2], which is responsible for the fact that gravitation manifests itself as an
attraction and not a repulsion of gravitating masses.” He continued:
Such an interpretation could consist only in the reduction of the constant κ to the square of
another constant of nature. This suggests looking for phenomena in which the square root of
the constant κ plays a part. While hitherto it has been regarded as almost certain that
gravitational phenomena play practically no part in nuclear physics, it now appears that the
possibility that the phenomena of β-radioactivity might be connected with the square root of
κ can no longer be rejected out of hand.37

In the case of radiometric dating by means of beta decay (as in the Rb-Sr and
K-Ar methods) Jordan hypothesized that beta-active elements did not follow the
ordinary Rutherford–Soddy exponential law

dN
¼ λN ðtÞ;
dt

where λ is the decay constant. Instead it might follow a law of the form

dN pffi
¼ λ* N ðtÞ t:
dt

Here λ* is a true constant, meaning that the measured mean lifetime varies as t½.
With this hypothesis he hoped to bring the age of the oldest rocks into agreement
with his cosmology based on the G(t) hypothesis. In a later paper co-authored by
Fritz Houtermans the hypothesis was corrected to

dN 1  pffi 
¼ λ* N ðtÞpffi or N ðtÞ ¼ N 0 exp 2λ* t :
dt t

The time variation was assumed to be valid for positive and negative beta decay and
for K-capture, but not for alpha decay.38 The German physicist Helmut H€onl, a
former student of Arnold Sommerfeld, agreed that the Jordan–Houtermans
approach or some other application of Dirac’s ideas might be the best way to
solve the grave time scale difficulty.39

37
Pauli (1936), p. 76; see also Jordan (1944), p. 186.
38
Houtermans and Jordan (1946), Jordan (1947a), p. 20. Together with the British physicist Robert
Atkinson, in 1929 Houtermans pioneered quantum-mechanical nuclear astrophysics. See Kragh
(1996), pp. 85–87. After World War II he specialized in geophysics and meteoritics, including
radiometric dating methods. In 1953 he estimated the age of the Earth to be 4.5 billion years. For
Houtermans’ work and eventful life, see Amaldi (2012).
39
H€onl (1949). See also Dehm (1949).
32 2 Varying Gravity

As late as 1969 Jordan considered it a possibility that the Fermi constant

governing beta decay might vary in time in a manner similar to the variation of
gravity. He suspected that the age of the Earth as determined by beta radioactivity
would be greater than the age as inferred by alpha radioactivity.40 The hypothesis
was taken up at a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in June
1957, where Houtermans and other participants—including geologists as well as
physicists—discussed the ideas of Dirac, Jordan, Dicke and other physicists that
some of the constants of nature might vary with time.41 The question of a variation
in time of beta decay was investigated empirically by two Canadian physicists,
E. Kanasewich and J. Savage from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver,
who concluded that the “Rutherford theory” of no time-variation agreed better with
data than the Dirac theory.42
Jordan was not the only physicist of repute to consider G-dependent decay times
of nuclear particles and nor was he the only one to move into the foreign land of
geophysics in the post-World War II era. The British physicist Patrick Blackett, a
Nobel laureate of 1948, had no previous training in geophysics. He entered the field
as an amateur and mostly learned it himself through a close reading of Holmes’
Principles of Physical Geology. In the late 1940s Blackett proposed a fundamental
theory of terrestrial magnetism which aimed at connecting gravitation and magne-
tism. He suggested that any rotating body, as a result of its rotation, possessed a
magnetic field. Although the “Blackett effect” was never confirmed, it led him to
design a sensitive magnetometer for paleomagnetic investigations. His extensive
studies of geomagnetism soon turned him into a supporter of continental drift.43
Some of Blackett’s ideas were clearly inspired by the LNH and similar cosmo-
physical speculations of a numerological kind. For example, he found that the
magnetic moments of the Earth and the Sun were nearly proportional to their
angular momenta and that the constant of proportionality could be related to the
inverse of Dirac’s large number in the form e2/m2G ffi 1042. Whereas his suggestion
of gravitational magnetism was dismissed by most theoretical physicists, in letters
from about 1950 Jordan expressed interest in it.44 Numerology in the style of Dirac
and Jordan was not new to Blackett. In 1939 he speculated that the mean life τ0 of
the “mesotron” (or meson, now the muon) might depend on the gravitational
constant. Blackett’s expression for the dependency can be written as

40
Jordan (1969b), pp. 254–255. See also Jordan et al. (1964), p. 505.
41
See Aldrich et al. (1958). This was possibly the first scientific conference ever specifically
devoted to the relationship between cosmology and geology.
42
Kanasewich and Savage (1963).
43
Blackett’s important work in geomagnetism and other parts of geophysics is considered in
Frankel (2012b) and Nye (2004).
44
According to Nye (2004), p. 17. See also Jordan (1955), pp. 271–272.
2.3 Jordan’s Cosmological System 33

Fig. 2.5 Physicists in front of the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, commemorating Niels Bohr
and the fiftieth anniversary of his atomic model. Jordan (second row to the left) was at the time
busy developing his theory of the expanding Earth, Dirac ( first row) was beginning to reconsider
his varying-gravity theory, and Blackett ( first row) focused on geomagnetism and continental
drift. On the first row, from the left: A. Pais, F. Bloch, F. Hund, W. Houston, C. Møller,
D. Dennison, I. Rabi, V. Weisskopf, Aa. Bohr, P. Dirac, O. Frisch, O. Klein, W. Heisenberg,
P. Blackett, R. Courant, and A. Rubinowicz. On the third row, third and fourth from the right:
J. Wheeler, C. Weizsäcker. Credit: Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen

e3
τ0 ¼ pffiffiffiffi ;
μ2 c3 G

where μ denotes the mass of the mesotron, about 200 electron masses.45 “It was
shown,” Blackett commented a few years later, “that the mean life of the meson at
rest probably depended on the gravitational constant, and so, through general
relativity theory, on the total mass of the universe.”46 He thought that the mean
life might vary as the square root of the age of the universe. The idea was taken up
by Jordan in his proposal of a possible time-variation of the decay constant of beta
radioactivity. Whereas Blackett did not assume Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis, Jordan did,
which caused him to suggest that the lifetime of beta-emitters varied proportionally
to the square root of the age of the universe.47 Since the mid-1950s Blackett and
Jordan increasingly focused on geophysics, the first turning into an advocate of
continental drift and the second of the expanding Earth (Fig. 2.5).

45
Blackett (1939).
46
Blackett (1941), p. 213.
47
Jordan (1944).
34 2 Varying Gravity

2.4 “A Landmark in Human Thought”

The general idea of time-varying laws of physics, including a gravitational constant

varying in time, had been anticipated by Milne, Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Oxford, in his theory of so-called kinematic cosmology.48 This theory
rested on a penetrating analysis of the concept of time which led him to conclude
that nature can be described by at least two different time parameters. Optical and
atomic phenomena would run according to “kinematic time” (t), whereas mecha-
nical phenomena such as pendulum clocks, planetary motions and the rotation of
the Earth kept “dynamical time” (τ). Milne found that the two time scales were
connected by
 
t dτ dt
τ ¼ t0 log þ t0 or ¼ :
t0 t0 t

The constant t0 can be interpreted as the present epoch, making the two times equal
at present. On the t-scale the gravitational constant varied as G ~ t and the universe
was expanding from a singular point in space; but on the τ-scale G would remain
constant and the universe be static, with its history stretching infinitely backwards
to τ ¼ 1. Likewise, although the age of the Earth was approximately 3  109
years as determined from radioactive decay (t time), in the past the dynamical year
was shorter than the kinematic year and consequently the Earth was much older as
measured in the dynamical τ-time.
Based upon kinematic time Milne reasoned that the constant of gravitation
would increase with the epoch according to

c3
G¼ t:
M0

Milne referred to M0 as the fictitious or apparent mass of the universe, namely, the
extrapolated mass around an observer from r ¼ 0 to r ¼ ct. With t ¼ TH he found
M ¼ 2.55  1052 kg, which corresponds nicely to the number of nucleons in the
apparent universe of the same order as the Eddington–Dirac number 1079
(1 kg ffi 6  1026 nucleon masses, meaning M ¼ 1.5  1079 nucleon masses). How-
ever, Milne’s real universe was uniform and infinite, hence containing an infinite
number of particles.
The relation G ~ t had the advantage that shortly after t ¼ 0, when the galaxies
were closely packed, there would be no gravitational pull to brake the rapid
expansion. With increasing time G would grow, but now the galaxies would be
so far apart that gravitation could be ignored. As Milne pointed out, in Dirac’s
theory the situation was just the opposite. In a paper of 1938, where he extended his
kinematic relativity theory to cover also electromagnetic phenomena, Milne

48
Milne (1935). The theory is analysed in Cohen (1949–1950) and North (1965), pp. 149–185.
2.4 “A Landmark in Human Thought” 35

considered Dirac’s LNH. However, he concluded that there was no room for
G decreasing inversely with the cosmic epoch within his own system.49
The relative change of G in Milne’s system would be about dG/Gdt ¼ 5  1010
per year, but the rate was of no great significance to Milne, who placed all of his
results, including G ~ t, in a conventionalist perspective. He emphasized that the
relation did not imply that local gravitation, as in the solar system or on the surface
of the Earth, increases in strength. In fact, he did not consider G ~ t to be subject to
experimental test at all. Frederick L. Arnot, a lecturer of physics at St. Andrews
University in Scotland, developed a cosmological theory along the lines of Milne
and Dirac.50 On the basis of Milne’s two time-scales and “without any appeal to
general relativity” he showed that

GM ¼ kc3 t:

The quantity k is a dimensionless constant of the order of unity. For the total number
of particles he obtained, like Dirac in 1937,

1
N ¼ t2 ;
2

where t is expressed in atomic units. Contrary to Dirac and Milne, in Arnot’s system
the universe was not expanding in either of the two time-scales. To account for
Hubble’s redshift-distance relation he proposed that the speed of light varied
in time.
Despite the obvious differences between the cosmological systems of Dirac and
Milne, the latter’s ideas had a considerable impact on Dirac’s thinking. In an
interview with the physicist and author David Peat from the early 1970s, Dirac
said: “One should give Milne the credit for having the insight of thinking that
perhaps the gravitational constant is not really constant at all. Nobody else had
questioned that previously.”51 At a conference in Tallahassee in 1975 Dirac simi-
larly praised Milne’s distinction between the atomic and the mechanical time scale.
“In fact,” he said, “it really started me off on this whole line of work.”52
The British evolutionary biologist John B. S. Haldane at University College
London was fascinated by Milne’s ideas. In two papers of 1945 he developed this
“landmark in human thought,” as he called Milne’s theory, into a speculative
cosmological theory. The result was nothing less than “a quantum theory of the
origin of the solar system.”53 There is no need to deal in detail with Haldane’s

49
Milne (1938).
50
Arnot (1938). See also the more elaborate theory put forward in Arnot (1941).
51
Online as http://www.fdavidpeat.com/interviews/dirac.htm.The interview is published in Buck-
ley and Peat (1979).
52
Dirac (1978c), p. 8.
53
Haldane (1945a, b). See also Barrow and Tipler (1986), pp. 244–245 and Kragh (2004),
pp. 221–224.
36 2 Varying Gravity

admittedly amateurish and “wildly speculative” theory (his own expression) except
noting that it resulted in a new picture of the history of the Earth. The radioactive
decay law translated from kinematic to dynamical time by means of dτ/t0 ¼ dt/t
yields

dN t
¼ λN ðtÞ :
dτ t0

It follows that the rate of decay will first increase and only subsequently, after
having passed a maximum at t ¼ 1/λ, decrease. This, Haldane suggested, led to a
new picture of the heat economy of the Earth that differed from the one obtained by
John Joly, Arthur Holmes and most other physical geologists: “We reach the
surprising conclusion,” Haldane wrote, “that the heat production per year by
radioactivity in the earth’s crust is not diminishing, as has been assumed so far,
but is increasing and will increase for some 1000 million years.”54 Surprising
indeed.
Haldane did his best to interest astronomers and geologists in his theory, but his
attempts were completely unsuccessful. Although Milne endorsed it enthusiasti-
cally, it was ignored by the geological community. Thornton Page, an American
astronomer and former student of Milne, referred to Haldane’s theory in a popular
review article on the origin of the Earth. Although Page found the theory to be
interesting, he also characterized it as “the most bizarre suggestion of all in this field
already rich in speculation.”55 Bizarre it was, and soon forgotten.56 It was Dirac’s G
(t) theory that eventually established contact between cosmology and geology, and
not the Milne–Haldane theory. In his two publications of 1945 Haldane ignored
Dirac’s theory of varying gravity and stuck to Milne’s.

2.5 Paleoclimatology Enters Cosmology

The Hungarian-American nuclear physicist Edward Teller was in 1935–1942 a

colleague of Gamow at the George Washington University. He shared Gamow’s
interest in astrophysics and in 1939 the two collaborated on a theory of galaxy
formation within the context of the expanding universe.57 After wartime work in the
Manhattan Project Teller took up a position as professor at the University of
Chicago. In 1947 he participated in the tenth Washington Conference on

54
Haldane (1945b), p. 140.
55
Page (1948), p. 23.
56
Haldane’s theory was critically reviewed by Lemaı̂tre and also by the philosopher Robert
Cohen. See references in Kragh (2004), p. 225. See also Stanley-Jones (1949). Today the theory
is forgotten, and perhaps justly so. It is briefly mentioned in Brush (2001), p. 164.
57
Gamow and Teller (1939).
2.5 Paleoclimatology Enters Cosmology 37

Theoretical Physics, the topic of which was “Gravitation and Electromagnetism,”

and during the meeting he discussed Dirac’s cosmological theory with Gamow and
the Princeton astrophysicist Martin Schwarzschild.58 The following year Teller
published a brief paper in Physical Review in which he argued that the G(t)
hypothesis led to consequences in conflict with established paleontological knowl-
edge.59 His argument was of the retrodictive rather than predictive kind, in so far
that he suggested a scenario of what the Earth would have looked like in the past if
certain conditions—such as the constant of gravitation—were altered. He then
compared this hypothetical past, or rather the present consequences of this past,
with the actual Earth. For more than two decades Teller’s paper played an important
role in the interplay of geology and cosmology, but today it is not well known.
Teller seems himself to have considered it rather unimportant, a mere parenthesis in
his scientific career.60
Teller’s argument assumed that the temperature of the Earth’s surface depends
directly on the energy flux received from the Sun. He did not take into account
cloud formation or other meteorological factors. From astrophysical theory he
assumed the solar luminosity to vary as

L  G7 M5 ;

where M is the mass of the Sun. The temperature at the Earth’s surface, at a distance
r from the Sun, follows from the Stefan–Boltzmann law in the form

L  1=4
2
¼ σT 4 or T  L=r 2 :
4πr

Classical mechanics yields

r 2 v2 ¼ GMr;

where v is the orbital velocity of the Earth. Teller noticed that this quantity will
remain constant even if G varies in time, which is a consequence of angular
momentum conservation (L ¼ rmv ~ rv). It follows that the radius of the Earth’s
orbit varies as

1
r :
GM

58
Martin Schwarzschild (1912–1997) was the son of the famous German astronomer Karl
Schwarzschild (1873–1916). After studies in mathematics and astronomy in G€ ottingen and Berlin,
in 1937 he moved to the United States where he obtained a position at Columbia University and in
1942 became a U.S. citizen. In 1947 he accepted a position at Princeton University.
59
Teller (1948).
60
In his extensive memoirs Teller did not even mention his 1948 excursion into cosmology and
paleoclimatology. See Teller and Shoolery (2001).
38 2 Varying Gravity

With G ~ 1/t the result becomes

T  M7=4 t9=4 :

Teller considered both of the variations Dirac had proposed in 1937, either a
decreasing G alone or combined with an increasing M. Assuming M ¼ constant
the result is T ~ t9/4, meaning that T depends sensitively on the age of the Earth.
The temperature of the Earth’s surface in the past will be related to its present
temperature T0 by
t 9=4
0
T ¼ T0 :
t

Here t0 denotes the present epoch or roughly the Hubble time. Teller concluded that
at a time 200–300 million years ago, “We are led to expect a [surface] temperature
near the boiling point of water.” The gravitational constant would at the time have
been approximately 10 % greater than its present value. On Dirac’s original
assumption N(t) ~ t2 and consequently M ~ t2, the result is a slowly increasing
temperature over geological time following

T  t1=4 :

Teller did not actually give this result but only illustrated the cool ancient Earth
with an example, stating that in the same time interval the temperature would have
been 12 % lower than today. “This would bring the average temperature on the
earth below the freezing point,” he wrote. The actual values of Teller’s two
examples of past temperatures are 79 and 15  C.
Since geology and paleobiology showed “ample evidence of life on our planet at
this time,” Teller felt justified in concluding that Dirac’s hypothesis was wrong or
seriously inadequate. However, he realized that the argument was perhaps
oversimplified and that the hypothesis might in some way escape the conclusion.
“Our present discussion cannot disprove completely the suggestion of Dirac,”
Teller admitted. “The suggestion is, because of the nature of the subject matter,
vague and difficult to disprove.” Indeed, it would take another four decades before
the G(t) hypothesis was definitely proven wrong.
Despite Teller’s cautionary remark his paper was often cited, with or without
proper reference, as proof of the incorrectness of Dirac’s cosmology based on the G
(t) hypothesis. For example, without mentioning Teller by name Paul Couderc
stated that Dirac’s theory “involves a variation of the terrestrial temperature during
the past 500 million years, which geological observations utterly denies.”61 Other
physicists and astronomers followed troop.62 However, as early as 1950 Dirk ter

61
Couderc (1952), p. 98.
62
E.g., Gamow (1949), p. 21, and Omer (1949), p. 166. See also Schatzmann (1966), p. 219,
originally published 1957 as Origine et E´volution des Mondes.
2.5 Paleoclimatology Enters Cosmology 39

Haar, a British-Dutch physicist at the University of St. Andrews, pointed out that
Teller’s argument was inconclusive because it rested on a number of ceteris paribus
assumptions. One of them was the assumption that the opacity of the Sun remained
the same and another was the disregard of cloud formation in the atmosphere. Ter
Haar argued that if heavy clouds were formed all over the Earth, the average
temperature would be considerably lowered.63
Jordan agreed with ter Haar and amplified his arguments against the “Gamow–
Teller objection” that the Sun’s heat would have caused “the trilobites in the oceans
to boil,” as he phrased it.64 Presenting Teller’s line of reasoning in a slightly
different way he expressed the luminosity of the Sun (of radius R) as

L  M11=2 R1=2 G15=2 :

Jordan deduced that the solar constant S would depend very strongly on the
gravitational constant, namely as S ~ G10, although he admitted that this was only
a rough approximation. The dependence of S on G might well be less pronounced.65
In his later work Jordan found that, with S0 a constant and dG/Gdt ¼ 109 per year,
the time-dependence of S would approximately follow
 
S ffi S0 1  108 t ;

where t is measured in years.66 This meant that the solar constant in the Carbon-
iferous was approximately 50 % greater than today. According to Jordan, an
increase in the Sun’s luminosity would first of all result in a large number of
heavy clouds, perhaps turning the Earth’s atmosphere into something resembling
the atmosphere of Venus. He suggested that there was convincing geological and
paleoclimatic evidence that the Earth had in fact been covered by clouds in the
Carboniferous age and part of the Permian age.
Teller’s argument against Dirac’s hypothesis of a decreasing gravitational con-
stant was well known and often referred to, if more by physicists and astronomers
than by earth scientists. In the mid-1960s it was developed and sharpened, first by
the Princeton astronomers Philip Pochoda and Martin Schwarzschild and then
independently by Gamow and the Estonian-Irish astronomer Ernst Öpik. By that
time the time scale of the universe had been significantly revised in the sense that
the Hubble constant turned out to be much smaller than previously thought.67 The
accepted age of the universe had now increased to between 10 and 15 billion years,

63
ter Haar (1950), p. 131.
64
Jordan (1955), p. 235.
65
Jordan (1962b), p. 285. See also Dyson (1972), according to whom S ~ G9.7 or S ~ t9.7. As
mentioned in Sect. 2.3, ten Bruggencate (1948) was probably the first to consider the effect of the
G(t) hypothesis on the Sun’s luminosity.
66
Jordan (1964), p. 114.
67
On the change in the cosmic time scale, see Kragh (1996), pp. 271–276.
40 2 Varying Gravity

which largely—if not completely—removed the time scale difficulty that until then
had plagued most finite-age cosmological models.
From about 1960 to 1967 Dirac and Gamow exchanged a series of letters in
which they discussed Dirac’s cosmological hypothesis and its astronomical and
terrestrial consequences. In a letter to Gamow of 10 January 1961, Dirac wrote:
It was a difficulty with my varying gravitational constant that the time scale appeared too
short, but I always believed the idea was essentially correct. Now that the difficulty is
removed, of course I believe more than ever. The astronomers now put the age of the
universe at about 12  109 years, and some even think that it may have to be increased to
20  109 years, so that gives us plenty of time.68

In reality, even the extended time scale did not give “plenty of time.” The values
cited by Dirac were either Hubble times or ages of the universe on the assumption
of an Einstein–de Sitter universe. In 1958 Allan Sandage at the Palomar Observa-
tory estimated 13  109 years as an upper limit for a universe of the Einstein–de
Sitter type. As he pointed out, “there is no reason to discard exploding world models
on the evidence of inadequate time scale alone.”69 However, the quoted value
corresponds to 6.5  109 years for the Dirac model and while this value was greater
than the age of the Earth—at the time known to be 4.5  109 years—it was smaller
than the age of the oldest stars.
The extension of the time scale also helped Dirac’s theory by weakening Teller’s
objection. Because, with an age of the universe of 12  109 years the temperature of
the Earth in the Cambrian era would only be about 45  C and thus no longer rule out
life on Earth. As noted by Pochoda and Schwarzschild, “with the newer, rather long
estimates for the age of the Universe, the time elapsed since the Pre-Cambrian
appears only a rather modest fraction of the total time scale, so that the excess of
G in the Pre-Cambrian over its present value and the consequence excess in the
solar luminosity would be quite small.”70 The two Princeton astronomers were
mainly concerned with the history of the Sun, not with the history of the Earth. For
flat-space cosmological models they computed numerically the evolution of solar
models in which G(t) varied as
 n
T
G ¼ G0 ;
t

where T is the age of the universe and G0 represents the present value of G. In the
case of Dirac’s hypothesis with n ¼ 1, they showed that it led to a luminosity of the
Sun in its early stages of evolution nearly five times its present luminosity. As a
consequence, the Sun would no longer be a main sequence star. To make n ¼ 1
agree with the observed Sun, they had to assume T 15  109 years. Pochoda and
Schwarzschild also made calculations in the case of n ¼ 0.2, as given by the Brans–

68
Quoted in Kragh (1990), p. 237. For the Dirac–Gamow correspondence, see Kragh (1991).
69
Sandage (1958), p. 525.
70
Pochoda and Schwarzschild (1964), p. 587.
2.5 Paleoclimatology Enters Cosmology 41

Dicke theory (to be considered below). With this mild variation they found results
that only differed insignificantly from the constant G corresponding to the standard
case n ¼ 0 valid for relativistic models. However, according to the astrophysicists
G. Shahiv and John Bahcall the Brans–Dicke theory led to problems with the Sun’s
neutrino flux.71
In view of the astronomers’ estimates of the Hubble time Pochoda and
Scharzschild considered the condition T 15  109 years to be “uncomfortable.”
With an age of the Earth of approximately 5 billion years, G at the time of the
Earth’s formation would have been approximately 1.5 G0, whereas T ¼ 10  109
years led to G ffi 2 G0. Using a different method of calculation Gamow similarly
showed that on Dirac’s hypothesis the Sun could not have shone for more than
2 billion years.72 It would have burned all its hydrogen and subsequently turned into
a red giant.
While Pochoda and Schwarzschild had little to say about the Earth, Öpik was
greatly interested in the earth sciences and their connections to astronomy. In 1950
he had proposed a theory of the ice ages and over the next two decades he continued
to work on this problem and related problems in paleoclimatology. In a review
article of 1965 on climatic changes in “cosmic perspective” he drew on a wealth of
geological evidence to explain the climatic balance of the Earth. Characteristically,
the article was written at the request of a leading geologist, the Australian Rhodes
Fairbridge, who was an early expert on climate change and known in particular for
his hypothesis of regular changes in the ocean levels over long time scales. In a
footnote to his paper of 1965, Öpik acknowledged Fairbridge’s role, adding that the
paper was written in 1961, “but its publication was delayed by unfavourable
coincidences.”73
In relation to Teller’s paper of 1948, Öpik considered the terrestrial conse-
quences of a varying gravitational constant by calculating the relative insolation
(solar radiation energy per unit area) of the Earth on the assumption of Dirac’s
hypothesis. A comparison of the calculated insolation in the past and the one
estimated from the geological record told him that the two were incompatible,
meaning that Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis must be wrong. “Even the scanty geological
data are sufficient to cause rejection of a bold cosmological idea,” he concluded.74
Jordan emphatically disagreed.
Öpik was himself in favour of another bold cosmological idea, namely the
eternally oscillating universe and it is possible that his preference for this kind of

71
Shahiv and Bahcall (1969). See also Sect. 2.7.
72
Gamow (1967c). Other problems in solar nucleosynthesis based on a decreasing gravitational
constant were pointed out in Ezer and Cameron (1966).
73
See also Dicke (1962a), which refers to Öpik’s paper of 1961 as “privately circulated.”
Fairbridge was at the time a supporter of the hypothesis of a slowly expanding Earth, which was
sometimes justified in terms of a decreasing gravitational constant. However, Fairbridge did not
accept the Dirac–Jordan hypothesis of G(t). We shall return to Fairbridge in Sect. 3.6.
74
Öpik (1965), p. 292.
42 2 Varying Gravity

universe coloured his attitude to Dirac’s hypothesis.75 According to Dirac, the LNH
and hence also G(t) was incompatible with oscillating or cyclic models of the
universe. In the latter models the curvature of space must be positive, whereas
the LNH leads to a flat space. As another reason for dismissing oscillating universe
models Dirac mentioned that such models involve a large number, namely the
maximum radius of the universe, which does not fit with the LNH.
The nuclear-physical theory of the early universe that Gamow and his collabo-
rators Ralph Alpher and Robert Herman developed during the period 1946–1956
was the first big-bang cosmology in the modern sense of the term. Supervised by
Gamow, Alpher completed in the summer of 1948 his Ph.D. thesis on element
formation in the early universe, the first of its kind. He not only mentioned Dirac’s
LNH and its consequence in the form of the G(t) hypothesis, but also Teller’s very
recent argument against it.76 However, neither he nor Gamow accepted Dirac’s
reasoning. The Gamow–Alpher–Herman theory was solidly based on Einstein’s
field equations, which Gamow always used in the standard version given by the
Friedmann equations and simply took for granted. He consequently disregarded
alternative theories such as Dirac’s G(t) theory and also Milne’s cosmology and the
new steady-state theory. Although Gamow found Dirac’s LNH to be fascinating
and perhaps even true, he denied its purported consequence in the form of a
decreasing gravitational constant.
When Gamow and most other physicists denied the validity of Dirac’s cosmo-
logy it was not only because of its empirical consequences but also because of its
conflict with general relativity, according to which G must be constant. But must it?
Not according to C. Gilbert, a mathematical physicist at King’s College, the
University of Newcastle. Gilbert used principles allegedly based on the theory of
general relativity to derive a cosmological model similar to Dirac’s, including a
gravitational constant varying as G ~ 1/t.77 To derive this result he introduced
elements from Milne’s cosmological system into general relativity. Gilbert’s
model was characterized by a deceleration parameter q0 ¼ ½, mean density of
matter ρ ¼ 4.8  1029 g cm3, and an age of the universe equal to 4  109 years,
corresponding to H0 ffi 160 km s1 Mpc1. By 1956 this was not only a suspiciously
low age, it also conflicted with the authoritative age of the Earth of (4.55  0.07) 
109 years which the American geochemist Clair Patterson published the same year
and since then has stood the test of time.
In a later communication Gilbert admitted that his age of the universe was too
small.78 In any case, his theory did not succeed in replacing the standard view that
there is no room for a changing G within Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Mainstream physicists maintained that an amalgamation of G(t) and general rela-
tivity cannot be accomplished consistently. If G is not constant, energy-momentum

75
Öpik (1956).
76
According to Peebles et al. (2009), p. 38.
77
Gilbert (1956, 1957). See also Wesson (1978), pp. 22–26.
78
Gilbert (1961).
2.5 Paleoclimatology Enters Cosmology 43

conservation cannot be satisfied. As we shall see in Chap. 3, outside mainstream

physics Gilbert’s claim continued to play a role.
As mentioned above, Gamow was involved in Teller’s original argument against
Dirac’s hypothesis of G(t). Gamow repeated the argument in a paper of 1949 and
also in a later popular book.79 In discussions and correspondence with Dirac from
the 1960s he maintained and further developed what Jordan called the Gamow–
Teller objection. Then, in a series of papers from 1967, he made public what he had
discussed privately with Dirac. Gamow admitted that the longer time scale changed
the details of Teller’s old argument, but not that it invalidated it. As he pointed out,
palaeontologists had recently found fossils of primitive life as old as 3 billion years.
“Even though Teller’s argument makes life safe for inhabitants of the Cambrian
ocean, it certainly threatens the life of organisms living a few eons [billion years]
ago.”80 Having discussed the additional problem of the increased solar luminosity
in the past, he concluded that “the possibility of the change of gravity in inverse
proportion to the age of the universe has been completely ruled out.”
While Gamow insisted that the varying-G hypothesis was plain wrong, he
wanted to retain the LNH, and for this purpose he suggested that the elementary
charge e might instead increase in time according to

e2  t

This hypothesis, contrary to Dirac’s, did not lead to obvious disagreements with
either paleontological or cosmological evidence.81 Gamow’s varying-e hypothesis
was however contradicted by new measurements of the fine-structure constant
(2πe2/hc, where h is Planck’s constant) in distant quasars. As soon as Gamow
became aware of the contradiction, he retracted the hypothesis.82 All later mea-
surements have shown that the elementary charge is a true constant of nature. In this
connection it is worth noting that late in his life Dirac suggested that Planck’s
constant h varied with the epoch. Since Dirac believed that the fine structure
constant was a true constant, Gamow’s relation e2 ~ t followed.83
Thirty-five years after having proposed his cosmological theory Dirac finally
returned to it. In a volume devoted to the commemoration of Gamow (who died in
1968) Dirac and Teller commented on the current state of varying-G cosmology.
Teller essentially restated his old argument against a decreasing G, except that he

79
Gamow (1949, 1962), pp. 139–141.
80
Gamow (1967a), p. 759. It should be noted that the geological periods and the times in the past
associated with them have changed considerably during the twentieth century. For example, the
“Cambrian” did not have a fixed meaning across the century. Gamow apparently associated the
Cambrian with Teller’s period 200–300 million years ago, but according to Holmes’ revised time
scale of 1960 the Cambrian ended about 500 million years ago. The presently accepted time for the
end of the Cambrian period and the beginning of the Ordovician is 485 million years ago.
81
Gamow (1967b, c). See also Kramarovskii and Chechev (1971).
82
Kragh (1991), Wesson (1980), p. 45.
83
Dirac (1982), p. 88.
44 2 Varying Gravity

now found the consequences for astrophysics to be more decisive than those
relating to the past climate of the Earth.84 In his brief essay, Dirac repeated what
he had said privately to Gamow, namely, that Teller’s and others arguments were
not really a fatal blow to his hypothesis. It could, he vaguely suggested, be rescued
by making certain assumptions.85 What these assumptions were he first spelled out
in a lecture to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on 13 April 1972.86 By that time
he was ready to reintroduce the idea of spontaneous creation of matter in the form of
the N ~ t2 hypothesis that he had abandoned in 1938. The year 1972 also saw the
publication of a book dedicated to Dirac’s seventieth birthday in which the distin-
guished theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson systematically and critically reviewed
Dirac-inspired ideas of the variation of fundamental constants.87 Dyson’s essay was
instrumental in reviving interest in the subject.
Dirac subsequently developed his cosmological theory in several versions, most
of which made use of the varying-G hypothesis G ~ 1/t and also the creation
hypothesis N ~ t2.88 None of these versions won much support, although they
attracted considerable interest and inspired many comments. In his publications
on cosmology, confined to the periods 1937–1938 and 1972–1982, Dirac paid little
attention to the history of the Earth, a subject he never took seriously and only
referred to casually. But a few other cosmologists did take the subject seriously, in
particular Jordan and Dicke to whose theories of a cosmology–geophysics connec-
tion based on the assumption of a varying G we now turn.

2.6 Offspring of Scalar–Tensor Gravitation Theory

In Einstein’s general theory of relativity, gravitation is fully described by the

geometry of space-time as given by the metrical tensor gμν. According to the
class of “scalar–tensor” theories developed in the 1950s and 1960s a scalar field
φ must be added to the tensor equations to account for the measurable value of the
gravitational constant. The value of the new φ field, and hence the gravitational
constant, depends on the point in space-time, φ ¼ φ(x, y, z, t).
The scalar–tensor formalism became well known only after Robert Dicke and
Carl Brans published a paper on it in 1961, but most of the formalism had been
established earlier by Jordan and his collaborators. In fact, elements of the scalar–

84
Teller (1972).
85
Dirac (1972).
86
Dirac (1973d).
87
Dyson (1972).
88
Wesson (1978), pp. 13–19, Kragh (1990), pp. 239–245. More about Dirac’s later theories
follows in Sect. 4.2.
2.6 Offspring of Scalar–Tensor Gravitation Theory 45

tensor formalism can be found even earlier.89 The kind of theory is often known
under the names of Brans and Dicke alone, but Jordan–Brans–Dicke (JBD) is also
used.90 Several other physicists were involved in the development of this kind of
theory. As Brans recently noted, “if a list of names were to be used for people who
independently proposed ST [scalar–tensor] modifications of standard Einstein
theory, the resulting compound title would be extravagantly unwieldy.”91 Contrary
to most other physicists, Dicke was always careful in acknowledging Jordan’s
priority. What matters in the present context is that the theories of this class include
a gravitational constant that varies in time if not necessarily in Dirac’s sense.
It is worth noting that much of the work done by Jordan’s group in Hamburg was
collaborative and not always with Jordan playing a leading or even an active part.
According to George Ellis, a leading mathematical cosmologist, “Jordan’s name
was on . . . the papers, although he in fact did not take part in writing them: his name
was there simply because he was the head of the group from which they came.”92
This was also the opinion of Jordan’s collaborator Engelbert Schücking: “Jordan
appeared often as co-author, but I doubt whether he contributed much more than
suggestions in style, like never to start a sentence with a formula.”93 Some of the
research done by Jordan and his group was supported by the Aeronautical Research
Laboratories (ARL), an institution under the U.S. Air Force. In the 1960s Jordan
wrote two ARL reports on his extension of general relativity and the G(t)
hypothesis.94
Jordan originally formulated his theory within the framework of the five-
dimensional, so-called Kaluza–Klein unified theory going back to the 1920s.95
He was not the only one who in the 1940s tried in this way to make place for a
scalar field corresponding to a varying gravitational constant. So did Einstein and
his collaborator, the German-American mathematical physicist Peter Bergmann. In
a paper of 1948 the latter recalled that in the spring of 1946 Wolfgang Pauli (who at
the time resided in the United States) turned over to him the proofs of a paper that
Jordan had written on gravitation theory with a varying gravitational constant. The

89
The first scalar–tensor gravitational theory was published in 1941 by the Swiss mathematician
Willy Scherrer at the University of Bern. For the origins and early development of scalar–tensor
theories, see Goenner (2012).
90
Dehnen and H€onl (1968, 1969) may have been the first to use “Jordan–Brans–Dicke” and also
the abbreviation “JBD.” Occasionally physicists speak of “Dicke–Brans–Jordan” theory (DBJ)
and other permutations are also in use.
91
Brans (2014).
92
Ellis (2009), p. 2180.
93
Schücking (2000), p. vi.
94
The ARL reports are listed in Goldberg (1992). One of Jordan’s reports contained a detailed
review of geophysical and astronomical aspects related to Dirac’s hypothesis. See Jordan (1961b),
a copy of which is located at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen.
95
Jordan (1948). “Kaluza–Klein” refers to the German mathematician Theodor Kaluza and the
Swedish physicist Oskar Klein. While Kaluza’s unification comprised gravitation and electrody-
namics, Klein’s theory also included the quantum domain.
46 2 Varying Gravity

paper was to have appeared in the Physikalische Zeitschrift in 1945, but due to the
war the journal ceased publication. According to Bergmann:
In this paper, Jordan attempted to generalize Kaluza’s five dimensional unified field theory
by retaining g55 as a fifteenth field variable. Professor Einstein and the recent author had
worked on the same idea several years earlier, but had finally rejected it and not published
that abortive attempt. The fact that another worker in this field has proposed the same idea,
and independently, is an indication of its inherent plausibility.96

Under the impact of work done by his collaborators Günther Ludwig and Claus
Müller, Jordan eventually abandoned the five-dimensional theory. Instead he pro-
posed field equations in the usual four dimensions involving a scalar field related to
replacing Newton’s constant of gravitation.
From the late 1940s onwards Jordan developed his cosmological ideas into an
alternative or extended theory of general relativity. At the same time he also
became increasingly interested in the connections between cosmology and geo-
physics, a subject that would dominated much of Jordan’s later scientific work and
to which we shall return in Sect. 3.2.97 In the monograph Schwerkraft und Weltall
(Gravitation and Universe) from 1952 he presented a new basis for his theory of a
universe increasing in mass as M ~ t2 and governed by a gravitational force varying
inversely with the age of the universe. Jordan’s general field equations included two
new numbers or dimensionless constant of nature (ζ, η) the values of which were
not specified by theory but could only be estimated by comparison with empirical
data. On the other hand, there was no room in Jordan’s equations for a cosmological
constant, that is, Λ ¼ 0. Jordan argued that η ¼ 1 and that η ¼ +1 in order that his
theory should comply with the original Dirac hypothesis including matter creation.
For a positively curved space Jordan’s theory led to differential equations for the
scale factor R(t) that corresponded to the Friedmann equations of ordinary general
relativity, only were Jordan’s equations more complicated and included more
solutions. For η ¼ +1, c ¼ 1 and ζ > 2 he found the linear solution
 ½
2
R¼ t:
ζ2

With G0 and ρ0 denoting two constants, Jordan derived for the gravitational
“constant” G and the mean density of matter ρ that

96
Bergmann (1948), p. 255. The title of Jordan’s unpublished paper was “Gravitationstheorie mit
veränderlicher Gravitationszahl” (Gravitation theory with variable gravitational constant).
Bergmann was sceptical with regard to Jordan’s theory because the extra scalar variable caused
an embarrass de richesse, as he expressed it.
97
Jordan’s enduring interest in geophysics and other aspects of the earth sciences is documented
by his many publications on the subject. See the bibliography of Jordan’s articles and books in
Beiglb€ock (2007).
2.6 Offspring of Scalar–Tensor Gravitation Theory 47

G ¼ G0 t1 and ρ ¼ ρ0 t1 :

In the spherical case the mass of the closed universe varied in time as
 3=2
2
M ¼ 2π 2 ρ0 t2 :
ζ2

Whereas Dirac only assumed a temporal variation of G, in Jordan’s theory G was

allowed to vary in both space and time. However, he chose to disregard the spatial
variation since it was supposedly unimportant and of no explanatory value.98
As to the increase of the mass of the universe according to M ~ t2, Jordan
eventually reached the conclusion that the hypothesis was not, after all, tenable.99
He now declared his earlier belief in matter creation to be “a misunderstanding” and
“surely erroneous.” Instead he suggested that M ~ t2 was valid only for so-called
pre-stellar matter pouring out from pockets of empty space.100 The final form of
Jordan’s field equations was indebted to a critical analysis of Markus Fierz at Basel
University who pointed out that some of Jordan’s equations would lead to atomic
spectra depending on space-time. By incorporating the criticism of Fierz and Pauli,
in 1959 Jordan proposed a new version of his scalar–tensor theory with mass
conservation.101
While Jordan’s extended gravitation theory only attracted limited attention
outside Germany, it was taken up and further developed by several of his colleagues
in the new Bundesrepublik Deutschland, the German Federal Republic. Among
those who examined the theory the young Berlin theoretical physicist Kurt Just was
perhaps the most prolific. In a paper of 1955 Just investigated in mathematical
detail the cosmological models allowed by Jordan’s theory, focusing on the spa-
tially closed model characterized by G ~ 1/t and R ~ t.102 Just mentioned several
objections against Jordan’s favoured model, one of them being Teller’s climato-
logical argument of 1948. Moreover, Just showed that according to Jordan’s theory
the present radius of curvature would be so small that the positively curved universe
should turn up observationally. Yet in the mid-1950s there was no observational
evidence indicating cosmic space being positively curved.
The cosmological background radiation discovered in 1965 provided a further
argument against Jordan’s original theory of gravitation. Helmut H€onl and Heinz
Dehnen, two German astrophysicists at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau,

98
Jordan (1971), p. 2.
99
Jordan (1959a), p. 113.
100
Jordan (1962c).
101
Fierz (1956), Goenner (2012). For a lucid summary of Jordan’s cosmological theory as
developed in the late 1950s, see Heckmann and Schücking (1959). Other aspects of Jordan’s
theory were dealt with in Brill (1962) and O’Hanlon and Tam (1970).
102
Just (1955). On Just’s early work on Jordan’s theory, see Goenner (2012). Just later moved to
the United States to become professor of physics at the University of Arizona, Tuczon.
48 2 Varying Gravity

believed that results from astrophysics and cosmology were much better suited to
test gravitation theories than the uncertain geophysical results on which Jordan
focused.103 They consequently investigated what the background radiation would
look like on the basis of Jordan’s theory.104 In that case the total energy density of
the radiation would increase in time and its intensity at different wavelengths would
no longer lie on a blackbody-curve at constant temperature. Since these conse-
quences disagreed with measurements, H€ onl and Dehnen concluded that the micro-
wave background amounted to a strong empirical argument against a gravitational
constant varying as Dirac had proposed.
Accepting the objection raised by H€ onl and Dehnen, Jordan now declared his
previous equations to be “false.” As an alternative he suggested a modification of
the field equations that made his theory almost identical with the theory of Brans
and Dicke to be considered in Sect. 2.7.105 In this theory G varies as tn with n < 1.
Jordan stressed that although the Brans–Dicke approach differed substantially from
his own reasoning, in the end the two approaches led to the same result. This he
considered a strong argument in favour of the Jordan–Brans–Dicke theory, which
he judged to be “the only possibility of a plausible generalization of Einstein’s
theory of gravitation.”106 Jordan’s new theory still allowed G to decrease in time,
but no longer in Dirac’s strong version of G ~ 1/t. This move did not imply that
Jordan abandoned Dirac’s hypothesis, but only that he separated it from the
gravitational field equations and instead considered it an independent, empirically
justified hypothesis. Moreover, although he felt forced to abandon the M(t) hypo-
thesis, he did it with regret. Somehow, he believed, the hypothesis of spontaneous
matter creation ought to play a role in the final picture of the universe. Jordan
promised to return to the problem, but he never did.
Ideas similar to Jordan’s extended theory of general relativity, but developed
independently, appeared in an important paper published by the two Princeton
physicists Carl Brans and Robert Dicke in 1961.107 Although at first the paper did
not make much of an impact, within a few years it became recognized as a most
interesting alternative to standard general relativity. Its continuing appeal is illus-
trated by bibliometric data: until 1981 it had been cited in about 500 articles and
today the cumulative number of citations is more than 2.800 (Fig. 2.6).108 Brans had
been a Ph.D. student of Dicke and the joint paper was an outgrowth of Brans’
doctoral thesis from the same year.109 Still when Brans had almost completed his

103
Dehnen and H€onl (1969), Wesson (1978), pp. 36–37.
104
H€onl and Dehnen (1968).
105
Jordan (1968, 1971, p. xv).
106
Jordan (1969b), p. 253.
107
Brans and Dicke (1961).
108
Kaiser (1998).
109
Brans (1961). See also Brans (1999, 2010) for personal and historical comments on the paper
and on scalar–tensor theories in general. Kaiser (1998, 2007) compares the Brans–Dicke theory to
the theory of the Higgs field proposed a few years later. Both theories related to the origin of mass,
but they belonged to two widely different research traditions.
2.7 A Machian Approach to Fundamental Physics 49

170

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Fig. 2.6 Citations to Brans and Dicke (1961). Credit: Web of Science

thesis he was unaware of Jordan’s theory, but (undoubtedly due to Dicke) the final
form of it included an extensive discussion of the theory as presented in Jordan’s
book of 1955. Brans briefly noted that Schwerkraft contained a detailed account of
the geophysical consequences of Jordan’s theory of G(t), but without mentioning
which. Nor did the Brans–Dicke paper refer to consequences of a geological or
geophysical nature.

2.7 A Machian Approach to Fundamental Physics

What soon became known as the Brans–Dicke theory was based to a large extent on
two principles of a general, almost philosophical nature. One of them was Dirac’s
LNH and the other was Mach’s principle according to which (in one of its several
versions) the space-time metric is determined by the mass of the universe. In
agreement with an earlier idea of Dicke,110 the two Princeton physicists took the
latter principle to imply that the mass M of the visible universe was related to its
space curvature radius R by

GM 1 M
ffi 1 or ffi :
Rc2 G Rc2

Thus, as the universe expands and M and R change, G changes accordingly. A

relation of this kind can also be derived from ordinary Friedmann cosmology, but
Brans and Dicke looked upon it as the outcome of individual contributions from
celestial bodies at various distances. This alone suggests that G may not be a

110
Dicke (1959a).
50 2 Varying Gravity

fundamental constant but is a quantity which depends on the large-scale structure

and evolution of the universe.
The same equation connecting G, M and R was part of Jordan’s cosmology, but
without associating it to Mach’s principle. On the contrary, although Jordan valued
Ernst Mach’s positivist philosophy of science greatly, he explicitly denied the
validity of Mach’s principle as a foundation of cosmological theory.111 Dicke, on
the other hand, was fascinated, even obsessed, by the principle of the Viennese
philosopher-physicist, which was the philosophical beacon guiding much of his
research concerning gravitation and cosmology.112 In part based on Machian
arguments Dicke reached the conclusion that Einstein’s theory of general relativity
might not be completely correct. Although he admitted that the Einstein theory was
elegant, he was “not sure that nature has quite the predilection for an elegant theory
that man apparently possesses.”113
To construct a new theory of gravitation “which is more satisfactory from the
standpoint of Mach’s principle than general relativity” Brans and Dicke replaced
the constant of gravitation with a long-range scalar field φ(x, y, z, t) generated by the
matter in the universe. The two quantities were inversely proportional, that is,
G ~ φ1 (contrary to Jordan, who in his early versions had G ~ φ). This means
that a variation of G implies a variation of the scalar field:

1 dφ 1 dG
¼
φ dt G dt

However, the measured value of G also depended on a dimensionless parameter, ω,

the value of which was not given by theory but could only be determined by
observation. The relationship between G and ω was stated as
 
2ω þ 4 1
G¼ φ :
2ω þ 3

Dicke characterized ω as a measure of the fraction of the gravitational force caused

by the scalar field. The ω parameter was constant in the sense that it did not depend
on the φ field, but later extensions of the Brans–Dicke theory included the possi-
bility of ω ¼ ω(φ). While Dicke disregarded the cosmological constant, some of the
later extensions also included Λ ¼ Λ(φ).
In the lower limit ω ¼ 0 the equations of the Brans–Dicke theory described a
model universe in which distance and gravitation varied as

111
Jordan (1955), p. 138.
112
E.g. Dicke (1964a). Mach’s principle has given rise to a very extensive literature, both
philosophical and scientific. For a contemporaneous and critical discussion of its use in and
relevance for cosmology and theories of gravitation, see for example Reinhardt (1973).
113
Dicke (1959c), p. 621.
2.7 A Machian Approach to Fundamental Physics 51

R  t1=3 and G  t1=2 :

In the limit ω ! 1 the equations passed asymptotically over into those of the
ordinary Einstein theory of relativity.114 As in the theories of Dirac and Jordan,
gravitation would decrease in time, but at a rate that depended on the value of the ω
parameter. For example, in the special case of a flat space with vanishing pressure
(what cosmologists call a “dust model”), the rate was given by
 η
t
G ¼ G0 ;
T0

with

2
η¼ :
4 þ 3ω

T0 is the age of the universe and the subscript 0 refers to the present era.
The variation could also be expressed as
 
1 dG H0
¼ :
G dt 0 1þω

For comparison, the rate of decrease of G in Dirac’s theory (and in Jordan’s) was
given by 3H0. “The resulting rate of decrease of the gravitational constant is 1 part
in 1011 parts per year,” Dicke wrote. “With a closed universe this rate of decrease
could be as great as 3 parts in 1011 per year.”115 In the case of ω ¼ 6 the rate is about
twenty times less than according to Dirac’s theory and

G  t0:09 :

Dicke further stated the relationship between the age of the universe and the
Hubble time TH to be

2 þ 2ω
T0 ¼ TH :
4 þ 3ω

For ω ¼ 6 this amounts to a value of T0/TH that is only marginally smaller than the
ratio 2/3 in the Einstein–de Sitter cosmological model. Applying their theory to the
anomalous precession of Mercury’s perihelion, Brans and Dicke found a value for
the perihelion shift that was smaller than Einstein’s by a factor given by

114
Brans and Dicke (1961), Dicke (1962a).
115
Dicke (1962a), p. 657.
52 2 Varying Gravity

Fig. 2.7 The Brans–Dicke universe. R is the scale factor and q0 the curvature parameter. The
quantity λ is a scalar given by λ ¼ G0/G(t). Source: Dicke (1962a), p. 636. Reproduced with the
permission of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

4 þ 3ω
:
6 þ 3ω

To secure agreement with observations they concluded that ω 6 and possibly

ω ffi 6, which was their preferred value.
Assuming that “the universe expands from a highly condensed state,” Brans and
Dicke further examined various cosmological models modified by the assumption
of a slowly decreasing gravitational constant (Fig. 2.7). While in these models
2.7 A Machian Approach to Fundamental Physics 53

G varied rapidly in the early stages of the universe, the variation was much slower at
later times. In the standard Friedmann theory governed by general relativity, the
expansion of the universe of average mass density ρ and zero pressure follows the
expression
 0 2
R k 8πGρ
þ 2¼ :
R R 3

The speed of light c is taken to be unity, k is the curvature parameter attaining the
values 0 or 1, and Λ ¼ 0. In the Brans–Dicke theory the analogous expression is
 0 2 0 0  0 2
R k 8πρ φ R ω φ
þ 2¼  þ :
R R 3φ φ R 6 φ

It is seen that with φ ¼ constant ¼ 1/G the former equation is regained.

Brans and Dicke pointed out that for ω 6 their model for a flat-space universe
was practically indistinguishable from the Einstein–de Sitter model based on
ordinary general relativity. In another paper Dicke investigated in detail the cosmo-
logical and astrophysical consequences of the Brans–Dicke theory, concluding that
it was the only theory able to explain the disagreement between the age of the
universe and various evolutionary ages of stars and galaxies.116 In this respect he
considered the Brans–Dicke theory to be superior to Dirac’s, for on the assumption
of G ~ 1/t the age of the Sun and the other main sequence stars would be suspi-
ciously smaller than the usually accepted ages.117 Contrary to the early versions of
Jordan’s theory, Brans and Dicke constructed their scalar–tensor theory in such a
way that mass–energy was conserved in agreement with standard general relativity.
Many of the ideas of the Brans–Dicke paper of 1961 had been discussed earlier
by Dicke, who since the mid-1950s increasingly turned from radiation and quantum
physics to studies of gravitational physics, both experimentally and theoretically.118
He soon became a leading figure in what is known as the “renaissance of general
relativity.”119 Dicke’s interest in gravitation theory and cosmology, including
aspects of geophysics, was first developed during a sabbatical year he spent at
Harvard in 1954. Since there was nobody at Harvard to discuss the subjects with, he

116
Dicke (1962b).
117
Dicke (1961b), p. 100.
118
On Dicke’s life and work, see Peebles (2008). Interviews with Dicke include Lightman and
Brawer (1990), pp. 201–213, and three interviews conducted by the American Institute of Physics
between 1975 and 1988. The interviews can be found online as http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/
transcripts.html. Dicke reprinted most of his early papers on relativity, cosmology and geophysics
in a book-length chapter on “Experimental Relativity” in DeWitt and DeWitt (1964), pp. 165–316.
For a review of Dicke’s work in geophysics, see Kragh (2015c).
119
See Kaiser (1998) for aspects of the renaissance.
54 2 Varying Gravity

studied them on his own. In an interview with astrophysicist Martin Harwit he

recalled:
I got interested in astrophysics and geophysics because I thought these subjects provided a
tool for getting at some of the questions which my interest in general relativity were
bringing up. I was interested early in a number of aspects of relativity, and one of these
came about from Dirac’s arguments about the large numbers. Another was the interest I had
in Mach’s principle, thinking this should be significant. . . . In that framework you have the
requirement that the gravitational constant is not a real constant but it’s a function of
coordinates. The cosmological solution varies with time, which carries with it obvious
geophysical and astrophysical implications, if true.120

In 1957 Dicke was appointed professor of physics as Princeton University. The

same year he participated in one of the important events of the renaissance of
general relativity, the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference on the Role of Gravitation in
Physics which on the initiative of Bryce DeWitt and his physicist wife Cécile
DeWitt-Morette was held at the University of North Carolina.121 Other participants
included John Wheeler, Peter G. Bergmann, Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, Felix
Pirani, Stanley Deser, and Richard Feynman. The focus of the conference was on
aspects of general relativity, including gravitational waves and problems of quan-
tum gravity, but there was also a session on cosmology. In a summary account of
the conference Bergmann briefly referred to “the theories sponsored for instance by
P. Jordan,” but only to comment that they “have [not] as yet been clarified
conceptually to the extent that they merit experimental testing.”122 Jordan’s name
did not appear in the report of the conference.
Another major conference on general relativity, celebrating the fiftieth anniver-
sary of Einstein’s relativity theory, was held in Bern in 1955.123 Jordan was invited
to this event, where he gave a lecture on mathematical aspects of his gravitation
theory with G(t). Several of the participants in Bern would also come to Chapel Hill
2 years later, including Bergmann, Deser, Bondi and Pirani. Whereas the Bern
conference had been attended by only nine U.S.-based physicists out of a total of

120
Interview of 18 June 1985. See http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4572.html
121
For the background of the Chapel Hill conference 18–23 January 1957, see DeWitt and Rickles
(2011), which includes the reports and discussions of the conference. There were interesting links
between the Chapel Hill conference and the Gravity Research Foundation (GRF) to be mentioned
in Sect. 3.1. Bryce DeWitt won the first prize in the 1953 competition and was instrumental in
lifting the scientific respectability of the GRF.
122
Bergmann (1957). On the other hand, another of Einstein’s former German-American collab-
orators, Valentine Bargmann at Princeton University, covered in the same volume of Reviews of
Modern Physics Jordan’s theory in a review article on the theory of relativity. Bargmann evidently
found the possibility that G might vary in space and time to be interesting and worthwhile to test
experimentally. See Bargmann (1957).
123
Mercier and Kervaire (1956). Yet another important event in the renaissance of general
relativity (including cosmology) was the 1958 Solvay Congress on “Astrophysics, Gravitation,
and the Structure of the Universe,” which included addresses by Bondi, Hoyle, Wheeler, Lemaı̂tre,
and Klein. Two years later the International Committee on General Relativity and Gravitation was
established.
2.7 A Machian Approach to Fundamental Physics 55

ninety or so, Chapel Hill was dominated by the U.S. relativity community. This
conference or workshop was smaller and more oriented towards recent work in
general relativity than the Swiss conference.
It should be kept in mind that in the 1950s general relativity, cosmology and
related aspects of fundamental physics were typically regarded with some dis-
respect or even hostility by the physics community. Fundamental gravitational
physics was seen as something half-way between mathematics and philosophy—
not real physics. DeWitt recalled that in the mid-1950s Samuel Goudsmit, the
Editor-in-Chief of Physical Review, seriously considered banning “papers on gravi-
tation and other fundamental theory” from the journal.124 In a popular paper of
1961 Dicke said about his own experience:
As a graduate student of physics 20 years ago I had been told by my professor, a well-
known and outstanding physicist, that I should not trouble to learn General Relativity,
Einstein’s theory of gravitation. As he put it, gravitation was too weak an interaction to be
important inside the atom, the site of the big mysteries. This attitude is still mirrored in our
graduate training programme, for few universities have even a single graduate course on
General Relativity.125

Admitting that “the chief support for General Relativity is the simplicity,
elegance and beauty of the formalism, rather than observations,” Dicke described
experimental general relativity as “a sadly neglected field.” He was determined to
do something about it.
Dicke’s talk at Chapel Hill on “The Experimental Basis of Einstein’s Theory”
mostly dealt with the consequences of a possible decrease in time of the gravi-
tational constant. But he also found time to comment on the recent discovery of
violation of parity conservation in beta decay, speculating that “it could conceiv-
ably indicate some interaction with the universe as a whole.”126 As to Dirac’s
“famous dimensionless numbers,” Dicke wondered about their meanings. He listed
three possible answers:
First, and what ninety percent of physicists probably believe, is that it is all accidental;
approximations have been made anyway, irregularities smoothed out, and there is really
nothing to explain; nature is capricious. Second, we have Eddington’s view, which I may
describe by saying that if we make the mathematics complicated enough, we can expect to
make things fit. Third, there is the view of Dirac and others that this pattern indicates some
connections not understood as yet. On this view, there is really only one “accidental”
number, namely, the age of the universe; all the others derive from it. The last of these
appeals to me; but we see immediately that this explanation gets into trouble with relativity

124
DeWitt (2009), p. 414. According to DeWitt, Wheeler succeeded in persuading Goudsmit not
to keep general relativity out of Physical Review.
125
Dicke (1961c), p. 797.
126
Dicke (2011), p. 58. The possibility of parity non-conservation in weak interactions had been
inferred on theoretical grounds by Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang in 1956 and was verified
experimentally in early 1957. The discovery was announced at a meeting of the American Physical
Society in January 1957, just in time for the physicists at the Chapel Hill conference to know
about it.
56 2 Varying Gravity

theory, because it would imply that the gravitational coupling constant varies with time.
Hence it might also well vary with position.127

As far as the astronomical and geophysical effects of G(t) were concerned, Dicke
briefly dealt with the climate in past geological ages, formation of the Moon, and
heat flow out of the Earth. A more formal and much more elaborated version
appeared half a year later in two papers in Reviews of Modern Physics.128 In one
of the papers Dicke proposed a rather speculative theory of gravitation based on an
analogy to a polarizable vacuum, which he described by a time-varying vacuum
permittivity ε0 ¼ ε0(t).129 He suggested that his new picture of empty space—or
ether, as he later said—might lead to the creation of particles in an originally
matter-free primordial universe containing only gravitational energy. Two years
later he spoke about empty space as an ethereal medium: “One suspects that, with
empty space having so many properties, all that had been accomplished in
destroying the ether was a semantic trick. The ether had been renamed the
vacuum.”130
The other and more interesting of the papers was published under the rather
misleading title “Principle of Equivalence and the Weak Interactions.” Not only
was most of the paper concerned with geological consequences of a varying
gravitational constant, it also had nothing to do with weak interactions as usually
understood. Dicke took the term to mean interactions described by a small coupling
constant, which primarily meant gravitation. His only reference to what is normally
called weak interactions was at the end of his paper, where he inferred from Dirac’s
LNH that “β decay rates would vary inversely as the square root of the age of the
Universe.” This was the same result that Jordan had suggested in 1944 and also
referred to in his 1952 monograph, but Dicke was apparently unaware of Jordan’s
ideas. A few years later Dicke considered the possible variation in time of the weak
coupling constant in relation to the age of meteorites. He suspected the beta decay
rate to vary as tn, with ¼ < n < ½, but admitted that available evidence was too
uncertain to show any variation.131
Like Jordan in Germany, Dicke was fascinated by Dirac’s LNH, but in a more
critical and independent way. From Dicke’s point of view, the numbers of orders

127
Dicke (2011), p. 53.
128
Issue no. 3 of the 1957 volume of Reviews of Modern Physics contained papers prepared in
connection with the Chapel Hill conference. Most of the papers, including Dicke (1957b), had not
been presented at the conference but may have been informally discussed. The other paper by
Dicke (1957a) followed his presentation at Chapel Hill. The issue of Reviews of Modern Physics
also included Hugh Everett’s doctoral dissertation on the “relative state” formulation of quantum
mechanics which in Bryce DeWitt’s later formulation became known as the many-worlds inter-
pretation. Although Everett did not attend the Chapel Hill conference, his ideas were mentioned in
the discussions.
129
Dicke (1957b). On this topic, see also Sect. 4.1, footnote 1.
130
Dicke (1959a), p. 29.
131
Dicke (1959b). See also Peebles and Dicke (1962b). Solomon’s suggestion of 1938 resulted in a
decay constant varying as tn with n ¼ 2/3 (see Sect. 2.2).
2.7 A Machian Approach to Fundamental Physics 57

1039 and 1078 could not have been much different, since they were conditioned by
the presence of intelligent life.132 Humans could not have evolved had the age of the
universe T been much smaller than 1039 atu, nor would they exist if the age was
much greater. Over the next several years he amplified his argument that Dirac’s
reasoning contained a “logical loophole” by assuming the epoch of humans to be
random. “With the assumption of an evolutionary universe, T is not permitted to
take one of an enormous range of values, but is somehow limited by the biological
requirements to be met during the epoch of man,” he wrote.133 His paper in Nature
caused a brief reply from Dirac, who now, for the first time since 1938, returned to
cosmology.
Dicke’s biologically oriented interpretation of the LNH eventually became an
important stimulus to the anthropic principle introduced by the Australian-British
astrophysicist Brandon Carter in 1973.134 In his widely read textbook Cosmology
from 1952, Hermann Bondi included sections on Dirac’s large numbers, about
which he said that “it is difficult to resist the conclusion that they represent the
expression of a deep relation between the cosmos and microphysics.”135 Although
Bondi thus was receptive to the magic of the LNH, he concluded that Dirac’s
cosmology based on it was “very unconvincing” and that Jordan’s theory was
“almost certainly false.” It was by reading Bondi’s book that Carter became
interested in the line of reasoning that led him to the anthropic principle. By 1970
Carter had become acquainted with Dicke’s work and Dirac’s LNH but not yet
formulated the anthropic principle. He rejected Dirac’s G(t) conclusion as “an error
of blatant wishful thinking,” as he later expressed it, and informally he discussed
what he at the time called the “principle of cognizability.”136
The question of the Earth’s temperature in the past first raised by Teller was
reconsidered by Dicke, who dealt with it in greater detail than previous authors.
Assuming the age of the universe to be 8 billion years, in 1962 he calculated the
surface temperature of the Earth during the last 4 billion years.137 Rather than using
Dirac’s G(t) variation he adopted the slower variation as given by the Brans–Dicke
theory with ω ¼ 6, namely

132
Dicke (1957a, p. 356, 1957b, p. 375).
133
Dicke (1961a, 1959a).
134
Barrow and Tipler (1986). On the early history of the anthropic principle, see Kragh (2011),
pp. 220–228.
135
Bondi (1952), pp. 59–62, 159–164.
136
Carter (1989), p. 190. Dyson (1972) mentioned Carter’s “principle of cognizability” in relation
to Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis. The anthropic principle was introduced in Carter (1973), where Carter
stated it as the opposite of the Dirac–Jordan varying-G hypothesis.
137
Dicke (1962a). See Sect. 3.6 for a version of Dicke’s temperature-time graph.
58 2 Varying Gravity

 
1 dG H0
¼ ffi 1:2  1011 year1 :
G dt 0 7

Moreover, Dicke took into account the great amount of water vapour in the cloud-
covered atmosphere caused by increased temperature. The effect of the water
vapour, he suggested, would be to stabilize the temperature. As a result of his
calculations he suggested that the surface temperature in the early period of the
history of the Earth agreed with the existence of algae some 3 billion years ago.
Such algae were known to survive in hot springs at a temperature of nearly 90  C.
Dicke’s analysis confirmed his earlier conclusion that “there is no particular
difficulty in accounting for life over a period of the past billion years.”138 The
conclusion presupposed a variation of G of the Brans–Dicke type and not of the
Dirac–Jordan type G ~ 1/t, where the rate of decrease of G would be considerably
larger, namely 2.4  1010 year1.
In a review of 1961 Dicke estimated the past surface temperature of both the
Earth and the Moon on the assumption of Dirac’s G(t) and a Hubble constant of
H0 ¼ 80 km s1 Mpc1. Although he admitted that the curve for the Earth’s
variation with temperature “has no great reliability,” he was confident that the
highest temperature for the Moon would have been some 250  C at the time of its
formation.139
By the late 1970s climate models indicated that the solar constant had been
remarkably constant over a period of 3  109 years and that the change in solar
luminosity during the last 300 million years had been less than 3 %. Most experts
now agreed that the brightness of the Sun was of relatively little importance for
variations in the past climate of the Earth.140 It appeared that questions of paleo-
climatology were too messy and complex to be answered by the traditional methods
of physicists and astronomers. Nor was paleoclimatology of any real use in testing
competing cosmological models. The conclusion of Dicke was agnostic and some-
what despairing: “The moral is that the atmosphere is complicated . . . We cannot be
sure how much the surface temperature would have changed.”141 We shall return to
the question of the ancient Earth’s temperature in Sect. 3.6.

138
Dicke (1957a), p. 358.
139
Dicke (1961b, p. 101, 1964b, p. 160).
140
Wigley (1981).
141
Dicke (1964b), p. 160.
Chapter 3
The Expanding Earth

In the 1960s the once discarded theory of continental drift proposed by Alfred
Lothar Wegener was substantially revised and transformed into the modern stan-
dard theory of global plate tectonics. For a decade or so the new theory of the Earth
and the traditional contraction theory faced competition from a third alternative, the
hypothesis of the expanding Earth. As early as 1952 Jordan had suggested Earth
expansion on the basis of decreasing gravity, and a few years later the suggestion
was taken up by several physicists and earth scientists. Dicke seriously applied his
skills in fundamental physics to a broad range of geophysical problems, including a
possible increase in the Earth’s radius. The Hungarian geophysicist Lászl
o Egyed
was not only a leading figure in the expansionist alternative but also an advocate of
varying gravity as the cause of the growing Earth. Other geologists and geophys-
icists in favour of the expanding Earth preferred to present their chosen theory in
purely empirical terms, without considering the cause of the expansion.
This chapter offers a fairly comprehensive history of the expanding Earth
hypothesis in the period up to the 1970s with an emphasis on those scientists who
considered expansion to be connected with Dirac’s hypothesis of a decrease in the
gravitational constant. The later phase of the two hypotheses will be examined in
Chap. 4.

3.1 Drifting Continents and the Expansion Alternative

Alfred Wegener’s epoch-making theory of continental drift and its fate in the
decades following its conception in 1912 is thoroughly covered in the historical
literature.1 Some of the ideas were anticipated by the American geologist Frank

1
The literature includes Hallam (1973), Menard (1986), Le Grand (1988), Oreskes (1999), and
Frankel (2012a).

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 59

H. Kragh, Varying Gravity, Science Networks. Historical Studies 54,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24379-5_3
60 3 The Expanding Earth

B. Taylor a few years earlier and also the Irish geologist John Joly has been
mentioned as a predecessor. Yet it was only with Wegener—and especially with
his classic monograph Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of
Continents and Oceans) from 1915—that a coherent, logical and empirically argued
theory of drift was presented as an alternative to the established “fixist” view of the
Earth. According to this traditional view, the Earth was cooling and essentially
static in spite of a slow thermal contraction. Wegener, on the other hand, assumed
that in the Cretaceous period the original super-continent Pangaea divided into two
continents, and that subsequent divisions and motions resulted in the globe as we
know it today. The continents not only separated, they literally ploughed through
the ocean floor.
Wegener’s theory was much discussed in the 1920s when it was seen at the same
time as revolutionary and controversial. For a brief period of time it was seen as
kindled in spirit by other fashionable theories and trends, such as Einstein’s
relativity, Picasso’s cubism, and Freud’s psychoanalysis. Mobilism was a la
mode, but not for long.2 While Wegener’s ideas aroused enthusiasm in some
quarters, the general reaction among geologists and geophysicists was marked by
scepticism or downright hostility. Apart from empirical weaknesses, a common
reason for dismissing the hypothesis of continental drift was that Wegener was
unable to provide the postulated motion of the continents with an adequate physical
cause. Wegener admitted the phenomenological nature of the hypothesis. As he
wrote, alluding to planetary astronomy at the time of Kepler, “The Newton of drift
theory has not yet appeared.”3 The problem was not only that there was no known
cause but that drift seemed to be impossible as it contradicted the laws of physics.
To the British mathematician and geophysicist Harold Jeffreys, a formidable and
influential opponent of continental drift, this was a decisive argument against
Wegener’s theory.
Despite a generally cool or hostile response, Wegener’s theory was not without
supporters. The South African geologist Alexander du Toit adopted, developed and
promoted drift theory during the 1930s and 1940s when it was abandoned by most
of his colleagues. Even more important was Arthur Holmes, who in the late 1920s
converted to continental drift and proposed a plausible mechanism of the motion of
the continents based on radioactive heating and convection currents in the Earth’s
mantle. In part inspired by the earlier work of Joly, in 1925 Holmes reached the
conclusion that “it is no longer possible to resist Wegener’s intriguing displacement
theory on the grounds that the continental blocks are at the present day embedded in
a rigid substratum.”4
All the same, the support of du Toit, Holmes and a few others did not succeed in
turning drift theory into an appealing alternative that enjoyed broad recognition in
the community of earth scientists. That happened only in the late 1950s when a

2
See Wood (1985), pp. 71–76.
3
Wegener (1966), p. 167.
4
Holmes (1925), p. 531.
3.1 Drifting Continents and the Expansion Alternative 61

growing number of geophysicists and marine geologists began to realize the

advantages of continental drift and similar mobilist ideas. A major reason for the
changed fate of drift was advances in paleomagnetism and the understanding of the
ocean floors. The resurrection, transformation and extension of Wegener’s theory
that led to global plate tectonics in the 1960s were to a large extent due to geo-
physicists, marine geologists and oceanographers. Classical geologists, many of
whom were unfamiliar with paleomagnetism and other parts of geophysics, were
not in the vanguard of the revolution.
When Jordan proposed the idea of an expanding Earth in 1952, he believed it
was an original idea. Only a few years later did he realize that the general idea of an
Earth that expands rather than contracts over time can be found much earlier.5 The
first proponent of Earth expansion may have been an Englishman, William
Lowthian Green, who introduced the idea in 1857. During the next 80 years or so
several authors, especially in Russia and Germany, came up with suggestions of an
expanding Earth. These early theories were typically of a speculative and amateur-
ish nature, and they mostly appeared in obscure publications unknown to profes-
sional geologists. They made almost no impact at all on post-World War II
development. Halm’s astronomically based theory of 1935, the essence of which
is outlined in Sect. 1.3, was an exception in the sense that it was published by a
respected astronomer in a recognized if not widely circulated scientific journal. And
yet Halm’s theory made no more impact than those of the more speculative authors.
The only one of Jordan’s predecessors deserving mention is the German engi-
neer and amateur geophysicist Ott Hilgenberg who in 1933 self-published a book
with the title Vom Wachsenden Erdball (On the Growing Earth). It was dedicated to
Wegener. However, although convinced of Wegener’s arguments for continental
drift, Hilgenberg did not accept his picture of the horizontally moving continents.
As an alternative he argued that the continents were driven apart from each other as
a result of a radial expansion of the Earth. He thought that the Earth had expanded
rapidly since the early Mesozoic. Hilgenberg’s theory shared a feature of several
other pre-World War II speculations, namely that the Earth not only grew in size but
also in mass. His idea was completely out of tune with physics at the time as it
rested on the belief that ethereal energy from the cosmos was continually absorbed
in “ether sinks” and from there transformed into matter.6 When Hilgenberg cannot
be dismissed as just a crank, it is for two reasons. First, many of his ideas
anticipated the later scientific expansion models. Second, in the 1960s he returned
to Earth expansionism and after his death in 1976 he even achieved status as an

5
Jordan (1955, p. 226, 1971, p. 72). On early Earth expansionism, see Carey (1988), pp. 137–141,
and Nunan (1998).
6
Hilgenberg may have borrowed the idea of ether sinks from the British mathematician and
philosopher Karl Pearson, who in the 1890s developed a theory of matter and ether based on
“squirts” and “sinks.” See Kragh (2011), pp. 39–40.
62 3 The Expanding Earth

ancestor hero among some expansionists.7 His obscure and uninfluential book of
1933 was now considered a classic and visionary work of the earth sciences.
From the mid-1950s onwards the idea of an expanding Earth was discussed and
sometimes advocated by several earth scientists either as a supplement to or, more
commonly, a substitute for the hypothesis of drifting continents. It is worth empha-
sizing the main difference between the two hypotheses. According to continental
drift there had always been continents and oceans, but their patterns of distribution
have changed as the continents separated on the surface of the constant-sized Earth.
By contrast, there were no oceans in the expansionists’ picture of the original Earth,
which was completely covered by a sialic crust. Only with expansion of the Earth
and the resulting cracks in the crust did the oceans appear. Expansionists disagreed
about the finer details of the history of the Earth, including the rate of the expansion
and its beginning in geological time, but all agreed that the continents had separated
as a result of an increased size of the globe (Fig. 3.1). The pioneers of the new
expansionism were Jordan from Germany, Egyed from Hungary, Carey from
Australia, and Heezen from the United States.
For a decade or so “expansionism” appeared as a possible and even, in some
quarters, attractive alternative to both the traditional contraction theory and the
emerging plate tectonics based on continental drift.8 However, by the early 1970s
expansion was considered a dead issue by the majority of geologists and geo-
physicists. The absence of a convincing mechanism for the slow inflation of the
Earth was an important reason why, in the end, expansion theory was broadly
dismissed. Recall that Wegener’s inability to provide a satisfactory mechanism for
drifting continents was a main reason for dismissing the old drift theory.
Most supporters of an expanding Earth relied on empirical arguments alone
without caring much for the cause of the expansion. “I personally have no strong
feelings concerning the specific mechanism of expansion,” said Bruce Heezen in
1960, “I simply conclude from the morphological and paleomagnetic results that
expansion has occurred.”9 The prominent expansionist Warren Carey likewise
stated that “Empirically I am satisfied that the earth is expanding,” adding that he

7
Scalera and Braun (2003).
8
The expansion theory of the Earth is discussed in relation to plate tectonics in, for example, Le
Grand (1988), pp. 193–195, Menard (1986), pp. 142–151, and Oldroyd (1996), pp. 273–278. From
a more philosophical than historical perspective the theory is dealt with in Nunan (1988), whereas
Nunan (1998) provides a concise summary of the history of the hypothesis. Sudiro (2014) focuses
on expansion theory’s degeneration in recent time into what he argues, probably correctly, is a
pseudoscience. Holmes (1965) includes a useful semi-historical chapter (pp. 960–994) on the
hypothesis. Carey (1976, pp. 23–38, 1988) are informative if partisan accounts of the development
of earth expansionism. See also the (no less partisan) bibliography in Scalera and Jacob (2003),
pp. 419–421. The most detailed and scholarly work on the subject is contained in Henry Frankel’s
four-volume work on the history of plate tectonics, see Frankel (2012b), especially pp. 278–354.
Other histories of plate tectonics tend to ignore the expanding Earth. For example, the theory is not
mentioned in Oreskes (2001), a collection of essays written by participants in the plate tectonics
revolution.
9
Quoted in Frankel (2012c), p. 417.
3.1 Drifting Continents and the Expansion Alternative 63

Fig. 3.1 Rhodes Fairbridge’s paleogeographic sketch of the expanding Earth. Source: Fairbridge
(1966), p. 144. Reproduced with the permission of John Wiley and Sons

found none of the proposed explanations to be satisfactory.10 But other scientists

did suggest mechanisms, either of a terrestrial or a cosmological nature. The
hypothesis of a decreasing gravitational constant, as advocated principally by
Jordan, Egyed and Dicke, obviously belonged to the latter category, which is the

10
Carey (1975), p. 134.
64 3 The Expanding Earth

one of most interest in the present context. The G(t) mechanism was well known to
geophysicists in the 1960s but far from generally accepted.
Samuel Warren Carey, professor of geology at the University of Tasmania, had
defended continental drift since the 1930s and as early as 1953 he considered
subduction of the oceanic crust. According to the leading geologist Edward Irving,
“It is possible that if he [Carey] had held to a fixed radius he would have formulated
the main ideas of plate tectonics before 1960—before any one else.”11 However, a
few years later Carey switched to expansionism. At a symposium held in March
1956 in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, he reported that it was only possible to
assemble Pangaea, Wegener’s original supercontinent, on an Earth considerably
smaller than its present size.12 The new picture of the Earth that Carey outlined was
this:
At an early stage of the earth’s history the crust was uniform. . . . The diameter of the earth
was less than half its present diameter and its surface area less than a quarter of its present
surface. The mean density was more than eight times the present density or over
44 [g cm
3]! Surface gravity was four times the present gravity. The rate of rotation was
correspondingly great.13

The hypothetical ocean called Tethys was part of the drifting continents tradi-
tion, but not in Wegener’s version which postulated a single landmass (Pangaea) as
a starting point. Alexander du Toit assumed in his version two supercontinents, the
southern Gondwana and the northern Laurasia which were separated by Tethys. He
took over the names and the idea from the great Austrian geologist Eduard Suess,
according to whom Thetys was an inland sea. Whatever the origin of the concept,
according to Carey and most other expansionists, the original Tethys ocean was just
an artefact. It had never existed, for the Earth started its expansion without any
oceans at all. The oceans only came into existence as the Earth grew bigger.
As Carey saw it, the Earth’s radius R had increased since the Paleozoic at an
average rate of 0.5 cm per year, but at the end of the Carboniferous, when R was
about 5000 km, the expansion had begun accelerating. Carey eventually reached the
conclusion that at the Ordovician R ffi 0.6 R0 and at the late Paleozoic R ffi 0.7 R0,
where R0 refers to the present radius.14 Recognizing that it was difficult and perhaps
impossible to explain the rapid expansion by means of the known laws of physics,
he stressed that it was an empirical conclusion. All the same, he speculated that it
might be due to a new kind of phase change in the interior of the Earth, where high
pressure forced the inner shells of electrons to merge with the atomic nucleus. This
kind of explanation sketch had been foreshadowed by Halm in his paper of 1935.

11
Irving, in a review of Carey (1976) appearing in Tectonophysics 45 (1978): 241–242.
12
Carey (1958) discussed his expansion hypothesis in the proceedings of the Hobart symposium,
which was however only published two years after the symposium itself. There are reasons to
believe that he did not discuss the issue in his talk and that his conversion thus took place a little
later. See Frankel (2012c), pp. 322–335.
13
Carey (1958), p. 346.
14
Carey (1983), p. 181.
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? 65

If the cause of the expansion could not be explained by the laws of physics, Carey
believed it would be a problem for physicists rather than geologists. It might even
be “the clue leading to new fundamental developments in physics,” he suggested.15
Although Carey may at the time have been aware of Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis,
neither he nor others mentioned it at the Hobart symposium. Carey would do so in
his later publications, but without ever embracing it. Over the following decades
Carey emerged as a charismatic and controversial leader of rapid global expansion,
proselytizing the idea at every possible occasion. At the same time he increasingly
estranged himself from mainstream geophysics.

3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist?

Apart from references to the age of the Earth, in his work until the 1950s Jordan did
not relate Dirac’s hypothesis to issues of geology or geophysics. However, from
that time onwards he increasingly focused on the Earth as a testing ground for
cosmological theories in general and for the G(t) hypothesis in particular. At a
conference on cosmological models held in Lisbon in 1963, he said:
Our Earth is the only [celestial body] about which we can perform any detailed historical
research; and the earth will maintain this singular importance in the frame of our knowl-
edge as long as space travel to the moon and to other planets did not yet become part of the
everyday life. The history of other celestial bodies is a matter of theory (and often only of
speculation). Only the earth allows us detailed sure statements. Therefore there cannot be
seen anything surprising, but only a very natural way of approach if we consider as
necessary sources of cosmological information also such branches as geophysics, geology,
paleomagnetism, paleoclimatology.16

Contrary to the second edition of Schwerkraft, which appeared in 1955, the

original edition was little known and rarely referred to outside Germany. The
reason for the early lack of interest in Jordan’s work may in part have been due
to external factors, such as the decline of German as an international language of
physics and a partial interruption of scientific communication between Germany
and the Western countries in the years following World War II.17 Jordan’s theory
was not entirely unknown, though. Significantly, Dicke referred to both editions of
Schwerkraft. Moreover, the book of 1952 was reviewed by two of the leading
British cosmologists, namely by George McVittie in the Proceedings of the Phys-
ical Society and by William McCrea in the highly visible Nature. In both cases the

15
Carey (1958), p. 349.
16
Jordan (1964), p. 111. See also Jordan (1971), pp. 9–10, where he discussed the question, “Why
should the Earth, a single planet among the many millions of celestial bodies in the Milky Way, be
a decisive test object for a fundamental physical law?”
17
Goenner (2012). Jordan’s Nazi past may also have played a role.
66 3 The Expanding Earth

reviews were rather critical and they did not relate at all to Jordan’s idea of an
expanding Earth.18
The second edition of Schwerkraft differed from the first one in several respects.
It was revised in collaboration with Engelbert Schücking (or Schucking), who
earned his Ph.D. degree in Hamburg in 1955. Schücking collaborated with Jordan
and his group on aspects of general relativity until 1961, when he moved to the
United States to become professor of physics at New York University six years
later.19 Perhaps the most important difference was that the second edition of
Schwerkraft included a more detailed, if largely qualitative treatment of the geo-
physical consequences of the varying-G hypothesis. A new section on these con-
sequences dealt with problems that, in Jordan’s opinion, ought to “attract attention
among astronomers, geophysicists, geologists, and paleoclimatologists.” However,
Jordan was keenly aware that in the area of the earth sciences he was an amateur:
“The author deals with subjects that lie far outside his professional competence and
for this reason his accounts are highly defective.”20 He realized that his geophysical
evidence for a decreasing G was of an indirect nature only and that it might not
appear convincing to the geophysicists. He consequently stressed that it was still
somewhat uncertain if the geological and astronomical issues he referred to were
really evidence in support of his theory of a decreasing G.
It was indeed unusual for a mathematically inclined quantum physicist to take up
problems of geology, but it was not the first time that Jordan made the move from
theoretical physics to areas of natural history. “I have always regarded the true aim
of my life as lying in the activity of a natural scientist rather than that of a pure
physicist,” he stated.21 While a student at the University of G€ottingen he studied not
only physics and mathematics, but also zoology. And in the 1930s he engaged
seriously in borderline problems between quantum physics and biology, attempting
to create a theory of so-called quantum biology.22 Now Jordan invested much of his
intellectual resources in the earth sciences, well knowing that he did it as a layman.
But this was not necessarily a disadvantage, he thought:

18
Dicke (1957a, b). McVittie’s review appeared in Proceedings of the Physical Society (London)
A 66 (1953): 667–668, and McCrea’s in Nature 172 (1953): 3–4. Strangely, McCrea wrote about
the G(t) hypothesis that it “was once briefly suggested and later discarded by Dirac.” He probably
meant the N(t) hypothesis of spontaneous creation of matter. An extensive English review of
Jordan’s theory appeared in Brill (1962). Noting that Jordan’s theory “has so far not received any
great attention,” Harrison (1963) referred to Jordan (1949, 1952).
19
See Schucking (1999) and Ehlers and Schücking (2002). These sources give some background
on Jordan and the roots of his theories of gravitation and the expanding Earth.
20
Jordan (1955), p. vi and p. 223.
21
Jordan (1971), p. x.
22
Beyler (1996). On Jordan’s philosophy of science and general world view, see Jordan (1963), a
popular book which includes sections on varying gravity and the expanding Earth. See also Kragh
(2004), pp. 175–185 and Beyler (2009). Beyler (1994) deals with Jordan’s biological and cosmo-
logical work in the post-World War II period, but does not mention his extensive work on the
expanding Earth and other aspects of geophysics.
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? 67

I believe it to be a healthy activity for a research scientist to take up a supplementary

activity besides the great amount of specialist work. He should aim at studying the various
points of contact of different special fields, and give much thought to the co-ordination of
different research activities and their results. Very often the specialist is not sufficiently
protected against the suggestive power of ad hoc hypotheses, whose weaknesses can be
seen much more easily and clearly if viewed from other subjects.23

When comparing the earth sciences to physics, Jordan was unimpressed. His
extensive but not very systematic reading of the geological, geophysical and
oceanographic literature left him with “the impression of a multitude of contradic-
tory theories” that caused more confusion than enlightenment. The physicist, he
wrote, “is disconcerted to find that the ratio of facts to hypotheses in, for example,
geology is very different from that in physics.”24 At a later occasion, a symposium
in honour of Dirac’s seventieth year birthday, he ascribed his own approach to what
he called the different mentalities of physicists and geologists, suggesting that the
latter favoured a conservative style of thinking. Contrary to the physicists they were
not eager to learn new facts, he claimed. With this in mind,
I came to the decision not to ask other specialists [in the earth sciences] about the
compatibility of Dirac’s hypothesis with empirical facts, but to try to learn myself what
really are the proven facts, and to see whether they lead to real contradictions against
Dirac’s hypothesis.25

Prepared to find no contradictions, Jordan found none.

In a letter of 1 October 1952 the distinguished theoretical physicist Wolfgang
Pauli, a Nobel laureate of 1945 and one of Jordan’s old colleagues and collabora-
tors, thanked him for a copy of Schwerkraft und Weltall. Pauli had little interest in
cosmology and none in geophysics, but he was an authority in the area of relativity
theory and did not consider the G(t) hypothesis to be particularly heretic. “In itself
Dirac’s idea of a varying κ [¼8πG/c2] seems natural to me,” Pauli wrote, “but as yet
I dare not form an opinion of whether or not it corresponds to physical reality.”26 In
a later letter from the same year Jordan referred to his new interest in geophysical
evidence for a gravitational constant decreasing in time. After having told Pauli
about his recent work on the extended scalar–tensor theory of general relativity,
he said:

23
Jordan (1971), p. xi. Referring to geologists and geophysicists, Jordan claimed on p. 141 that
“[it is] the practice of many authors first to put forward a definite theory . . . and then to discuss the
empirical facts in terms of this theory.” This procedure he much disliked because it “cannot
produce conclusions derived unambiguously and logically from the existing foundations.”
24
Jordan (1971), p. 10. See also Jordan et al. (1964), p. 506. The eminent geophysicist J. Tuzo
Wilson noted the different research styles of physicists and geologists in their studies of the Earth,
but he viewed them in a different light than Jordan. “Physicists’ generalizations have tended to be
too sweeping and geologists’ too detailed,” he wrote. Wilson (1963b), p. 864.
25
Jordan (1973), p. 61. On Jordan’s lack of respect for the geological literature, see also Jordan
(1969b), p. 260.
26
Pauli (1996), p. 736.
68 3 The Expanding Earth

I amuse myself with noting that various empirical facts indicate that the gravitational
constant was larger a few billion years ago than it is now. In my book I have referred to
the ideas of the American Fisher that the composition of the surface of the Earth seems to
indicate that the surface has increased by a factor 2 to 3 since the Earth was formed. One
would expect a similar effect on the Moon, although by a much smaller factor. In fact, in the
youngest of its formations the Moon exhibits certain “rills” which until now have remained
unexplained . . . and [which] give the strong impression that the interior of the Moon
subsequently has experienced a very small expansion in volume. There are some more
facts that in my view deserve a closer discussion. But an attempt to deal with this question
by means of quantitative calculations can be made only by specialists in geophysics such as
Bullen; and they will find my idea too incredible to care about it.27

Keith Edward Bullen was a New Zealand-born geophysicist, seismologist and

applied mathematician who in the late 1940s inferred from seismological data that
the inner core of the Earth is solid and with a higher density than the outer core. He
was one among several geophysicists who established the modern view of the
interior of the Earth.28 Jordan was familiar with Bullen’s so-called “compressi-
bility-pressure hypothesis” and his calculations of the density of the Earth’s
inner core.29
A leading theme in the 1955 edition of Schwerkraft was the hypothesis of an
expanding Earth as a result of the decreasing gravitational force. It seems that
Jordan came to the hypothesis from an unlikely source, a wealthy American
businessman and amateur scientist by the name Joel E. Fisher.30 Mr. Fisher first
appeared in Jordan’s publications in the first edition of Schwerkraft and subse-
quently in all of his work related to the expanding Earth. The two probably met
personally, but the circumstances are unknown. Their first interaction may have
taken place in the early 1950s in the form of correspondence in relation to Jordan’s
forthcoming book on gravitation and cosmology.31
Joel Ellis Fisher, born 30 November 1891, was president of the North-Western
Terminal Railroad in Denver and later director of the Melville Shoe Corporation in
Harrison, New York.32 His active business career made him a wealthy man who
privately sponsored research on various subjects, including glaciers and gravitation.
Before he entered the world of private business Fisher had studied at Yale from
where he graduated in 1911. He was director of the Babson Gravity Research
Foundation and the Washington Institute for Biophysical Research. Since his

27
Letter of 17 December 1952, in Pauli (1996), p. 800. For “the American Fisher,” see below.
28
Bullen (1949). On Bullen’s work on the core of the Earth, see Brush (1996c), pp. 198–202.
29
Jordan (1952), p. 198.
30
Jordan (1955), p. vi and p. 226.
31
Jordan (1961a), p. 417. Jordan referred in some of his writings, for example Jordan (1961b), to
discussions with Fisher.
32
Obituaries of Fisher appeared in Alpina Americana Journal 15 (1966): 115–116 and Alpine Journal
71 (1966): 190. These sources can be found online as http://publications.americanalpineclub.org/
articles/12196611500/Joel-Ellis-Fisher-1891-1966 and http://www.alpinejournal.org.uk/Contents/
Contents_1966_files/AJ%201966%20190-198%20In%20Memoriam.pdf. To my knowledge, the
Jordan–Fisher connection has never been noted in either the scientific or historical literature.
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? 69

youth Fisher was a devoted mountaineer and member of several American and
European mountaineering clubs. During the late 1930s he served as president of the
Alpina Americana club. He climbed the Matterhorn in Switzerland six times, the
last time in 1950, and in 1965 the 74-year-old Fisher ascended the 2930 m high
Riffelhorn also in Switzerland. He died in New York on 6 January 1966.
Little is known about the scientific work of Fisher except that he had an interest
in orogeny and glaciology, on which subjects he published a couple of papers in the
American Journal of Science in the 1940s and also, in 1950 and 1955, in the Journal
of Glaciology. Apart from this he did not publish in recognized journals of physics
or geophysics, but privately he published several books, pamphlets and essays on
glaciology, mountain ascents, and other geological subjects.33 Some of these were
of a rather speculative and unorthodox nature. One of his privately printed publi-
cations was a booklet from 1950 entitled Some Problems of Geophysics,
Approached from Viewpoints of Modern Physics. In the late 1950s Fisher collabo-
rated with William J. Hooper, a physics-trained inventor, in experiments on the
generation of anti-gravity from electric fields. Their research was presented at
meetings of the American Physical Society and resulted in two US patents to
Hooper.
A serious amateur scientist, in 1949 Fisher was elected a member of the
New York Academy of Sciences. Although Jordan referred frequently and very
positively to Fisher in his publications from 1955 to about 1970, he only once cited
a paper by him.34 Characteristically, this was a privately printed essay, which only
appeared as an abstract in the Transactions of the American Geophysical Society.
Despite Fisher’s lack of reputation in scientific circles, Jordan valued his insights
highly and perhaps somewhat uncritically. He never missed an opportunity to
express his indebtedness to his friend in New York. As far as geology and geo-
physics were concerned, it was one amateur being captivated by the ideas of another
amateur.
In 1954 Jordan wrote a brief essay on his varying-G theory to the prize compe-
tition of the Gravity Research Foundation, a private organization founded 5 years
earlier. Gravity Research Foundation (GRF) was established in 1949 by the Amer-
ican economist and businessman Roger W. Babson with financial support from
Clarence Birdseye, an inventor and industrialist. The original purpose was to
stimulate research in anti-gravity devices, materials that could absorb gravity and
other technological applications of gravity. Babson tended to see gravity as “our
enemy number one,” possibly because he felt that this sinister force of nature was
responsible for his sister’s and grandson’s drowning. His aim with GRF was not so
much to study gravitation from a scientific perspective as it was to tame gravity and
turn it into a friend rather than enemy of mankind (Fig. 3.2).

33
For some of Fisher’s publications and abstracts, see King et al. (1965), p. 537, which includes an
abstract titled “Arguments for a solid core of the Earth at 0 K.”
34
See Jordan (1955), p. 223.
70 3 The Expanding Earth

Fig. 3.2 Monument to R. W. Babson at Gordon College, Massachusetts. The inscription reminds
students of “the blessings forthcoming when science determines what gravity is, how it works, and
how it may be controlled.” Photograph by Elizabeth B. Thomsen, 2013. Retrieved from https://
commons.wikimedia.org

Fisher had close connections to GRF, for which he for a period served as acting
director. On 27 August 1960 GRF sponsored a “Gravity Day” with Fisher
presenting a paper on “The Possibility of Producing Changes in the Gravitational
Mass of Certain Substances.” He reported on experiments with bismuth and other
elements that apparently proved that they gained or lost weight according to their
magnetic history.35 It took a couple of years until GRF turned to more mainstream
research in gravity and then succeeded in attracting interest and respect from the
community of physicists and astronomers. In this way GRF became part of the
renaissance of general relativity and gravitation studies. Among the prize winners
of the 1950s and 1960s were notables such as Thomas Gold, John Wheeler, Banesh
Hoffmann, Hermann Bondi, Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking, and Dennis Sciama.
The most recent prize winner (for 2015) is Gerard ‘t Hooft of Utrecht University,
the Netherlands, a Nobel physics laureate of 1999.
The essay to GRF was actually submitted on Jordan’s behalf by Fisher, whom
Jordan credited for most of his geological examples supporting the theory: “It was
first brought to my attention by my friend, Joel E. Fisher, that there exist many well
known facts in geology and geophysics completely unexplained, but readily
explainable under the proposal that the constant of gravitation has diminished

35
See http://www.presidentialufo.com/wilbert-smith-articles/131-gravity-day-1960. For the his-
tory and activities of GRF, see http://www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/ and also DeWitt and
Rickles (2011), pp. 7–15.
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? 71

Fig. 3.3 Part of Jordan’s 1954 essay to the Gravity Research Foundation. Reproduced with the
permission of the Gravity Research Foundation

over geological time.”36 Jordan vaguely suggested that his theory, contrary to
Einstein’s, allowed in principle “the harnessing of gravity,” which supposedly
resonated with the ideas and aims of the Gravity Research Foundation (Fig. 3.3).
However, he did not win the prize but only received honourable mention. He was no
more fortunate thirteen years later, when he again submitted an essay, this time on
empirical tests of the G(t) hypothesis. Jordan now focused on astronomical mea-
surements rather than on the more uncertain results obtained from geology and
geophysics. Relating to his original interest in Dirac’s hypothesis, he wrote:
But though mathematically beautifully relations were revealed by these studies . . . it
remained unsatisfactory, that the extreme slowness of the surmised decrease seemed to
leave scarcely any hope to connect these mathematical speculations with empirical facts.
Therefore I was again fascinated as my late friend J. E. Fisher at New York made the
remark, that Dirac’s decrease of G, if existent, must have caused a marked expansion of the
earth in the course of its history.

36
Jordan (1954).
72 3 The Expanding Earth

In works between 1955 and 1962 Jordan discussed a long series of geophysical,
geological and astronomical evidence which, in his view, amounted to convincing
support of the G(t) hypothesis.37 In accordance with Fisher he proposed that the
Earth must have expanded and that the cause of the expansion was a steadily
diminishing gravity. His basic argument was that, since the Earth consisted of a
compressed core and a non-compressed crust, diminishing gravity would cause the
core to expand as a result of reduced weight of the overlying layer of rock. Stated
somewhat differently, with a slow change in G the Earth can be assumed to be in a
state of hydrostatic equilibrium at any given time. In such an equilibrium state the
pressure p varies with the radius r as

dp ρmðr Þ
¼
GðtÞ 2 :
dr r

The quantity m(r) is the mass inside r, and ρ is the density. A decrease in G implies
that the pressure in the interior was formerly greater than it is today and, conse-
quently, that the Earth was smaller. According to Jordan, as a result of expansion,
the crust would break up and the cracks would be filled in by upward movement of
the underlying molten basalt. The total area of granitic continents today would thus
be equal to the surface of a smaller ancient Earth. Jordan was pleased to note that
the Russian geologist I. B. Kirillov “has shown that the present continents do fit
together on a sphere whose surface area is equal to the total area of the
continents.”38
The same point was independently made by Cyril H. Barnett, a British anatomist
and amateur geologist. Barnett’s argument caused a brief comment from Harold
Jeffreys, who noted “the problem of explaining how the Earth’s volume can have
increased threefold.”39 He further objected that the shape of the continents, had they
originally covered the entire Earth, would have been considerably distorted as a
result of the expansion. Jeffreys had no more confidence in the expanding Earth
than he had in continental drift.
At a conference in Newcastle in 1967 Jordan once again referred to Fisher as the
originator of the connection between the G(t) hypothesis and the expanding Earth.
As he recalled, having digested Fisher’s idea he believed to see in it a possible
answer to “one of the great problems of Earth research,” namely, why there exists
two preferred levels of elevation on the surface of the Earth separated by about
4.5 km. It was then that he “began to read a little about the sciences concerning the
Earth and the Moon.”40 Jordan similarly highlighted the idea of a two-layered Earth

37
Jordan (1955, 1959a, b, 1962a, b, c).
38
Jordan (1962a, b, c), p. 599. See also Jordan (1971), pp. 72–75.
39
Barnett (1962) followed by Jeffrey’s untitled comment. Jeffrey’s objection of continental
distortions was countered by Dennis (1962), an American geologist. See also Barnett (1969).
40
Jordan (1969a), p. 55. On the hypsographical problem as a motivation for Jordan’s ideas of the
expanding Earth, see also Jordan (1969b), pp. 262–263.
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? 73

in a contribution to a volume published on the occasion of the sixtieth birthday of

the Polish physicist Leopold Infeld. We have to assume, he said, that
. . . during the formation of the continental layer the Earth was considerably smaller than
today, so that this layer covered the whole sphere of the Earth to a practically constant
thickness. A process of expansion caused the continental layer to split into parts; the newly
formed rifts were filled out to the equilibrium altitude by the more dense but also more
mobile sima material of the deeper layer. In the course of time part of these rifts between
the parts of the continental layer developed into wide oceans.41

The “hypsographical” problem relating to the two-layer structure of the Earth’s

surface, corresponding to the continental plates and the ocean floors, was far from
new. For example, it had been dealt with in detail by Alfred Wegener, who believed
it could be explained by continental drift. “In the whole of geophysics,” Wegener
wrote,
. . . there is probably hardly another law of such clarity and reliability as this—that there are
two preferential levels for the world’s surface in alternation side by side and are represented
by the continents and the ocean floors, respectively. It is therefore very surprising that
scarcely anyone has tried to explain this law, which has, after all, been well known for some
time.42

To Jordan the hypsographical law was solid evidence of an expanding Earth and
ultimately of a decreasing gravitational constant. As early as 1955, shortly before
the publication of the second edition of Schwerkraft, Hans C. Joksch, an astronomer
at the Münster University Observatory, analysed by rigorous statistical means the
Earth’s hypsographical curve, pointing out that it consisted of three rather than two
levels. In agreement with “the considerations of P. Jordan and J. E. Fisher”
concerning a varying gravitational constant, he suggested that early expansion
had first disrupted the original sialic crust.43 Subsequent expansion would then
have disrupted a second layer, which was in turn separated by the third oceanic
layer. Joksch’s paper was one of the very few references in the contemporary
geological literature to Jordan’s theory—and the only one to Fisher. The Swiss-
Austrian geophysicist Adrian Scheidegger described Joksch’s theory and its foun-
dation in Jordan’s “highly speculative” suggestion of a decreasing gravitational
constant.44
Jordan also referred to other of Fisher’s ideas, among them that the orogenic
forces responsible for the formation of mountains were due to the expansion of the
Earth and hence could be understood on the basis of the varying-gravity hypothesis.
Moreover, Fisher had argued that the Earth must cool as a result of its adiabatic

41
Jordan (1962b), p. 287. Sima, an older name derived from silicon and magnesium, denotes the
lower layer of the Earth’s crust composed of basaltic rock. It lies below the granitic shell that forms
the foundation of the continental masses and is known as sial (from silicon and aluminum).
42
Wegener (1966), p. 37, an English translation of the fourth edition of Wegener’s classic Die
Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane first published in 1915.
43
Joksch (1955).
44
Scheidegger (1958), p. 9 and p. 157.
74 3 The Expanding Earth

expansion, thereby balancing the heat produced by radioactive minerals. Jordan

considered it “an attractive thought.”45 Some of Jordan’s arguments related to the
consequences the G(t) hypothesis would have on the structure and history of the
Moon. One of the consequences was a variation in the Moon-Earth distance and
another was the cracks or rills on the surface of the Moon mentioned in Jordan’s
letter to Pauli quoted above. Jordan first mentioned the rills as possible evidence for
expansion in 1955 and later in greater detail, concluding that “there is nothing in our
observations of the lunar rills to contradict our interpretation of them as conse-
quences of Dirac’s hypothesis.”46 From the size and number of rills he estimated an
average increase in the Moon’s radius of about 0.005 mm per year.47
The implications for the history of the Moon of a decreasing gravitational
constant was studied by Horst Gerstenkorn, a high-school teacher and accom-
plished amateur astronomer in Hannover who made important contributions to
lunar theory.48 The Dirac–Jordan variation of gravity would have caused tidal
friction to be stronger in the past. Gerstenkorn showed that, as a consequence, the
Moon must originally have been a dwarf planet that was captured by the Earth’s
gravitational field only 600–800 million years ago. The age of our satellite would
thus be much smaller than what was ordinarily believed (namely, nearly the same as
the age of the Earth or about 4.5 billion years). The German amateur astronomer
found the scenario to be doubtful and the G ~ 1/t assumption to be “very hypo-
thetical.” Jordan noted the problem, but apparently without considering it a serious
one.49
Volcanism was yet another phenomenon that Jordan thought was the result, at
least in part, of tensions in the crust and ultimately explainable by a diminishing
gravitation. He tended to believe that volcanoes were a special feature of the Earth,
not to be found in other planets with the possible exception of Venus. This idea he
credited to Hans-Jost Binge, a young student of his who had written a manuscript on
volcanoes and intrusions that Jordan found to be very convincing.50 Binge had
suffered since his birth from cerebral palsy and was unable to communicate nor-
mally by either speech or writing. His manuscripts were all written by his mother,
who alone was able to understand him. Binge died at the age of forty, shortly after
having graduated with a dissertation on the geophysical consequences of the G(t)
hypothesis.51 Jordan wrote movingly of Binge as “a great talent [who] was subjected
to a tragic fate.”52

45
Jordan (1955), p. 228.
46
Jordan (1971, p. 47, 1955, p. 237).
47
Jordan (1971), p. 95. Jordan also believed that the (in)famous “canals” on Mars were real and
that they were due to expansion of the planet. Jordan (1961b), p. 20.
48
Gerstenkorn (1957). See also Brush (1996c), pp. 200–202.
49
Jordan et al. (1964), p. 513, Jordan (1971), p. 106.
50
Binge (1955), Jordan (1955, p. 233, 1959b, p. 783, 1973, pp. 68–69).
51
Binge (1962), Jordan (1971), pp. 120–121.
52
See Jordan (1966), p. 100 and also Jordan (1971), pp. 118.
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? 75

Despite his severe handicap, Binge was able to write a couple of papers on
astrophysical subjects and also a note on his theory of volcanism.53 According to
the Binge–Jordan view, part of the material of the Earth’s crust was under a pressure
lower than that at the time of its formation and would therefore be in an unstable
state. Volcanic activity consisted of explosive eruptions that originated from phase
transitions in the material and were connected with folding processes. The only way
to account for the diminishing pressure causing the explosions was to assume a
systematically weakening gravitational constant. Indeed, Jordan argued that volca-
nism was “a testimony to the Dirac hypothesis of a decrease in the force of
gravity.”54
As mentioned in Sect. 2.3, Jordan did not accept Teller’s paleoclimatological
argument against Dirac’s hypothesis. Still in 1952, in the first edition of
Schwerkraft, he seems to have been unaware of ter Haar’s cloud hypothesis
which came to work as Jordan’s preferred protection against Teller’s conclusion.
By the mid-1950s Jordan considered a warmer Earth in the past to be in agreement
with Dirac’s hypothesis if only supplemented with the idea of a Venus-like Earth in
the Carboniferous period. This idea he considered to be “confirmed in an extremely
convincing manner” by the type of vegetation in the Carboniferous which strongly
indicated a total coverage by clouds.55
Jordan also considered the apparent conflict with older ice ages predicted by the
astronomical theory proposed by the Serbian mathematician and astronomer
Milutin Milanković, but only to conclude that there was no real conflict. On the
contrary, Jordan suggested that the G(t) hypothesis was “able to answer the
question, why the inevitable climatic changes controlled astronomically could
lead to glaciation during the last 106 years, but not in former times.”56 He referred
to the increased solar constant in the past, which he estimated to be just enough to
prevent the icing that would otherwise follow the Milanković cycles.57
In short, Jordan was convinced that he had vindicated Dirac’s hypothesis
empirically. Expansion of the Earth was real and it was mainly due to a gravi-
tational constant decreasing inversely with the age of the universe. Jordan spread
the gospel of the gravity-induced expanding Earth at every possible occasion,
at conferences, in public lectures, and in a variety of scientific and popular publi-
cations. Thus, in a biography of Einstein published in 1969, he included a lengthy
section on these non-Einsteinian topics.58 By the early 1960s Jordan seems to have
believed that his and others’ ideas of an expanding Earth was about to win general
recognition among geophysicists. In his unpublished ARL report of 1961 he wrote:

53
For Binge’s contributions to astrophysics, see Zeitschrift f€
ur Naturforschung A 6 (1951): 49–53,
7 (1952): 440–444, and 11 (1956): 874.
54
Jordan (1971, p. 123, 1962b, p. 286).
55
Jordan (1962b, p. 285, 1967).
56
Jordan (1964), p. 115.
57
Jordan et al. (1964), pp. 516–518.
58
Jordan (1969b).
76 3 The Expanding Earth

“The opinions of leading specialists in this field are converging now to acknowl-
edge expansion of the earth as an empirically stated fact; differences of opinion
remain only concerning the amount of this expansion.”59 But Jordan’s optimism
was unfounded.
In the mature version of his theory Jordan presented the separation of South
America from Africa as purely a result of global expansion at a rate about 5 mm per
year.60 However, according to Jordan, the expansion of the Earth had taken place in
two stages, for up to the end of the Paleozoic the rate had only been 0.5 mm per
year. He argued that the faster expansion rate of

1 dR dR
ffi 10
9 year
1 , ffi 5 mm year
1
R dt dt

was characteristic for the later eras. Contrary to some other expansionists (including
Egyed and Dicke) Jordan was convinced that expansion made continental drift in
the sense of Wegener, superfluous. He estimated that about 90 % of the expansion
was due to decreasing gravity, stating that “Dirac’s hypothesis allows us to under-
stand earth expansion as a sufficient cause to draw the different parts of the
continental-block-layer from each other.”61
The combination of geophysical, astronomical and astrophysical evidence
showed to Jordan’s satisfaction that “Dirac’s hypothesis should not really be
considered as a hypothesis, but rather as empirically proven knowledge.”62 A few
years later he repeated that the G(t) hypothesis provided “an empirical justification
for the Earth’s expansion which is independent of any theoretical speculation.”63 As
the hypothesis of a decreasing G justified the expanding Earth, so did “our present
knowledge of the earth . . . make[s] the correctness of Dirac’s hypothesis an
established fact.”64 Although Jordan realized that the evidence was indirect and
in need of further support from astronomical measurements, such as radar determi-
nations of the distance to the Moon and the planets, he nonetheless accepted it as
proof. The German physicist Wolfgang Kundt recalled about his former professor
that his confidence in the G(t) hypothesis was stronger than in the reality of
conflicting evidence.65 On the other hand, Jordan was far more open to conflicting
evidence than Dirac, who simply tended to disregard them.

59
Jordan (1961b), p. 16.
60
Jordan (1971), p. 92.
61
Jordan et al. (1964), p. 508, Jordan (1961b). Emphasis added.
62
Jordan (1959b), p. 795.
63
Jordan (1963), p. 282.
64
Jordan (1962a), p. 600.
65
Kundt (2007).
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? 77

Jordan was a professed positivist, anti-materialist and empiricist.66 In the late

1930s he argued that Dirac’s theory based on the LNH was in reality an “empirical
cosmology” solidly based on and justified by hypothesis-free observational facts.67
Twenty years later he adopted the very same methodology, that is, to infer the truth
of a theory by the facts it can explain. In his writings from the period he referred
several times to Wegener’s theory of drifting continents. Although he admired
Wegener, he argued that his theory was defective and inferior to his own view of an
expanding Earth. Yet, methodologically his approach was strikingly similar to
Wegener’s, namely, to consider a large and diverse group of unexplained or poorly
understood geological phenomena and then argue that they could best be explained
by a general hypothesis, in his case a diminishing gravitational constant. Jordan
expressed his method and conclusion as follows:
Many facts, which up till now could only be interpreted by ad hoc hypothesis, can be
understood if one assumes Dirac’s hypothesis—the one hypothesis replaces numerous
others. This is true to such an extent that it is almost suspicious on the face of it; almost
every problem which, so far, had received no satisfactory solution could form a basis for
Dirac’s hypothesis. On reflection we realise that this is the overall result to be expected if
the hypothesis is valid.68

Referring to his book The Expanding Earth, in more general terms he spelled out
his methodological strategy in the following way69:
It is the explicit purpose of the book to examine whether Dirac’s hypothesis can be
(a) disproved, (b) proved correct, or (c) left as an open question, from the empirical data
available. It would be disproved if we were to draw from this hypothesis a conclusion which
is contradicted empirically. We could obtain proof, if certain facts were to be found which
are only explicable by the hypothesis, and if a complete survey would show that no
contradiction exists. For each range of phenomena which can be tested in this way we
must first of all attempt to state all the observed facts freed from any hypothetical
interpretation.

The belief that pure facts of nature can be stated unambiguously without
involving any theoretical assumptions is not shared by philosophers, but it was an
integral part of Jordan’s own philosophy of science. In his very first paper dealing
with Dirac’s hypothesis he stressed that it was possible “to distinguish quite clearly
between what are observational facts—and as such independent of any theory—and
what are the results of theoretical considerations.”70 The explanations Jordan
offered were qualitative and not very detailed, and they all derived from the G(t)
hypothesis rather than specifically from his extended theory of general relativity.

66
See Jordan (1934), an essay on the positivist concept of reality in which he concluded that “the
method of positivism is nothing but the scientific method in its purest form.”
67
Jordan (1938).
68
Jordan (1971), p. 15.
69
Jordan (1971), p. 19.
70
Jordan (1937), p. 515.
78 3 The Expanding Earth

In other words, one could adopt the G(t) hypothesis without accepting his scalar–
tensor theory, which is what most scientists in favour of the hypothesis did.
Another feature in much of Jordan’s work in the decade from 1955 to1964
deserves mention, namely, his use of sources and lack of specific references to
the scientific literature. For one thing, he often referred to authors whose work
could not be looked up because they had published nothing. In other cases he
referred to correspondence or unpublished lectures and manuscripts. Moreover, he
did nothing to distinguish between orthodox and unorthodox ideas, or between
ideas suggested by amateurs and by reputed earth scientists. Jordan typically
mentioned numerous names in his articles and books, but only in very few cases
did he connect the names with references to the literature; and when he did, his
selection was quite arbitrary. His 1962 article in Reviews of Modern Physics
contained about forty names and not a single reference to works by the mentioned
authors.71
One may reasonably assume that Jordan’s way of writing diminished his repu-
tation as a serious scientist among many geologists and geophysicists in the British-
American tradition. Only in 1966, in a major monograph translated into English five
years later as The Expanding Earth, did he present his theory in full and supplied it
with a comprehensive list of references. By that time the pendulum had swung
towards global plate tectonics and the expanding Earth become a minority view.
Although the book was often referred to, it made very little impact on the devel-
opment of geophysics.
In evaluating Jordan’s work in the earth sciences it should be kept in mind that he
was busy with many other issues in the post-World War II period. Thus, from 1957
to 1961 he was a member of the Bundestag, the West-German federal parliament,
for the Christian-Democratic party. In addition to his political work, Jordan was
also much occupied with public lectures, popularizations of science and generally
with acting as what in German is known as a Kulturtr€ ager, an emissary of culture.72
On the scientific side, he and his collaborators in Hamburg did much work in
general relativity and also in pure mathematics, including the theory of algebra
and groups.
Jordan’s publications on varying gravitation and the expanding Earth were
known by physicists and geophysicists but without attracting a great deal of
attention. Paul Wesson found Jordan’s theory of the Earth to be interesting but
also “dubious from the geophysical aspect.”73 To a large extent Jordan’s theories
were overshadowed by those of Robert Dicke, who published in English and in the
form of papers in widely circulated journals. Jordan, on the other hand, mostly
wrote in German and summarized his work in monographs of which only one

71
Jordan (1962a). On the other hand, in a German review article from the same time he did add a
list of references. See Jordan (1961a).
72
Beyler (1994), pp. 485–495.
73
Wesson (1973), p. 25.
3.2 Pascual Jordan: Geophysicist? 79

appeared in an English translation.74 Several of his publications on the extended

relativity theory, the expanding Earth and the G(t) hypothesis appeared in the not
widely read proceedings of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz.
Jordan was a co-founder of the Academy in 1949 and from 1963 to 1967 he served
as its president. Among the few German geologists with whom Jordan interacted
was Harm Glashoff at Mainz University “who has given me much friendly advice.”
In his monograph on the expanding Earth Jordan emphasised that “a careful study
of his [Glashoff’s] work seems essential for any serious specialist’s discussion of
the geological consequences of Dirac’s hypothesis.”75
When Die Expansion der Erde (The Expansion of the Earth) appeared in English
in 1971, continental drift in the form of plate tectonics had become the preferred
theory of the development of the Earth’s surface. Another book published the same
year announced the death of the expanding Earth theory as follows: “The idea of an
expanding Earth has a long and interesting history, but recent observations have
shown that any expansion is unlikely or so extremely small that it is not significant
during at least the last 1000 million years.”76 According to the authors, two geo-
physicists at the University of Newcastle, non-expansion was proved primarily by
magnetic measurements of the Earth’s paleoradius and determinations of the
number of days in the year by means of the coral growth rings method. We shall
return to the two methods in Sect. 4.3.
What matters is that by the early 1970s the expanding-Earth theory was no
longer considered a serious alternative to plate tectonics by the majority of earth
scientists. As noted by Homer Le Grand, “When in 1971 his monograph on earth
expansion was translated into English, it was not only out-of-date in terms of its
geology but it had been overtaken by the emergence of newer versions of Drift
including plate tectonics.”77 Whether for this reason or not, The Expanding Earth
received no review in leading and widely circulated science journals such as Nature
or Science.78 Jordan’s mostly cited paper received 51 citations until 1980, whereas
the one in the leading physics journal Reviews of Modern Physics was only cited

74
Menard (1986), p. 144 and p. 316 erroneously states that Jordan’s book on the expanding Earth
dates from 1952 and was translated into English in 1966, which he considers an indication of “the
intensity of interest in the expansion hypothesis during the plate tectonic revolution.” He evidently
mixed up the first edition of Schwerkraft and Jordan’s later Die Expansion der Erde. In 1966 there
was indeed a great deal of interest in the expanding Earth hypothesis, but Jordan’s book attracted
only very limited attention.
75
Jordan (1971), p. 145. Jordan referred to a work on the dynamics of the Earth from the viewpoint
of the G(t) hypothesis that Glashoff had published in the proceedings of the Mainz Academy. See
Glashoff (1966).
76
Tarling and Tarling (1971), p. 84.
77
Le Grand (1988, p. 227). For more on the late phase of Earth expansionism, see Sect. 4.4.
78
The German 1966 edition was reviewed in Tectonophysics 4 (1967): 117–120 by Hans Georg
Wunderlich, a professor of geology at G€ ottingen University. Although Tectonophysics was an
English-language journal, the review was in German. The English translation of Jordan’s book was
reviewed by the Manchester astronomer Michael Moutsoulas in Geoexploration 11 (1973):
197–198.
80 3 The Expanding Earth

twelve times in the same period.79 The numbers of citations were much smaller than
for Dicke and his collaborators. As Jordan’s extensive work on the expanding Earth
received but limited attention in the 1960s, so it is considered of marginal interest
(if any at all) to modern historians dealing with the recent revolution in the earth
sciences. It may be an exaggeration to say that Jordan has been written out of the
history of the earth sciences, but if so it is a slight exaggeration only.80

3.3 Dicke and the Earth Sciences

As is evident from his Chapel Hill address and the two subsequent papers in
Reviews of Modern Physics, by 1957 Dicke had obtained solid knowledge of a
series of geophysical subjects, which he discussed expertly (Fig. 3.4). Some of the
knowledge he got from discussions with his Princeton colleague Harry Hammond
Hess, who had joined the faculty in 1934 and in 1950 was made head of Princeton
University’s Department of Geology. In papers from the early 1960s Dicke
acknowledged “the many suggestions and ideas I have derived from conversations
with Professor H. Hess of the Princeton geology department.”81 In 1960 Hess
formulated the crucial idea of “sea floor spreading” and thereby made a seminal
contribution to what would soon become known as plate tectonics. According to
Hess’ hypothesis the sea floor was generated at mid-oceanic ridges by the convec-
tion of the Earth’s mantle, and from there it spread. Hess originally circulated the
sea floor spreading hypothesis by means of a preprint only, whereas the first
publication on the subject was due to the American marine geologist Robert

Fig. 3.4 Robert Henry

Dicke. Reproduced with the
permission of the American
Institute of Physics

79
Web of Science data. The two papers are Jordan (1959a, 1962a).
80
Frankel (2012b), pp. 278–354 deals extensively and scholarly with Earth expansionism without
mentioning Jordan or his books. Jordan is also absent from the review of expanding Earth theories
in Nunan (1998). Jordan’s book of 1966 appears in the bibliography of Sudiro (2014), but there is
no mention of Jordan in the review article itself. The same is the case with Nunan (1988).
81
Dicke (1962a), p. 664 and Dicke (1961b), p. 106.
3.3 Dicke and the Earth Sciences 81

Dietz, at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, who independently had arrived at the
same idea. It was also Dietz who coined the name. Nonetheless, Hess is generally
credited with first proposing sea floor spreading.82
In an interview of 1975, Dicke said:
Long before the average geologist in the country took this continental drift, and plate
tectonics, to mean anything at all—Harry Hess, over in our geology department, had a clear
picture of what was going on. Anyway, it’s obvious that as gravitation is getting weaker, the
earth should expand slightly, and I noticed in my readings at that time that there were cracks
in the mid-Atlantic ridge in the ocean, oceanic cracks. So this suggested that these cracks
might be the result of tension, due to the earth expanding . . . . I went over and talked to Hess
about this. We laid out a beautiful picture of the Atlantic Ocean crust moving, and trenches,
and island arcs, and all the—the whole plate tectonic game was laid out for me, and this was
the late fifties.83

On the suggestion of Hess, Dicke visited Yale University in 1959 to discuss with
Warren Carey the evidence for an expanding Earth and its relation to decreasing
gravity. Carey, who stayed as visiting professor at Yale, had at the time become
convinced that the present surface of the Earth was the result of a long phase of
expansion. In late 1959 and early 1960 he gave several lectures in Princeton.84
Dicke also collaborated with several physics colleagues and graduate students on
geo- and astrophysical problems related to the G(t) hypothesis. One of them was
William Jason Morgan, who in 1964 wrote his physics Ph.D. thesis under Dicke and
with Hess on his committee. The title of the thesis was “An Astronomical and
Geophysical Search for Scalar Gravitational waves.” Such “φ-waves,” as they were
also called, were expected from the Brans–Dicke scalar–tensor theory and Dicke
wanted to know if they actually existed and what observable effects they might
have.85 One possibility was that the φ-waves, which were thought to be caused by a
variation of G in space and time, triggered earthquakes. This was the subject that
26-year-old Morgan investigated in a paper co-authored by J. O. Stoner and
Dicke.86 Analysing nearly 2000 earthquakes in the period from 1904 to 1952
with the purpose of finding periodicities, the three authors concluded that there
existed a statistically significant annual periodicity possibly due to a corresponding
variation in the gravitational constant. The mechanism might be that the change in
G led to periodic stress in the Earth and that the stress triggered earthquakes.
However, Morgan and his two co-authors cautiously pointed out that the observed
annual period could not be interpreted as strong evidence for the hypothesis of a
varying G.

82
For details, see Frankel (2012c), pp. 280–319.
83
Interview by Spencer Weart of 18 November 1975, the Niels Bohr Library and Archives, the
American Institute of Physics. See http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/31508.html
84
Carey (1988), p. 119 and p. 141.
85
Dicke (1964c).
86
Morgan et al. (1961). Morgan and Stoner were at the time National Science Foundation
pre-doctoral fellows working with Dicke’s gravity group in Princeton. For a later attempt to link
the periodicity of earthquakes to the variation of G, see De Sabatta and Rizzati (1977).
82 3 The Expanding Earth

At the time Morgan had taken no course in either geology or geophysics, but his
work with the thesis turned him toward research in geophysics. At the end of 1964
he was hired by the German-American geophysicist Walter Elsasser, who had
joined Hess in Princeton in 1963.87 Four years later, in what was only his fifth
paper, Morgan presented a cornerstone of the new plate tectonics in the form of a
quantitative, mathematically formulated theory of trenches and faults. When Mor-
gan received the prestigious National Medal of Science in 2003 he noted that Dicke
had received the same award in 1970. He paid the following tribute to his former
thesis adviser: “My apprenticeship with him more than 40 years ago was where I
learned what science is—how to formulate and attack a scientific problem. His
approach and attitude toward science remain with me today.”88
Dicke was not originally interested in either geology or geophysics. But, as an
undergraduate at Princeton, he wanted to take at least one course in each of the
major sciences. From this honourable intention, he made one exception and that
was geology.89 By 1957 he had become seriously interested in the subject, as
indicated by his membership in the American Geophysical Union. Generally
Dicke had easy access to several of the American geophysicists and oceanographers
who were instrumental in the plate tectonic revolution. Jordan in Hamburg did not
have the same advantage and neither, perhaps, the same interest.
In two broad-ranging papers of 1957 and 1962 Dicke surveyed how a varying
gravitational constant as given by either Dirac’s theory or the slower version of the
scalar–tensor theory would affect the Earth and the Moon. His aim was not
primarily to contribute to the geological sciences, but rather to use geological and
astronomical data as tests for the G(t) hypothesis and more specifically for the
Brans–Dicke theory of gravitation. He hoped in this way to throw light on how
“physics, astrophysics, and geophysics may become completely enmeshed in a
gravitational study.”90 This synoptic view was characteristic for much of Dicke’s
research in the period.
The phenomena that Dicke dealt with were largely the same as those Jordan had
covered. Moreover, the two physicists shared the same “Wegenerian” method,
namely, to investigate within a synthetic perspective a wide range of geophysical
problems that were not yet well understood. If they could be better explained on the
assumption of varying gravitation the hypothesis would gain in credibility, perhaps
even come out as empirically justified. Wegener’s arguments for continental drift
did not refer only to geology, geophysics and geodesy, but also to astronomy,

87
Frankel (2012d), pp. 474–475. Elsasser, who originally worked in atomic and quantum theory,
had known Dirac since the late 1920s. In an appendix to a paper of 1971 Elsasser dealt with the
geological effects of Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis which “appeared a few decades after [before?] the
confidence of earth scientists in the ancient contraction (‘shrinking apple’) model of mountain
building had begun to be shaken.” Although Elsasser found the hypothesis of gravity-driven Earth
expansion to be interesting, he did not support it. See Elsasser (1971).
88
Schultz (2003).
89
AIP interview of 18 June 1985. http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4572.html
90
Dicke (1961c), p. 797.
3.3 Dicke and the Earth Sciences 83

paleoclimatology and zoology. They appealed to the coherence of the broader,

global picture but invited criticism from the point of view of the special sciences.91
The same was the case with Jordan’s arguments, and to a lesser extent with Dicke’s,
for the expanding Earth.
Although the results obtained by Dicke did not differ substantially from
Jordan’s, his methods and conclusions did. While Jordan was convinced that
evidence based on the study of the Earth amounted to proof of the G(t) hypothesis,
Dicke’s conclusion was more reserved. None of the evidence “can be used to give
strong support to Dirac’s hypothesis,” he cautiously stated in his 1957 paper, adding
that a variation of the gravitational constant could not be excluded. Five years later,
he concluded that his analysis of examples from geophysics “cannot be marshaled
as evidence for a gradual decrease in the gravitational constant.”92 To him, the case
for G(t) was neither proven nor disproven. The two physicists also had different
attitudes to the expanding Earth, which Jordan was strongly committed to. Dicke,
on the other hand, only supported the hypothesis half-heartedly and for a rather
brief period of time (see below).
In one of his 1957 papers in Reviews of Modern Physics, Dicke included a
discussion of the consequences that the G(t) hypothesis would have for the forma-
tion and surface of the Moon. If the Moon had originally been formed in a molten
state and subsequently solidified—Dicke assumed it to have occurred 3.25 billion
years ago—its surface area would since then have increased slightly because of the
expansion caused by decreasing gravity. Like Jordan, he pointed to the rills of the
Moon as possible evidence and, also like Jordan, he emphasized that the expansion
effect would have been much smaller than for the Earth. The problem of the
formation of the Moon was at the time unresolved, with a capture hypothesis and
a rival fission hypothesis being the most popular candidates.93 Dicke argued that the
hotter Sun in the past, as predicted by the G(t) hypothesis, supported the view that
the Earth and the Moon were formed as molten bodies. Tidal waves in a liquid Earth
might have produced the mechanism for fission in accordance with the idea
originally suggested in the late nineteenth century by the British mathematician
and astronomer George Howard Darwin, a son of the famous naturalist Charles
Darwin.
The increasing interest in Brans–Dicke cosmology led G. Shahiv and John
Bahcall to investigate the effect of G(t) on evolution of the Sun, thus extending
the line of research started by Pochoda and Schwarzschild a few years earlier.94
While in the classical model (G ¼ constant; ω ! 1) the solar luminosity increases
mildly with time, Shahiv and Bahcall found that for smaller values of ω it changes
to a decrease. The more rapid depletion of hydrogen caused by a higher luminosity
in the past would influence the neutrino flux, and Shahiv and Bahcall concluded that

91
Le Grand (1988), pp. 80–96, Frankel (1976).
92
Dicke (1962a), p. 664. See also Dicke (1964b), p. 173.
93
On theories of the formation of the Moon, see the careful account in Brush (1996c).
94
Shahiv and Bahcall (1969).
84 3 The Expanding Earth

in the Brans–Dicke model with ω ¼ 5 it would be about twice as great as the one
calculated from the then standard theory based on the assumption of constant G.
Since the solar neutrino flux had recently been measured by Raymond Davis in
rough agreement with the latter assumption, Shahiv and Bahcall concluded that
their result constituted a problem for the Brans–Dicke theory.
“It is remarkable that the rate of heat flow from the earth should present a crucial
test for a physical hypothesis,” Dicke stated, referring to the G(t) hypothesis.95
Having discussed the problem of heat flow from the interior of the Earth in a
preliminary way, he handed it over to one of his students, Charles T. Murphy, who
wrote an undergraduate thesis on it. In an interview of 1975 Dicke recalled: “I had
one student, for example, look at the heat flow problem from this point of view
[decreasing gravity], because . . . if you have the interior hot, as we understand it is,
and if the temperature curve for the mantle of the earth is near the melting point, if
you lower the pressure inside, . . . you can calculate the way in which heat flows out
this way. And it agrees rather well with what is observed, to a factor of two.”96
A few years later an extended version of Murphy’s thesis was transformed into a
joint paper with Dicke published by the American Philosophical Society.97 Based
upon considerations of the energy sources of the Earth, Dicke and his co-author
inferred that radioactivity and other known processes were not enough to account
for the observed heat production of about 50 erg s
1 cm
2 reaching the Earth’s
surface area. The additional energy source, they suggested, might have its roots in
gravity weakening in time. The idea was, roughly, that as G decreases, the pressure
and melting point of the mantle will decrease and the interior of the Earth cool. Heat
will flow out of the core and mantle at a rate greater than if G were constant.98
Moreover, the induced heat flow added to the heat generated by radioactivity makes
it possible for convection currents to occur in the mantle.
The net result of a series of complex mechanisms was this: “The decreasing
gravitational constant makes available the internal heat of the earth as a steady-state
convective system in the mantle and makes convection a more likely possibility.”99
Calculating the heat release brought about by this effect, Dicke and Murphy found
the value 2.5  1012 cal s
1 for the entire Earth surface, or about 20 erg s
1 cm
2.
“Thus a large portion of the observed heat flow might originate deep in the earth,”
they concluded. The proposed mechanism might also explain the “mystery” of the
rate of heat flow from the ocean floors, namely, that it was nearly the same as that
from the continents despite the much higher content of radioactivity in the latter.

95
Dicke (1957a), p. 361.
96
AIP interview, http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/31508.html
97
Dicke (1962a), p. 660, Murphy and Dicke (1964).
98
Dicke seems at the time to have been undecided with regard to the physical state of the inner
core. In Dicke (1962a, 1964b) he stated that the inner core was solid, but in other of his
publications from the same time he expressed doubts about Bullen’s evidence for a solid inner
core, which he judged to be marginal. The turning point in the acceptance of the solid inner core
only occurred in the late 1960s. See Brush (1996a), p. 201.
99
Murphy and Dicke (1964), p. 243.
3.3 Dicke and the Earth Sciences 85

Dicke took the mean heat flow from the ocean floor to be 35 erg s
1 cm
2 and found
the effect of a decreasing G to represent almost half this figure.100
Richard von Herzen, a geophysicist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
in Massachusetts, was not ready to accept Dicke’s “exotic” explanation of heat
escaping from the Earth’s interior. He suggested that the theory and its basis in the
G(t) hypothesis was a “speculative mechanism [that] should be accepted with a small
grain of salt . . . until a need to accept its implications increases.”101 Other geo-
physicists and geologists needed more than a small grain of salt to accept the G(t)
mechanism.
Murphy and Dicke were well aware that convection in the mantle was a
controversial hypothesis and had remained so since the days of Wegener.102 Indeed,
convection currents of radioactive origin were the favoured mechanism for the
horizontal movements of the continents and consequently denied by Jeffreys and
many other critics of Wegener’s theory. Noting the close connection between the
convection hypothesis and continental drift, Jordan sharply criticized the hypothe-
sis as contrived and unnecessary. He thought it was inconsistent with the second
law of thermodynamics.103 On the other hand, he praised the work of Murphy and
Dicke for offering a new and physically more correct mechanism for mantle
convection without claiming that it supported continental drift. According to
Jordan, the Murphy–Dicke theory was irrelevant to his own version of a more
rapidly expanding Earth. None of the effects of a slowly decreasing G that Murphy
and Dicke predicted for the interior of the Earth violated established geophysical
facts, but unfortunately the effects were not empirically verified. Consequently, the
two authors concluded, “they do not directly verify the [varying-G] hypothesis.”
Nor did detailed studies on the rotation of the Earth and the temperature of
meteorites succeed in clearly identifying effects of the decreasing gravitational
constant. Dicke concluded that the astronomical data allowed a rate of change of
G in agreement with the Brans–Dicke theory (~10
11 year
1), but he was unable to
present his analysis in stronger terms, namely, as positive evidence for the theory.
Lack of counterevidence is not evidence.104 He returned to the issue in an article of
1969, this time with a focus on the geophysical consequences of a changed rotation
of the Earth rather than focusing on the varying constant of gravitation.105
The situation was no more promising in an investigation Dicke made with his
former student James (or Jim) Peebles concerning the amount of argon in

100
Dicke (1962a). For the Earth as a heat engine, see also Scheidegger (1958), pp. 55–57, who
quoted the average heat flow to be about 1.2  10
6 cal s
1 cm
2 or 50 erg s
1 cm
2.
101
Von Herzen (1967), p. 213.
102
On the problem of mantle convection, see Oldroyd (1996), pp. 255–257, and Le Grand (1988),
pp. 112–117.
103
Jordan (1966), pp. 80–83, Jordan et al. (1964), p. 507.
104
Dicke (1966).
105
Dicke (1969).
86 3 The Expanding Earth

meteorites.106 Peebles had come to Princeton in 1958 to study particle physics but
soon became part of Dicke’s gravity group. On the suggestion of Dicke and
motivated by his fascination with Mach’s principle, Peebles wrote in 1962 his
dissertation on varying constants of nature. The title was “Observational Tests and
Theoretical Problems Relating to the Conjecture that the Strength of the Electro-
magnetic Interaction May Be a Variable.” In a follow-up paper Peebles discussed
the possibility of a varying fine structure constant in relation to the isotropy of space,
which was also the subject of a joint paper by Peebles and Dicke.107 Some of the
papers co-authored by Dicke and Peebles in the 1960s relied in part on Peebles’
dissertation. About his encounter with Dicke and his group, Peebles recalled:
I was fascinated by the variety of topics under discussion and intimidated by how much
everybody knew. Dicke, in particular, . . . was drawing from a deeper well of understanding
of the physics of the real world than anyone else I have encountered. . . . Bob’s motivation
was his fascination with Mach’s principle, which might be read to say that as the universe
evolves so do the laws of physics. I was fascinated by all the evidence one could bring to
bear, from the laboratory to geology and astronomy. My evident lack of interest in Mach
didn’t seem to bother Bob.108

The idea behind the Peebles–Dicke meteorite study was that a higher tempera-
ture in the early history of the solar system would have caused an anomalous loss of
argon from meteorites. But the method only made it possible to estimate an upper
value for the relative G-dependence on time of 10
10 per year. When Dicke and
Peebles reviewed the empirical arguments for the Brans–Dicke theory, the words
“not compelling” appeared repeatedly.109 It may have been this state of affairs,
namely, the inadequacy of astronomical, geological and geophysical tests to yield
unambiguous answers that caused Dicke to withdraw from geophysics. For a few
more years he continued doing work in the area, but then abandoned it. His last
contribution to geophysics dates from 1969.
According to Dicke, a weakening gravity and an expansion of the Earth might
play some role in terrestrial history, but
. . . it just seemed to me to be so deeply buried in all the other things that it would be hard to
separate it out, in an unambiguous way. . . . I decided after a while that it was just too hard to
try to get fundamental physics out of the earth.110

There were other reasons as well for Dicke’s retreat from geophysics, not least
that his interest in cosmology was boosted by the discovery in 1965 of cosmic

106
Peebles and Dicke (1962a).
107
Peebles (1962), Peebles and Dicke (1962c).
108
Peebles et al. (2009), p. 185.
109
Dicke and Peebles (1965).
110
Interview by Spencer Weart of 18 November 1975, the Niels Bohr Library and Archives, the
American Institute of Physics. http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/31508.html. Freeman Dyson
echoed Dicke’s sentiment. “Until geophysics becomes an exact science,” he wrote, it would be
impossible to relate the past temperature of the Earth or the heat flow through the Earth’s crust in
an unambiguous way to a decrease in G. See Dyson (1972), p. 230.
3.3 Dicke and the Earth Sciences 87

microwave radiation. Apart from engaging fully in the new big-bang cosmological
theory, he also turned to the astronomical consequences of the Brans–Dicke theory,
in particular the tricky problem of measuring and explaining the assumed oblate
shape of the Sun. The precise shape of the Sun affects the value of Mercury’s
perihelion advance and thus might help to establish existence of the φ field in
accordance with the Brans–Dicke theory. However, although the initial measure-
ments of Dicke and his collaborator H. Mark Goldenberg came out in favour of the
Brans–Dicke theory with ω ffi 6, they were received with scepticism and not gen-
erally accepted.111 Later measurements from around 1980 strongly supported the
Einstein theory of gravitation rather than the rival theory of Brans and Dicke. These
measurements could only be explained on the scalar–tensor theory if ω  500,
where the Brans–Dicke theory approximates general relativity very closely.
Despite all the annoying uncertainty, according to Dicke there were good
reasons to believe that the gravitational constant decreased at a rate of about
3  10
11 year
1. If this were the case, the Earth would expand, but only at a
modest rate corresponding to an increase in radius R of 0.5 cm per century or
0.05 mm per year.112 In his paper with Murphy, Dicke concluded that the expansion
rate was 0.047 mm per year or “about 110 miles over the last 4 billion years.” This
was an expansion rate much lower than the one suggested on the basis of empirical
evidence by Carey, Egyed and other expansionist geologists. Dicke credited the
result of a slow expansion due to decreasing gravity to an unpublished senior thesis
written in 1958 by his student G. Hess. Its title was “The Annual Variation of the
Length of the Day as Evidence Relating to a Theory of Gravity.”113 The author of
the thesis was George B. Hess, a son of the geology professor Harry Hess.
Dicke stated the general relation between the change in G and the resulting
change in R as

dR dG
ffi
0:1 :
R G

Could the system of oceanic ridges and the distributions of the continents be the
result of a gravity-induced expansion of the Earth? Not according to Dicke, who
emphasized that the required magnitude of the expansion could not be explained in
terms of gravity decreasing at a rate of about 10
11 per year. The rate would have to
be higher by a factor of 100, for which there was no physical justification. Dicke
consequently dismissed Carey’s suggestion of a strong expansion of this

111
The problem of the Sun’s oblateness goes back to 1865, when Simon Newcomb tried to explain
the Mercury anomaly that was later solved by Einstein. For an overview of the history, see Rozelot
et al. (2010).
112
Dicke (1957a, 1962a).
113
Morgan et al. (1961), Dicke (1962a). Copies of Hess’ thesis work may no longer be extant. I am
grateful to George Hess for having confirmed the authorship of the 1958 thesis (E-mail of
15 January 2015). George Hess took his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1967 on experiments with liquid
helium. He subsequently became a professor of physics at the University of Virginia, where he
mostly worked in condensed matter physics.
88 3 The Expanding Earth

magnitude.114 In his view, the geological evidence rather pointed towards the conti-
nental drift picture with convection in the Earth’s mantle as the driving mechanism.
As to the effect of a diminishing G, he wrote that “The miniscule effects of a modest
expansion would be lost in the magnificent displays produced by convection.”115 This
was also his conclusion in a report to the Space Science Board established under the
National Academy of Sciences in 1958. According to Dicke’s report:
It is not clear that a general expansion of the Earth is required to cause such a separation
[of the Americas and Europe-Africa]. It could also be caused by convection in the mantle.
Certainly it must be said that if continental drift has been occurring to the extent indicated
by recent paleomagnetic data, the effects of an expansion of radius 47 km per b.y. would be
negligible. . . . If subcrustal currents are not important, an expansion in radius of only
0.0047 cm per year could produce a medial crack in the Atlantic 2 km wide in only 13 m.y.,
assuming that half the expansion takes place in the Atlantic.116

Dicke obviously was not an expansionist in the sense of Jordan, but neither was he
strongly committed to the revived theory of drifting continents. He just considered it
the best of the available pictures of the Earth and its history.
In a letter of July 1966 Jordan informed Dicke about his forthcoming book on the
expanding Earth and the large value (10
9 per year) he found for the rate of
decrease of gravity. Jordan planned a visit to the United States and wanted to
meet Dicke in Princeton. In his letter of reply Dicke agreed that, “the implications
for geophysics and astrophysics of a time rate of change of the gravitational
interaction is one of the most fascinating questions that one could consider.” But
he was sceptical with regard to Jordan’s high value for the rate of change: “I am
curious to know how you could have a time rate of change of gravitation as great as
10
9 per year and am looking forward to reading about it in your book.”117

3.4 Egyed and the New Expansion Theory

In a review article of 1963, the Hungarian geophysicist Lászl
o Egyed, director of the
Geophysical Institute in Budapest, noted that several authors had independently
arrived at the idea of an expanding Earth.118 He has himself been described as “the
penultimate independent discoverer” and the one with whom “the expansion hypo-
thesis entered the normal literature of science.”119 Jordan referred repeatedly to Egyed,

114
Dicke (1964b), p. 162.
115
Dicke (1962a) and similarly in Murphy and Dicke (1964), p. 226: “If substantial continental
drift associated with subcrustal currents should occur, it seems likely that the effects of a small
expansion would be masked by the larger effects produced by these currents.”
116
Dicke (1961b), p. 105. The abbreviations “m.y.” and “b.y.” refer to million years and billion
years, respectively.
117
Jordan to Dicke, 2 July 1966, and Dicke to Jordan, 7 July 1966. Robert H. Dicke papers, box 4,
folder 4, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. I am
grateful to J. Peebles for providing me with copies of the letters.
118
Egyed (1963). For a brief biographical account, see Mesk
o (1971).
119
Menard (1986), p. 144.
3.4 Egyed and the New Expansion Theory 89

whom he generously called “one of the fathers of the theory of the expansion of the
Earth” and “one of the most enthusiastic defenders” of the theory.120 Egyed was
nationally as well as internationally recognized for his work in seismology, geo-
magnetism and other branches of geophysics. He was instrumental in the formation
of the Association of Hungarian Geophysicists in 1954 and in his later years the
communist regime allowed him to attend many international congresses on geo-
physics. In 1960 Egyed was elected a corresponding member of the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences and ten years later, shortly before his death, he became a
full member.
Based on paleogeographical and other evidence Egyed concluded in the
mid-1950s that the radius of the Earth had been expanding for the past 500 million
years by the slow rate of 0.4–0.6 mm per year.121 He assumed the rate to have been
constant throughout the period. Among the evidence which inspired Egyed to his
conclusion were estimates of the change of water-covered continents throughout the
history of the Earth. It was generally agreed from geological considerations that the
mass of sea water had remained roughly constant. Egyed now reasoned that, on the
assumption of a contracting Earth, it follows that the areas covered by sea water
would have increased over the last 500 million years; on the other hand, the opposite
trend would follow from an expanding Earth. According to Henri and Geneviève
Termier at the University of Paris, the area had decreased. Using the data collected by
the Termier couple and also by the distinguished Russian geologist Nikolai Strakhov,
Egyed interpreted it as “evidence for the hypothesis that the Earth has expanded.”
Egyed’s argument based on the coverage of the Earth’s surface by water relied on
the assumption that the hypsometric curve, meaning the proportion of land area at
various elevations, had stayed constant during geological time. As pointed out by his
critics, there was no good reason to maintain the assumption without which the
expansion argument would lose its force. A slight increase in thickness of the
continents offered a plausible alternative interpretation of the paleogeographical
data. Yet another possibility was that the data might be explained by a combination
of known processes such as glaciation, mountain building, erosion and ocean rises.122
Egyed’s main argument was sharply criticized by Robert Dietz according to
whom the Hungarian geophysicist had failed to take into consideration polar and
glacial effects. Dietz dismissed the underlying idea of a Precambrian universal
sialic crust which fragmented due to expansion. “I cannot take the expanding Earth
hypothesis of Egyed . . . and others seriously,” he bluntly stated.123 Despite various
objections, Egyed kept to the expansion hypothesis. The Termier couple did not
intervene in the controversy over the expanding Earth except that they offered some

120
Jordan (1966, 1971, p. 49 and p. 66).
121
Egyed (1956a, b). See also Frankel (2012b), pp. 279–282.
122
Scheidegger (1958), p. 11, Armstrong (1969), Hallam (1971).
123
Dietz (1967), p. 236, who referred to Egyed (1961b). He did not comment on Egyed’s argument
for the expanding Earth in terms of decreasing gravity.
90 3 The Expanding Earth

indirect support by concluding that “global palaeogeography does not display any
argument against Earth expansion.”124
To account for the expansion in physical terms Egyed adopted a modified
version of a theory of the composition of the inner Earth first proposed by the
British theoretical geophysicist William H. Ramsey at Manchester University in the
late 1940s. According to Ramsey, the Earth was originally formed as a cold solid
body, and not as a molten mass. Rather than explaining the difference between core
and mantle in terms of chemical composition, he explained the core by a phase
transition of silicate compounds such as olivine into a liquid metallic state due to
extremely high pressure.125 The phase change was facilitated by heat from radio-
active decay. Ramsey’s high-pressure phase change theory, which contradicted the
standard picture of the core as consisting mainly of iron and nickel, was controver-
sial and dismissed by many earth scientists. Yet it survived in various modified
forms. Jordan initially thought that Ramsey’s explanation of the spheres of discon-
tinuity inside the Earth as due to phase differences was valid, but in 1962 he came to
the conclusion that this was not the case. He ascribed his change of mind to
discussions with Edward Teller, according to whom Ramsey’s hypothesis was
physically improbable.126
Egyed suggested that the inner core was a remnant of the original solar material
out of which the Earth was formed. He believed that the minimum density of the
inner core was 17 g cm
3, that the density of the outer core was 9–12 g cm
3, and
that the density of the mantle ranged between 3 and 6 g cm
3. Egyed further argued
that the matter of the inner core slowly and irreversibly transformed into a stable
low-density phase, implying a decrease in the mean density of the Earth. Assuming
the mass of the Earth to be constant then led him to “the surprising conclusion that
the volume of the Earth is steadily increasing.” As a result of the expansion a large
amount of tectonic energy would be released. Egyed’s theory was ambitious and
total in scope127:
A new conception of dynamic character is given for the internal constitution of the Earth.
. . . The expansion of the Earth is able to account for the formation of the crust and oceanic
basins, the energies of the tectonic forces and earthquakes, the origin of deep-focus
earthquakes, the periodicity of geological phenomena, the continental drift and mountain
building, and is supported also by paleogeographical data.

Egyed’s claim, or the corresponding claim of Jordan and Binge, that Earth
expansion was able to account for the formation of mountains, was not generally
accepted even by most fellow expansionists. Crustal shortening seemed necessary
for the folding-up of mountains and it was hard to see how crustal shortening could
be obtained by expansion.128

124
Termier and Termier (1969), p. 101. Emphasis added.
125
Ramsey (1949).
126
Jordan (1962b), p. 288. On the fate of Ramsey’s theory, see Brush (1996a), pp. 209–213 and
Doel (1996), pp. 97–98.
127
Egyed (1957), p. 106 and p. 101.
128
Scheidegger (1958), pp. 204–205.
3.4 Egyed and the New Expansion Theory 91

By the late 1950s Egyed thought he had found an alternative or supplementary

explanation for the expansion in Dirac’s cosmological hypothesis of a decreasing
gravitational constant, or what he called the “Dirac–Gilbert equation.” On this basis
he revised his picture of the structure of the Earth and its evolution over time. Egyed
now described the infant Earth as follows:
The original radius of the Earth was about half the present-day one so that the average
density could amount to 35 g cm
3 instead of the present 5.5 g cm
3. The surface of the
outer core, i.e. the Gutenberg–Wiechert discontinuity, must have lain at a depth of 100 to
200 kilometres below the surface of the Earth, for the critical pressure generating the high-
pressure phase of the core was reached at that level already, because of the high value of the
gravity acceleration, as postulated by the Dirac–Gilbert equation.129

Apart from applying the Dirac–Gilbert G(t) hypothesis to the expanding Earth,
Egyed also used it to propose a new hypothesis of the origin of the solar system
based on the great angular velocity of the Sun in the past. The planetary hypothesis
led to an expression for the orbital radii of the planets that roughly agreed with the
Titius–Bode law going back to the late eighteenth century.130 Originally trained in
physics and mathematics, Egyed was apparently aware of Dirac’s hypothesis in the
late 1930s, but “at that time, I shared the doubts of most physicists concerning this
hypothesis.”131
It was only after Gilbert’s argument that the G(t) hypothesis agreed with general
relativity that Egyed accepted the hypothesis and made it the basis of his view of an
expanding Earth. Egyed and also Holmes somewhat uncritically supported Gilbert
in his claim that he had proved Dirac’s hypothesis to be a corollary of general
relativity. In the opinion of the large majority of specialists in general relativity
theory, Gilbert’s claim was wrong (see also Sect. 2.5). They maintained that a
varying G cannot be reconciled with Einstein’s theory of gravitation, which is also
the current view. Given that Gilbert’s theoretical value for the age of the universe
was 4  109 years it is remarkable that Carey referred to it as “an impressive
success.”132 Egyed was in contact with Jordan, who was happy to have found a
brother in arms. The noted Hungarian geophysicist, Jordan wrote, “now prefers to
believe that Dirac’s hypothesis is correct and gives the theoretical explanation of
this expansion, which Egyed believes to be an empirically proven fact.”133

129
Egyed (1960a), p. 253. On Gilbert’s claim as argued in Gilbert (1956), see also Sect. 2.3.
130
Egyed (1960c). According to the Titius–Bode law, often referred to as just Bode’s law, the radii
of the planets follow a simple relation given by the number of the planet as counted from the Sun.
Today the “law” is generally considered a rule or mathematical coincidence with no theoretical
foundation. The name relates to two German astronomers, Johann Daniel Titius (1764) and Johann
Elert Bode (1772).
131
Letter to Arthur Holmes of 31 July 1959, quoted in Frankel (2012c), p. 285, where Holmes’
favourable evaluation of the expanding Earth and the G(t) hypothesis is documented. See also
Holmes (1965), pp. 983–987.
132
Carey (1976), p. 451. Theoretical physicists seem to have ignored Gilbert’s claim. Among the
few who responded to it was Wesson (1973), who found parts of Gilbert’s reasoning to be
“obscure” and even “somewhat perverse.”
133
Jordan (1962b), p. 287.
92 3 The Expanding Earth

Table 3.1 Egyed’s expanding Earth

Geological
T (106 years) epoch G (10
11 N m2 kg
2) g (m s
2) R (104 m) ΔR (104 m)
2000 Orosirian 8.00 16.6 537 100
1000 Tonian 7.34 12.7 587 50
500 Furongian 7.00 11.2 612 25
250 Early Triassic 6.83 10.4 625 12
0 Present 6.67 9.8 637 0
The table is adapted from Stewart (1970), p. 414

In a paper of 1958 Egyed and his Hungarian collaborator Lajos Stegena derived
from the Dirac–Gilbert hypothesis and the assumption of the Earth’s core men-
tioned above that the annual increase in the radius of the Earth was at least 0.3 mm,
hence “almost identical with the lower limit of radius increase as determined from
observations.”134 Two years later, in a popular review of geophysics, Egyed
repeated his empirical arguments in favour of the expanding Earth, adding that
the theory provided a simpler and more unified picture of the Earth’s surface than
other theories. He suggested that without Gilbert’s alleged proof there would have
been no reason to take Dirac’s hypothesis seriously135:
On the basis of rather complicated and unclear considerations of a mostly philosophical
nature, in 1939 [sic] Dirac concluded that the gravitational attraction had continually
decreased during the lifetime of the Earth, that is, the gravitational coefficient becomes
smaller. Physicists used to exact scientific reasoning received the result with considerable
distrust, and that despite that it came from a physicist as famous as Dirac.

At the time Egyed was aware of Carey’s independent work on the expansion of
the Earth, of which Arthur Holmes had informed him. He also knew about Jordan’s
work, referring in 1957 for the first time to Schwerkraft und Weltall, but without
adopting the G(t) mechanism, which he only did the following year. By the early
1960s he called attention to Dicke’s somewhat similar theory. As regards the
climatological effects of the G(t) hypothesis Egyed pointed out that the larger
solar constant in the past would not lead to a correspondingly larger total incident
energy from the Sun. The heating effect would to some extent be compensated by
the smaller surface area of the ancient Earth. Nonetheless, Egyed found it plausible
that the paleoclimate was warmer than at present and also that it was more uniform
and moist.136
Table 3.1 gives the values for G, the Earth’s surface gravity g and its ancient
radius R at various times T before the present. The values are based on Egyed’s
slow expansion rate dR/dt ¼ 0.5 mm per year and Dirac’s dG/Gdt ¼ 10
10 per year;
they assume a constant mass of the Earth.
Contrary to some other expansionists, Egyed did not consider the expansion
hypothesis a proper alternative to the idea of drifting continents. On the contrary,

134
Egyed and Stegena (1958).
135
Egyed (1965), p. 100. Translation of Hungarian paper originally published in 1960.
136
Egyed (1961a).
3.4 Egyed and the New Expansion Theory 93

in his view it provided a partial explanation of drift or spread that avoided the
controversial notion of continents moving with respect to the mantle: “In case the
Earth is expanding, continental drift is nothing more than the formation of new
ocean basins along the gaping rifts which come to exist between continents.”137 At
the 1967 Newcastle conference Egyed once again defended the slow expansion
hypothesis, now arguing for an average rate of 0.65  0.15 mm per year.138 He
considered Dirac’s G(t) to be part of the explanation, but not the only explanation of
why the Earth expands. In addition to G(t) he thought that natural radioactivity and
phase changes at high pressure played a role. According to Egyed, without these
mechanisms expansion would be unable to explain continental disruption.
The dissociation of continental drift in the sense of Wegener and continental
spreading can be found in several advocates of the expanding Earth. The topology
of the Earth, wrote Rhodes Fairbridge, “is not the product of continents floating
apart on a globe of fixed radius, but the growth of a new oceanic crust, the
continents remaining more or less in their same attitudes vis-a-vis each other, but
merely further apart or somewhat rotated.”139 Fairbridge suggested that there had
been an early and rapid Mesozoic expansion some 200 million years ago. The
expansion still continued today, but at a slower rate comparable to the one argued
by Egyed. While favouring the expansion of the Earth, contrary to Egyed and
Jordan he did not support the G(t) hypothesis, which he thought was inconsistent
with evidence from paleoclimatology.140
Many of the earth scientists in favour of the expanding Earth simply ignored the
G(t) explanation. Among those who considered it, some ruled it out as unnecessary
and extravagant while others dismissed it for empirical reasons, such as Fairbridge
did. Elena Alexandrovna Lubimova, a geophysicist at the Academy of Sciences in
Moscow, argued that a modest expansion was a natural consequence of the thermal
evolution of the Earth. “There is no necessity to involve some speculative theory,
connected with the variation of universal constant,” she wrote.141 According to the
Russian geophysicist the expansion rate was originally, shortly after the formation
of the Earth, 7  10
3 cm year
1 and had at present decreased to
3  10
3 cm year
1. During the first billion years the radius of the Earth had
increased by only 50–100 km. The view of a decreasing rather than an increasing
slow expansion was unusual and contrary to, for example, the ideas of Carey. Yet
Lubimova’s reasoning and result received support from another expansionist, the
Italian geophysicist Giorgio Ranalli according to whom there was “ample evidence

137
Egyed (1960b).
138
Egyed (1969a).
139
Fairbridge (1966), p. 143.
140
Fairbridge (1964). On Fairbridge’s view and its basis in the climate of the ancient Earth, see
also Sect. 3.6.
141
Lubimova (1967), p. 310. Scheidegger (1958), pp. 154–155, admitted the possibility that
thermal processes might cause a slight expansion of the Earth but not that such processes were
realistic. The question of a thermal expansion of the Earth was also examined by Paul Reitan, a
Norwegian geologist, who concluded that temperature changes could have caused an increase in
radius of at most 5 km during the last billion years. See Reitan (1960).
94 3 The Expanding Earth

that the earth has been subject to expansion.”142 Ranalli briefly considered Dirac’s
cosmological G(t) hypothesis, which he found to be suggestive but not directly
testable.
A tireless advocate of his gravity-based theory of the expanding Earth, Egyed
wrote and lectured on it at numerous occasions, not only in Europe but also in Japan
and the United States. For example, on 6 February 1961 he presented a paper to the
New York Academy of Sciences in which he summarized his ideas, including that
the Earth had originally been formed by solar matter. “On the basis of the Dirac–
Gilbert equation,” he said, “it can be shown that the earth originated from the sun.”
Moreover, “The Dirac–Gilbert results permit the establishment of the correct
expansion mechanism, and also the computation of the rate of expansion from
physical data.”143
Egyed continued until his death in 1970 to support the expanding Earth and
Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis, such as is evident from a textbook in geophysics published
in 1969. “From Ramsey’s model of the Earth and Dirac’s cosmology,” he wrote,
“follow directly the expansion of the Earth.”144 In the book’s preface he referred in
general terms to his lack of belief in the uniformitarian methodology that still
governed geophysical thinking. Since the days of Lyell geologists had taken for
granted that the laws of physics were permanent, but according to Egyed this basic
assumption of uniformitarianism or so-called actualism was unwarranted:
Our present physics is based on observations reaching back to about a few centuries, and yet
this physics, containing no time parameter, is extended to a time span of a few billion years.
The validity of this principle of physical “actualism” has so far never been proved. The
author is convinced that the causes of many of the contradictions of the physics of the solid
Earth lie in the misunderstanding and abuse of this principle.

Egyed thought to have found additional evidence for Earth expansion not only in
paleomagnetism but also in a suggestion made by John Wells, a geology professor
at Cornell University and a specialist in fossil corals. Wells’ idea was that the
number of days per year in the geological past—and hence the speed of rotation of
the Earth round its axis—could be inferred from the variation in the deposition of
calcium carbonate in fossil corals.145 By comparing the tiny daily rings with the
broader annual bands he found that in the Devonian the year consisted of 400 days,
or that in the course of 370 million years the Earth’s rotation had slowed down from
22 to 24 hours. Wells’ discovery was supplemented and extended by Colin
Scrutton, a palaeontologist at the British Museum, who in 1965 suggested that
some of the growth-rings were monthly, related to the lunar cycle. Scrutton
concluded that in the Middle Devonian the year contained 13 lunar months
each of 30.5 days.146

142
Ranalli (1971).
143
Egyed (1961b), p. 427.
144
Egyed (1969b), p. 279.
145
Wells (1963).
146
Scrutton (1965).
3.4 Egyed and the New Expansion Theory 95

Assuming that the faster rotation of the Earth in the past could be ascribed to a
smaller radius, Egyed derived from Wells’ preliminary coral data that the annual
increase of the Earth’s radius in the Upper Carboniferous was ΔR ¼ 0.58 mm and
ΔR ¼ 0.74 mm in the Middle Devonian.147 This agreed nicely with his favoured
slow expansion rate, but unfortunately the uncertainties in the fossil corals method
turned out to be too great to warrant Egyed’s conclusion. Although Jordan thought
that the expansion rate was much greater, he nonetheless found the evidence from
fossil corals to be a “very attractive” argument for the expanding Earth.148 So did
Holmes, according to whom Wells’ method placed the subject of the slowing down
of the Earth’s rotation on a firm basis.149
The work of Wells and others on the growth rings of corals as a method of
determining the Earth’s rotation in the past attracted considerable attention. Wells
gave an account of the method at the NASA Earth–Moon conference in 1964,
where also Dicke was present, speaking on the Earth’s rotation.150 While Dicke
concluded in favour of G(t), another of the participants, the leading British geo-
physicist Keith Stanley Runcorn, expressed his lack of confidence in the expanding
Earth hypothesis. Runcorn argued that Wells’ growth rings method in combination
with astronomical data ruled out the fast expansion models of Carey and Heezen,
which he referred to as “some of the wilder theories of the earth’s evolution.”151
The longer days in the past he attributed to tidal friction entirely. Runcorn also
considered the slow expansion based on Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis to be unlikely.152
As a result of his own and others’ research work in paleomagnetism, Runcorn had in
the late 1950s abandoned the fixist view of the Earth and turned into an enthusiastic
advocate of continental drift. He agreed with Holmes in praising the wide-ranging
significance of Wells’ method: “From considering the tiny lines on the skeleton of
an animal which lived 370 million years ago we are led to the consideration of
profound problems of cosmology, the evolution of the earth, and the formation of
the moon.”153
Bruce Heezen, a marine geologist at Columbia University’s Lamont Earth
Observatory collaborated with the cartographer Marie Tharp in mapping the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge. He was another pioneer of the new theory of the expanding
Earth, which he and Tharp for a period preferred over the theory of continental
drift.154 Heezen first discussed the expansion alternative in 1957 but at the time
without publishing on the idea. In a talk of 1958 which was published the following
year he cautiously advocated an expansion of the mantle, stating that the hypothesis
was worthy of serious investigation. The geologist and oceanographer Henry

147
Egyed (1969b), p. 278.
148
Jordan (1971), p. 115.
149
Holmes (1965), pp. 972–975.
150
Wells (1966).
151
Runcorn (1967), p. 11.
152
Runcorn (1964). See also Frankel (2012d), pp. 224–232.
153
Runcorn (1967), p. 11.
154
See Barton (2002) on the Heezen–Tharp collaboration.
96 3 The Expanding Earth

Menard was an active participant in the plate tectonic revolution. “Bruce was
talkative about the possibility of an expanding earth, but . . . he lacked any strong
conviction in the period from 1958 to 1960,” he recalled. “I kept waiting for him to
publish a proper scientific paper exposing his hypothesis to critical review. Mean-
while it was hard to take him seriously.”155
Over the next several years Heezen supported in a rather sketchy way the idea of
a rapid expansion.156 In a book published on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary
of Wegener’s drift hypothesis he spelled out the essence of the expansion picture of
the Earth:
Under this hypothesis, a sialic crust differentiated early in the history of the earth and
originally formed an essentially continuous outer shell. After this sialic crust solidified it
was broken up by the continued expansion of the interior of the earth. Mantle material,
reaching the surface in the cracks between the sialic blocks, formed the simatic ocean
floors. As the earth continued to expand, the oceans gradually grew wider, while the sialic
continents remained of nearly their original surface area. . . . This explanation would
account for the displacement of the continents one from another without having to assume
that the continents had drifted through oceans.157

Although Heezen did not come up with a definite figure for the expansion rate,
he thought that the rate might be as great as the one proposed by Carey, perhaps
amounting to a 45 % increase in the Earth’s surface area since the Paleozoic, or
what amounts to dR/dt ffi 7 mm per year. As to the cause of the expansion, Heezen
referred to a combination of the Dirac–Dicke hypothesis of G(t) and Egyed’s idea of
density changes within the interior of the Earth. “A decrease in the force of gravity
combined with internal density changes would produce a very large expansion,”
he declared.158 Still in 1960 Egyed was unaware of his fellow expansionist at
Columbia University. Under Tharp’s influence Heezen eventually abandoned the
idea of an expanding Earth for a form of continental drift in the late 1960s.

3.5 Sympathizers of Expansionism

Arthur Holmes found Egyed’s ideas to be interesting and promising, including his use
of Dirac’s cosmological theory. In one of his letters to the Hungarian geophysicist
Holmes referred to the steady-state theory of the universe which at the time was much
discussed in Britain as a possible alternative to the evolution theories based on the
field equations of general relativity. The theory aroused a great deal of attention and
was often considered controversial, or even provocative. According to Holmes159:

155
Menard (1986), p. 149.
156
Frankel (2012b), pp. 393–427.
157
Heezen (1962), p. 283.
158
Heezen (1960), p. 110.
159
Letter of 30 August 1959, as quoted in Frankel (2012b), p. 287. On the reception of the steady-
state theory in Great Britain and elsewhere, see Kragh (1996).
3.5 Sympathizers of Expansionism 97

If the “steady state” hypothesis of the Universe turned out to be correct (which heaven
forbid!) surely G would remain constant? However, apart from that very doubtful possi-
bility, it seems reasonably certain that G is decreasing with time. It may even turn out that
all the other evidence for an expanding earth is also evidence that G is decreasing and that
the “steady state” concept is wrong. But that is probably looking too far ahead. Meanwhile a
varying G provides much that we need, though I wonder if it would be enough, by itself.

Recall that in his youth Holmes had been in favour of a classical cyclic or steady-
state conception of the universe (Sect. 1.2). He now expressed his strong dislike of
the steady-state theory proposed by Fred Hoyle and others, even indicating that if
evidence from the Earth proved G to vary, this theory might be refuted.
In the revised 1965 edition of his influential textbook Principles of Physical
Geology Holmes dealt in some detail with the expanding Earth and its relation to
the contemporary cosmological debate.160 Writing at a time when the cosmic
microwave background had not yet entered the picture—his book was prefaced
October 1964—he referred to the “Big Bang theory” in the meaning of “one
supreme act of Creation followed by an explosive expansion of the matter and
energy then created.” Holmes may have been the first geophysicist using the term
“big bang,” which was originally coined by Hoyle in 1948 but sparingly used until
the late 1960s. Evidently interested in cosmology, Holmes referred to books and
articles by several cosmologists, including H. Bondi, P. Dirac, G. McVittie, and
C. Gilbert. The name of Jordan did not appear in his book.
Emotionally Holmes preferred an eternally cyclic or pulsating universe, which
he believed “makes an aesthetic appeal to many minds.” One of the minds was
obviously Holmes’. While not embracing the big-bang theory, Holmes did not
embrace the steady-state theory either. In line with what he had written to Egyed,
he thought that the expanding Earth contradicted the cosmology advocated by
Bondi, Gold, Hoyle and a few others:
Fortunately our own concern, as geologists, is with the Earth, and our geological interest in
the steady state hypothesis lies in its implication that G, the constant of gravitation, also
remains steady and really is a constant. But, if so, the expansion of the earth is left without
an explanation. Conversely, and this is of particular importance to astronomers, the
expansion of the earth is a powerful argument against the steady state.

Holmes was not the only geologist who referred to cosmology and had a
preference for a cyclic universe. In a textbook of 1976 the geophysicist Adrian
Scheidegger, professor at the Technical University in Vienna and a former student
of J. Tuzo Wilson, included a section in which he described the new big-bang
scenario. He commented:
Of course, we do not know what the Universe might have been like before the original “big
bang.” The latter might be part of a “pulsation” of the Universe which might alternate
between phases of expansion and contraction. Thus, a “stationary” state might perhaps be

160
Holmes (1965), pp. 983–987.
98 3 The Expanding Earth

present after all, in which one “big bang” would follow the next in intervals of about
20  109 years.161

Although the steady-state cosmological theory was not based on the field equa-
tions of general relativity, a varying gravitational constant was indeed incompatible
with it. But Holmes was wrong nevertheless, for a varying G was also inconsistent
with cosmological models based on the Friedmann equations of general relativity,
whether of the big-bang kind or of the cyclic kind. In other words, G(t) could not be
used to discriminate between steady-state cosmology and cosmological models
based on Einstein’s field equations. Varying gravity was simply not an issue in the
extended cosmological controversy between the two world systems. Much like
Egyed, Holmes uncritically accepted Gilbert’s claim that Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis
was consistent with the standard theory of general relativity.162
Holmes was at the time sympathetic to the expanding Earth, if by no means
committed to the hypothesis. He advocated a slow expansion of the kind Egyed had
proposed but rejected the rapid expansion argued by Carey and Heezen. His
preferred value for the increase in radius was only 0.5 mm per year or 100 km in
the course of the past 200 million years, whereas Carey’s value for the same period
was 8 mm per year. It is possible that Holmes came independently to the idea of
Earth expansion which he may have inferred from studies of the first erosion
processes some 3 billion years ago.163
According to Holmes, the major role of the expansion was not to move the
continents, but to provide energy for the mantle convection which, in his view, was
complementary to global expansion. In broad agreement with Egyed he suggested
that there was no reason to choose between continental drift and the expanding
Earth: “Convection does not exclude global expansion. Global expansion does not
exclude convection. And the combination is stronger than either separately.”164 Not
only could convection currents be combined with the expanding Earth, as in the
theories of Dicke and Holmes, they also appeared in some of the attempts to explain
the origin of oceanic ridges on the basis of the traditional picture of a nearly
permanent Earth.
At the end of his book, Holmes referred to the possibility of a cosmological
cause for the terrestrial expansion brought about by a relief of pressure:
There seems to be only one possibility in the light of present knowledge: that the terrestrial
force of gravity, which can be represented by g, has systematically decreased as the earth
has grown older. This variation of g with time could be brought about in either of two ways.
The universal constant of gravitation, G, may have decreased with time, as inferred by P. A.

161
Scheidegger (1976), p. 103. Oscillating models of the kind described by Scheidegger were
discussed by several astronomers and cosmologists but were generally seen as somewhat specu-
lative as many-cycle models could not be justified by the equations of general relativity. Moreover,
they presupposed space to be closed, which lacked observational evidence.
162
So did a few other geologists, see for example Stewart (1970), p. 413.
163
Egyed (1961b), p. 432, referred to a personal communication from Holmes and stated that
Holmes had in this way estimated an expansion rate of 0.4 mm per year.
164
Holmes (1965), p. 967.
3.5 Sympathizers of Expansionism 99

M. Dirac in 1938; or matter may have steadily vanished from every part of the earth (and
from all other material throughout the universe), as proposed by R. O. Kapp in 1960.165

The reference at the end of the quotation was to Reginald Otto Kapp, a British
emeritus professor of electrical engineering, who in 1960 published a speculative
and semi-philosophical cosmological theory which included continual disappear-
ance of matter as well as creation of new matter. His theory went back to a paper of
1940 and in its later version Kapp suggested that it was in the same tradition as the
steady-state theory of the universe.166 He also derived from his theory various
geophysical consequences, including that the Earth was contracting from a much
larger Earth in the past. According to Kapp, his theory explained the formation of
mountain ranges and it “transforms the Wegener Hypothesis from the category of
ad hoc hypothesis into that of inference.”167 Although Holmes did not accept
Kapp’s amateurish cosmology—and presumably even less his amateurish geo-
physics—it is a little surprising that he took it seriously and dealt with it on par
with Dirac’s cosmology.
Not all expansionists found it necessary to suggest a cause, either cosmological
or in terms of radioactivity or geochemistry, for the expansion of the Earth.
According to the Canadian geophysicist Alan Beck, the energy needed for the
expansion could easily be provided by the Earth itself. Assuming the Earth to be
of uniform density and constant mass, its gravitational potential energy is

3 GM2
Egrav ¼
:
5 R

From dEgrav/dt it is seen that an increase in R requires an injection of energy. As

Beck showed, the situation is different for a non-uniform Earth, which can expand
and loose gravitational energy at the same time. Using a density-radius contour of
the quadratic form


ρðr Þ ¼ ρ0 1
kr2 , 0 < r < R;

he found the potential energy of the Earth to be
2.5  1039 ergs. Beck argued that
“expansions of the order of 100 km seem quite possible without postulating any
source of energy.”168 On the other hand, he found a radial increase of the order of
1000 km to be improbable even if the effects of radioactivity were taken into
account. Such an expansion would need a non-conventional cause of some kind,
perhaps in the form of varying gravity. Without taking the possibility of a decreas-
ing G into account, two physicists from the University of Utah, Melvin Cook and

165
Holmes (1965), p. 983.
166
See Wesson (1973), pp. 28–29 and Kragh (1996), pp. 151, 196–197. Also Stewart (1970)
dealt with Kapp’s speculative cosmology.
167
Kapp (1960), p. 243.
168
Beck (1960, 1969).
100 3 The Expanding Earth

A. Eardley, independently made calculations of the energy required for an

expanding Earth. Their result, that neither radiogenic heat nor phase changes
were able to cause an expansion as substantial as the one suggested by Carey,
agreed with the conclusion of Beck.169
Another Canadian geophysicist, John Tuzo Wilson at the University of Toronto,
had a high reputation in the community of earth scientists. Originally studying
mathematics and physics he switched to geology and in 1930 he graduated as the
first Canadian with a degree in geophysics. After a stay at Cambridge University
Wilson went to Princeton, from where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1936. While at
Princeton he became friends with Harry Hess. Since the late 1940s Wilson had
defended the contractionist view of the Earth and attacked the mobilist view of
drifting continents which, he argued, was empirically inadequate, lacked a physical
mechanism, and contravened the methodological desideratum of uniformitarian-
ism. As late as 1959 he confirmed his stance against mobilism, only to change one
or two years later to become a champion of sea floor spreading, mantle convection
and continental drift.170 Wilson then quickly emerged as one of the leaders of the
new theory of plate tectonics. The remarkable shift from one paradigm to another
was facilitated by a brief flirtation with the idea that the Earth had expanded as a
result of decreasing gravity.
In a paper in Nature of March 1960, Wilson cautiously supported the slow
version of the expanding Earth hypothesis and its explanation in terms of a
decreasing gravitational constant. He suggested that expansion might be the cause
of the widening of the ocean basins and explain the formation of ridges. Citing
Dirac, Teller, Dicke and Egyed (but not Jordan) he admitted that a slow expansion
might be caused by other factors, such as phase changes in the interior of the Earth.
On the other hand, “a decrease in G remains an inviting idea.”171 Wilson was well
aware of Dicke’s argument connecting varying gravity and the expanding Earth
from the magazine American Scientist: an article that Dicke published on this
subject in 1959 was preceded by an article by Wilson based on the contracting
Earth.172
On the basis of recent estimates of the area covered by the mid-oceanic ridges
Wilson calculated that their formation would require an increase of the Earth’s
circumference of about 6 % in “all geological time,” which he found to be “close to

169
Cook and Eardley (1961).
170
See details in Frankel (2012d), pp. 3–50. According to “Planck’s principle” as used by Thomas
Kuhn and some sociologists of science, radical scientific change—from one paradigm to another—
is a non-rational event reserved for scientists of a young age. Older scientists are supposed to stick to
the established paradigm until they pass away. The principle has many exceptions, though, one of
them being J. Tuzo Wilson, who was 53 years old when he turned to continental drift. Another
example is Carey, who at the age of 45 changed to the expanding Earth after having defended
continental drift for two decades. On Planck’s principle, a name that derives from the autobiography
of Max Planck, see Blackmore (1978).
171
Wilson (1960), p. 882.
172
Dicke (1959a), Wilson (1959), Menard (1986), p. 173.
3.6 Discussions Pro et contra 101

Dicke’s estimate.” If “all geological time” is taken to be 4 billion years, the annual
increase in radius would be about 0.8 mm. Wilson criticized the theory of conti-
nental drift and also Heezen’s view of rapid expansion, which received support
from only a few scientists. In his paper of 1960 Wilson expressed serious interest in
the expanding Earth and G(t), which he found could explain global tectonics as well
or even better than the contracting Earth. He explicitly rejected expansion as an
explanation for continental drift, should it be real. However, Wilson’s interest in the
expanding Earth hypothesis turned out to be nothing but a brief flirt. By the fall of
1961 he had convinced himself that the continents were moving apart in accordance
with Wegener’s old idea. He did not return to speculations about gravity varying in
time or to the expanding Earth. These topics simply did not appear in a compre-
hensive popular account of the new theory of continental drift that he wrote for
Scientific American.173
On the other hand, Wilson seems to have recognized the expanding Earth model
as a serious alternative to other theories of the Earth. In a paper of 1963 on the
origin of the Hawaiian Islands he distinguished between four and not only two
major whole-Earth theories. His typology was this:
1. The traditional view of a rigid Earth supported by Jeffreys and “most geologists
in the northern hemisphere.”
2. The expanding Earth supported by Dicke, Heezen and Carey in different
versions.
3. Wegener’s theory of continental drift as revived by Runcorn, Blackett and
others.
4. The theory of convection cells in the mantle of the Earth, which “provides a new
and better mechanism for continental drift than that proposed by Wegener.”174
Wilson took his study of the Hawaiian Islands to be strong evidence for the last
of the four theories.

3.6 Discussions Pro et contra

The varying-G hypothesis became associated with the expanding Earth in the
1950s, largely as a result of the work of Jordan and Egyed. But the first contact
between Dirac’s hypothesis and the state of the Earth was established in 1948, when
Teller argued that the hypothesis led to a temperature in the past that was too high to
agree with paleontological evidence. Even if one accepted Teller’s argument and
concluded that Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis was wrong, it did not follow that the size of
the Earth had not increased over geological time. The climatological argument had
little effect on the viability of the expanding Earth hypothesis.

173
Wilson (1963a).
174
Wilson (1963b), p. 864.
102 3 The Expanding Earth

In the period around 1960s there was no consensus with regard to the temper-
ature of the Earth in the past. The traditional view going back to the French
naturalist Georges Leclerc (Comte du Buffon) in the mid-eighteenth century was
that the Earth had been formed in a molten state and gradually cooled. However,
there were also scientists who questioned if the climate of the ancient Earth had
really been warmer than today. According to the authoritative Handbuch der Physik
(Handbook of Physics) “it is safe to assume that the surface temperature of the Earth
has remained practically constant throughout the whole of geologic time.”175 The
temperature might even have increased. Referring to astrophysical theory and
mineralogical evidence some geologists suggested that the Precambrian had been
characterized by a very low surface temperature which since then had gradually
increased to the present average value of 14  C. This view was advocated by Alfred
Ringwood, a young Australian geochemist and cosmogonist, and subsequently
defended in a modified version by Fairbridge.176
In his classic Structure and Evolution of the Stars Martin Schwarzschild had
shown that the Sun’s luminosity was slowly increasing and had initially, for some
5 billion years ago, been 1.6 times smaller than its present value. His result assumed
G ¼ constant. Without suggesting an answer, Schwarzschild asked: “Can this
change in the brightness of the sun have had some geophysical or geological
consequences that might be detectable?”177 Öpik and Hoyle arrived independently
at the conclusion that the energy output of the Sun had increased over geological
time.178 Öpik estimated that shortly after the formation of the Earth the Sun’s
luminosity was 85 % of the present value and the surface temperature of the
Earth about
17  C; 1.5 billion years later the values had increased to 92 % and
þ5  C, respectively. Although Schwarzschild was aware of the G(t) hypothesis he
did not refer to it in either his 1956 work with Howard and Härm or in his book of
1958. Only in 1964, in his work with Pochoda, did he take up the subject.179 Öpik
too waited until the mid-1960s to comment on the Dirac–Jordan hypothesis.
In May 1957 Hoyle participated in a conference on stellar populations in the
Vatican Observatory, Castel Gandolfo, Rome. Among the attendants were also
Martin Schwarzschild, Otto Heckmann, Walter Baade, Georges Lemaı̂tre and
Bengt Str€ omgren. Hoyle used the occasion to present computations of the Sun’s
evolutionary track, plotting the solar luminosity and radius as functions of time. He
found the initial temperature of the Sun to be fainter than at present, “in agreement
with the recent estimate of Schwarzschild, Howard and Härm.” Although Hoyle did
not relate the increased solar luminosity to the Earth’s paleoclimate, and also did
not refer to Teller’s scenario based on decreasing gravity, he did comment on the

175
Handbuch der Physik, vol. 47 (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1956), p. 390
176
Ringwood (1961), Fairbridge (1964, 1966). On Ringwood’s work, see Brush (1996c),
pp. 147–149.
177
Schwarzschild (1958), p. 207.
178
Öpik (1958, 1965), Hoyle (1958).
179
Pochoda and Schwarzschild (1964). See Sect. 2.5.
3.6 Discussions Pro et contra 103

Fig. 3.5 Fairbridge’s

comparison of Dicke’s
curve for the early Earth
temperatures and the
contrasting results based on
constant gravity. Source:
Fairbridge (1966), p. 146.
Reproduced with the
permission of John Wiley
and Sons

climate of the Earth in the far future. Hoyle’s contribution to what later would be
called “physical eschatology” was this: “The future span available to life on Earth
can be seen to lie in the region 2–3 billion years—after a further 5 billion years the
oceans will boil and no life will surely persist then.”180
Picking up on Schwarzschild’s question, Fairbridge argued that 4 billion years
ago the mean temperature of the Earth’s surface was about 0  C (Fig. 3.5). This was
in fact what Schwarzschild and his Princeton collaborators Robert Howard and
Richard Härm had earlier suggested from their model calculations of the Sun:
In the early pre-Cambrian era, two billion years ago, the solar luminosity was about 20 per
cent less than now. The average temperature on the earth’s surface must then have been just
about at the freezing point of water, if we assume that it changes proportionally to the fourth
root of solar luminosity. Would such a low average temperature have been too cool for the
algae known to have lived at that time?181

As Fairbridge pointed out, this climate scenario was diametrically opposite to

the one proposed by Teller, Dicke and others on the basis of a decreasing

180
Hoyle (1958), p. 230. See also Hoyle (1994), pp. 299–303 for the Rome conference. On
so-called physical eschatology, see Kragh (2011), pp. 325–354.
181
Schwarzschild et al. (1958), p. 241.
104 3 The Expanding Earth

gravitational constant. Fairbridge concluded: “The evidence of paleoclimatology

favors the concept of expansion, but is opposed to change of the gravitational
constant.”182
The latter part of Fairbridge’s conclusion was substantiated by two German
astronomers at the University of Bochum, Walter Eichendorf and Michael Rein-
hardt. In the 1970s geochemically based estimates of paleotemperatures indicated
that the surface temperature of the Earth 3.4 billion years ago had been between
65 and 95  C, which was about the value to be expected from Teller’s argument
already 2 billion years ago. Eichendorf and Reinhardt used the data to propose that
the relative change in G was less than 2  10
11 per year. Moreover, they elabo-
rated on Teller’s brief remark of 1948 that, if mass creation according to M ~ t2 were
assumed it would have been too cold on the Earth. Instead of diminishing as T ~ t
9/4
the Earth’s surface temperature would increase according to

T  t1=4 :

As a result, since 3.4 billion years ago the temperature would have been about or
below the freezing point of water. The two German astronomers recommended that
“Dirac’s large numbers hypothesis should be buried with appropriate honours.”183
Perhaps it should, but this is not what happened.
The early work of Schwarzschild and his collaborators can be seen as an
anticipation of what came to be known as the “faint young Sun paradox,” or what
today is often abbreviated the FYS-paradox. This paradox or problem is the
apparent contradiction between strong evidence for liquid surface water on the
Earth more than 3 billion years ago and the prediction from reliable solar evolution
models that the energy input from the Sun was at the time 25–30 % lower than
today. Assuming an unchanged atmospheric composition the result of a smaller
solar luminosity will be a frozen Earth during the first 2 billion years of the
existence of our planet. And yet it is known that in the Archean there were oceans
of liquid water. The solar models are considered robust and very reliable, implying
that there must have been one or more effects in the past compensating for the faint
young Sun. What these effects were is still a matter of some debate.
The problem was first highlighted by the Cornell astronomers Carl Sagan and
George Mullen in 1972 and subsequently generated a large number of scientific
papers.184 While Sagan and Mullen thought that the compensating agent was
atmospheric ammonia, a powerful greenhouse gas, other specialists disagreed. To
solve the “glaring conflict between solar models and the biological and isotopic

182
Fairbridge (1964), p. 83, who seems to have been unaware of the Schwarzschild–Howard–
Härm paper.
183
Eichendorf and Reinhardt (1977), p. 537. Eichendorf and Reinhardt did not refer to either
Fairbridge or Schwarzschild.
184
Sagan and Mullen (1972). For a detailed review of the faint young Sun problem, see Feulner
(2012).
3.6 Discussions Pro et contra 105

history of the earth” Michael Newman and Robert Rood considered the possibility
that G varied in accordance with the Brans–Dicke theory, but as slowly as
dG/Gdt ¼
3  10
12 year
1 corresponding to an omega parameter as large as
ω ¼ 12.185 However, they found the possibility of an explanation based on varying
gravity to be unlikely and instead argued for a stronger greenhouse effect in the
past. Today most experts agree that cosmological effects are of no relevance to the
faint young Earth problem, and yet a few scientists have advocated varying gravity
as a possible solution.186 Whatever the precise answer to the problem, the many
analyses demonstrate how woefully inadequate and oversimplified Teller’s old
argument was.
While considerations of paleoclimatology were not directly related to the
expanding Earth, the situation was different with regard to paleomagnetic research.
Although the results derived from measurements of paleomagnetism were far from
unambiguous, the measurements played an important role in the debate concerning
the expansion hypothesis and its relation to continental drift. Whereas Carey
thought that his idea of rapid expansion received support from paleomagnetism,
most experts disagreed. Allan Cox and Richard Doell at the U.S. Geological Survey
were in the early 1960s cautiously moving toward support of continental drift. They
could find no paleomagnetic evidence for an expanding Earth, although they
obtained a radius for the Earth in the Permian (6310 km) that was slightly less
than the present radius. The result did neither confirm nor disconfirm Egyed’s slow
expansion rate, but it ruled out the much greater rate argued by Carey.187
A similar conclusion was reached by Edward Irving, a British-Canadian geolo-
gist and authority in paleomagnetism. In his monograph Paleomagnetism of 1964
he discussed Egyed’s and Carey’s arguments for the expanding Earth, concluding
that “The inconsistency with Carey’s hypothesis is substantial and appears there-
fore to invalidate Earth expansion as a cause of continental drift.”188 Although most
researchers in paleomagnetism agreed with the verdict of Cox, Doell and Irving, not
all did. Carey countered that Cox and Doell had misunderstood his model.189 Had
they applied their test to the correct model, they would have arrived at a Permian
radius of about 4500 km.
Among the few earth scientists in favour of rapid expansion was, apart from
Carey and Heezen, the Dutch geophysicist D. van Hilten, who based his support on
evidence from paleomagnetism. In qualitative agreement with Carey he derived the
values for the Earth’s radius in the past which are tabulated in Table 3.2. Also in

185
Newman and Rood (1977). For the Dicke–Brans ω parameter, see Sect. 2.7.
186
See Tomaschitz (2005), according to whom “The age of the universe has a substantial imprint
on planetary paleoclimatology.”
187
Cox and Doell (1961).
188
Irving (1964), p. 292.
189
Carey (1961, 1976, p. 185).
106 3 The Expanding Earth

Table 3.2 Van Hilten’s Period % of present radius R (km)

rapidly expanding Earth
Carbonifeous 79.5 5065
Permian 83.0 5288
Triassic 87.0 5543
Jurassic 89.5 5702
Data from van Hilten (1963, 1964)

agreement with Carey, he assumed that during the Earth’s expansion the area of the
continents and the continental shelves remained unaltered, whereas the oceans grew
bigger. Although van Hilten’s conclusion was broadly criticized, it received the
support of Holmes and Jordan.190
Contemporaneously with van Hilten the Australian geophysicist Martin Ward
used a generalization of a magnetic method developed by Egyed to estimate the
paleoradius of the Earth R relative to its present value R0. He found R/R0 to have
been 1.12 in the Devonian, 0.94 in the Permian, and 0.99 in the Triassic. Taking the
uncertainties into regard, Ward concluded that there had been no significant change
in R since the Permian.191 While his result made Carey’s rapid expansion
“unlikely,” the accuracy of the method was not good enough to rule out the slow
expansion proposed by Egyed. The conclusions of van Hilten and Ward were quite
different and yet they were based on largely the same methods, data and assump-
tions. According to van Hilten, Ward’s interpretation of the data was objectionable
and his conclusion unreliable.192 He maintained that the Earth had been smaller in
the past.
The disagreement between the two geophysicists was methodological and did
not concern the cause of the expansion, if it were real. Neither van Hilten nor Ward
referred to the G(t) hypothesis. Van Hilten did not speculate about the cause of the
expansion, but believed that it was sufficient to account for the relevant geological
data. In a review article in the first issue of the new journal Tectonophysics he
wrote: “Besides global expansion, no additional mechanisms, as for instance that of
convection currents in the mantle, seem to be required to explain the relative
movements between the continents.”193 However, his method and arguments
were severely criticized by two of his compatriots, the Amsterdam geophysicists
Jan Hospers and S. Van Andel, who in agreement with Ward concluded that Carey’s
large expansion rate was ruled out and that only the slow expansion advocated by

190
Holmes (1965), p. 209 and Jordan (1971), p. 92. See also Frankel (2012c), p. 230.
191
Ward (1963).
192
Van Hilten (1965).
193
Van Hilten (1964, p. 61, 1965). Tectonophysics, subtitled International Journal of Geotectonics
and the Geology and Physics of the Interior of the Earth, was established in 1964 by the Elsevier
publishing company with the aim of promoting greater cooperation between geologists and
geophysicists. Its editorial board included W. Brian Harland (Cambridge), S. Keith Runcorn
(Newcastle) and J. Tuzo Wilson (Toronto).
3.6 Discussions Pro et contra 107

Egyed, Dicke and Kenneth Creer remained a possibility.194 In later studies the two
Dutchmen confirmed at a 95 % confidence level that any Earth expansion rate
exceeding 2.5 mm per year could be rejected.195 Thus the paleoradius of the Earth
could not possibly have attained the values suggested by van Hilten.
In March 1964 a major conference on continental drift sponsored by the Royal
Society took place in London. The organizers were Blackett, Runcorn and the
leading Cambridge geophysicist Edward Bullard, who all were in favour of the
theory of drifting continents. The same was the case with the large majority of the
participating earth scientists, while there was almost no support for the theory of an
expanding Earth.196 According to one of the participants, the British geophysicist
Dave C. Tozer, theories of Earth expansion were of an ad hoc nature, which
“require either rather fantastic physical properties for the major constituents of
the planet, or a premature meddling with the foundations of physics.” For this
reason, he continued, they should be dismissed “until their assumptions can be
independently justified or the inadequacy of convection theories demonstrated.”197
He probably had in mind the class of varying-G theories, which did meddle with the
foundations of physics.
Bullen belonged to the majority of geophysicists who saw no merit in the idea of
either an expanding Earth or a gravitational constant that had been greater in the
past. On one occasion he justified his view methodologically by referring to what is
known as Occam’s razor: “In accordance with the simplicity postulate of scientific
inference, it is appropriate to treat entities like G as constant so long as the available
evidence does not suggest otherwise.”198 On the other hand, “that is not to say that
G is necessarily independent of time.” Expansionist scientists increasingly fought
an up-hill battle and yet the theory of the expanding Earth with or without the G(t)
hypothesis lived on.
Kenneth Creer, a physicist at the University of Newcastle and a former student
of Keith Runcorn, became interested in the expanding Earth after having met Carey
in the early 1960s. However, contrary to Carey and van Hilten he believed that most
of the expansion took place during the Archaeozoic (Archaeon) and that it played
very little role in the Mesozoic era when Pangaea broke into two parts, the ancient
continents of Laurasia and Gondwanaland. Creer also disagreed with van Hilten’s
small radius of the Permian Earth and generally thought that the hypotheses of a
rapid expansion confined to the more recent geological ages was “most improba-
ble.”199 He assumed that expansion had occurred over a period of 3.5 billion years.

194
Hospers and Van Andel (1967). Van Andel earned his doctoral degree from Amsterdam
University in 1968 with a dissertation on “A Test of Earth Expansion Hypotheses by Means of
Paleomagnetic Data.”
195
Van Andel and Hospers (1968), Hospers and Van Andel (1970).
196
See Frankel (2012d), pp. 162–170.
197
Tozer (1965), p. 253.
198
Bullen (1975), p. 345.
199
Creer (1965a, b).
108 3 The Expanding Earth

It started at the time when the Earth might have been entirely covered by the
continental crust and had a radius of only 0.55 R0, where R0 ¼ 6378 km is the
present value. By simulating the expansion process he estimated that in the early
Paleozoic, some 544 million years ago, the Earth would have swelled to 0.95 R0 and
to about 0.97 R0 by the end of the era. For the average rate of expansion he
suggested the value 0.75 mm per year. Contrary to many other expansionists he
did not regard expansion as the principal cause of the formation of mountains.
Although Creer did not refer to the Jordan–Dicke–Egyed hypothesis of a
decreasing gravitational constant, he did suggest that the expansion of the Earth
might have a cosmological origin of some kind:
For an adequate explanation we may well have to await a satisfactory theory of the origin
and development of the universe. In the meantime, we should beware of rejecting the
hypothesis of expansion out of hand on grounds that no known sources of energy are
adequate. It may be fundamentally wrong to attempt to extrapolate the laws of physics as
we know them to-day to times of the order of the age of the Earth, and of the universe.200

In February 1965, when Creer’s paper appeared in Nature, the more satisfactory
theory of the origin of the universe was on its way in the form of the revived hot
big-bang scenario. But contrary to what Creer suggested, this theory (contrary to the
steady-state theory) built on extrapolations of the known laws of physics. In another
paper he discussed the G(t) hypothesis as proposed by Dirac and more recently, so
he claimed, by Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar.201 Creer was not a convinced expan-
sionist, but he thought that the hypothesis deserved serious consideration. Much
like Dicke he argued that slow expansion could not be the principal cause or source
of either continental drift or orogenic processes:
I think that expansion should be regarded as something which may have been gently, but
persistently, occurring in the background. There may be little obvious geological evidence
of expansion: most of this could easily have been obscured by more vicious and rapid
processes such as continental drift and orogeny.202

As to drift, Creer thought that it would soon be satisfactorily explained by

convection in the mantle. Dietz, for one, was not impressed by Creer’s claim to
have fitted the present continents on a small globe covered entirely by a sialic crust.
Not only was the claim based on false assumptions, so Dietz objected, it also
implied that nearly the entire hydrosphere was of recent origin. For this and other
reasons he considered Creer’s version of the expanding Earth to be no less unten-
able than Egyed’s version. He wrote it off as “an absurdity.”203
Contrary to Dietz, the London geologist Raymond Dearnley largely agreed with
Creer’s picture. Comparing various methods of estimating the growth of the Earth,
he argued that the radius of the Earth had increased from 4400 km to its present

200
Creer (1965a), p. 539.
201
Creer (1965b), who seems to have misunderstood the Hoyle–Narlikar theory, which did not, in
fact, operate with a varying G. On Hoyle’s later ideas, see Sect. 4.1.
202
Creer (1965a), p. 543. For Dicke’s view see Dicke (1961b, 1962a) as discussed in Sect. 2.7.
203
Dietz (1967), p. 235. For Dietz’s dismissal of Egyed’s theory, see Sect. 3.4.
3.6 Discussions Pro et contra 109

value R0 over a course of 2.75 billion years; 600 million years ago the radius was
about 6000 km.204 Dearnley concluded that the methods “strongly suggest a
relatively uniform rate of expansion of the Earth’s radius of about 0.65  0.25 mm
per year as far back as 4500 million years.”205 At the 1967 Newcastle meeting on
geophysics he repeated the conclusion, noting that the value was almost the same as
the cosmological Hubble expansion rate.206 Without committing himself, Dearnley
was favourably inclined to a G(t) explanation based on the theories of Dirac, Gilbert
and Dicke. However, like several other protagonists of the expanding Earth he
pointed out that a decrease in G alone would be insufficient to account for the fast
expansion. After all, the density of solid matter is primarily determined by the
electrostatic force 1039 times stronger than the gravitational force. A weaker G in
the past would have to be supplemented by some other cause, most likely phase
changes in the Earth’s mantle such as discussed by Egyed, Creer and several other
geophysicists and geochemists.
Although Dearnley must have known about Jordan’s work, he failed to mention
the German physicist. This was not unusual in the English and American literature.
On the other hand, the Canadian geologist Johann Steiner gave full credit to Jordan
in an ambitious and somewhat speculative attempt to apply the “Dirac–Jordan
effect” to both the Earth and the Milky Way system. “The assumption,” he wrote,
“that the gravitational ‘constant’ is universal and constant in time . . . should be
considered untenable today, and deserves re-examination in the light of geological
phenomena.”207 However, Steiner’s version of the G(t) hypothesis was unusual in
several respects, not least because of his belief that the gravitational constant varied
cyclically with a period of about 250 million years. Since he also believed that the
size of the Earth depended on the value of G, it followed that the Earth alternately
expanded and contracted.
Yet another scientist who discussed the geophysical consequences of Dirac’s G(t)
hypothesis was Francis Birch of Harvard University, according to whom the radius
of the Earth, assuming its mass to be constant, could at most have increased 100 km.
If the gravitational constant had decreased from 2G to G the radius would have
increased 370 km, but such a rate he found unrealistic.208 There was no agreement
with regard to the size and rate of the expansion among the minority of scientists
dealing with the expanding Earth. As shown by Table 4.2, expansion rates varied
over a large range, from about 8 to 0.03 mm per year.
Adopting Ramsey’s phase change hypothesis for the interior of the Earth and
Dirac’s original G(t) hypothesis, the Japanese physicist Shin Yabushita, at

204
Dearnley (1965).
205
Dearnley (1966), p. 32.
206
Dearnley (1969). See also MacDougall et al. (1963).
207
Steiner (1967), p. 99, who referred to a “personal communication” from Jordan. Ten years later,
Steiner came out in support of the expanding Earth (see Sect. 4.4).
208
Birch (1968).
110 3 The Expanding Earth

Kyoto University, computed that changes in radius and gravitational constant were
related as

dR dG
ffi
0:3 :
R G

It followed that at the time when the Earth was formed, G was about 1.5 times
greater than at present and R some 700 km less than it present value.209 The
primitive Earth would thus have had R ffi 5670 km.
One of the problems originally motivating the idea of Earth expansion was the
difficulty of making the moving continents fit together on an Earth of the present
size. After continental drift and sea floor spreading had been widely accepted the
problem was reconsidered by Robert Meservey, a condensed matter physicist and
amateur geophysicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meservey
argued that the motion of the continents according to global plate tectonics was
not topologically possible on a present-sized Earth. On the other hand, the “para-
dox” might be resolved if “a large expansion of the earth’s interior has taken place
in the last 150 million years.” As to the cause of the expansion he mentioned the
possibility of a decreasing gravitational constant, vaguely suggesting that although
it or some similar mechanism was “highly conjectural,” yet it “cannot be excluded
on the basis of present physical knowledge.”210
It should be noted that the assumption of a varying gravitational constant did not
necessarily result in a steadily expanding Earth. The Portuguese geologist
F. Machado instead used geological and oceanographic data since the Devonian
to suggest that the size of the Earth had pulsated through a series of expansions and
contractions.211 Assuming a period of approximately 200 million years, he wrote
the variation in the Earth’s radius as
 
dR t þ 50
¼ 0:03 sin 2π ;
R 200

where t is the time measured in millions of years. From this Machado inferred that
G had varied in a similar but opposite manner, namely given by

dG dR
ffi
20 :
G R

Machado wisely avoided commenting on the physical and astronomical conse-

quences of the unlikely pulsation hypothesis. Unlikely it was and yet Machado’s
suggestion was independently supported by Steiner’s study from the same year. The

209
Yabushita (1984).
210
Meservey (1969), with references to Dirac, Carey, Egyed, Heezen and Wilson. As usual in the
English-language literature, Meservey did not refer to Jordan.
211
Machado (1967).
3.6 Discussions Pro et contra 111

idea of a pulsating Earth with radial changes related to a new conception of gravity
was not new. Based on a speculative “exponential law of gravitation” a theory of
this kind was suggested by Anatol Schneiderov at the George Washington Univer-
sity as early as 1943, and similar speculations were forwarded by some Russian
scientists.212 Contrary to the hypothesis of the expanding Earth, pulsating-Earth and
pulsating-gravity hypotheses were never taken seriously.
Although Dicke, who was an advocate of the cyclic or pulsating universe, did not
refer to a pulsating Earth in his writings, he may have considered the possibility in
private. According to Fairbridge, “Dicke (personal communication) remarked that
such expansion [of the Earth] might well be pulsatory.”213 The general idea of
cycles or pulsations in the history of the Earth goes far back in time but in the more
limited sense that terrestrial phenomena such as mountain formation or marine
regression were assumed to vary cyclically on an Earth of fixed size. Ideas of this
kind were common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when they
were suggested in different forms by, for example, Joly, Chamberlin and the
American geophysicist David Griggs.214 None of these suggestions referred to
cyclical changes in the radius of the Earth.
Another unconventional and short-lived hypothesis, proposed by an American
chemist in 1980, was that the gravitational constant increases rather than decreases
with time. The deceptibly simple argument was that according to GM ¼ Rc2 and
assuming M to be constant, it follows that G ~ R. Since the universe expands, the
gravitational constant must increase, for example as

Gt

At the big bang G would be infinitesimally smaller than the present value and thus
allow “the instantaneous flying apart of neutrons in the original spherical configu-
ration” of the universe.215 As pointed out by T. L. Chow, a physicist at Humboldt
State University in California, the G ~ t hypothesis had much earlier been suggested
by Milne, although in a version with no terrestrial consequences. Chow objected
that the proportionality hypothesis would lead to a surface temperature of the Earth
varying as

212
Schneiderov (1943), Carey (1988), p. 145. In Schneiderov’s theory the gravitational constant
G might be a variable quantity but in a completely different way than in Dirac’s G(t) theory.
Schneiderov’s ideas about gravitation were pre-Einstein and had no impact at all on later
developments in either cosmology or geophysics. For pulsating-Earth ideas in Soviet Russia, see
Sect. 4.4.
213
Fairbridge (1964), p. 60.
214
For geological pulsation hypotheses, see Oldroyd (1996), pp. 182–188.
215
Levitt (1980), p. 24. The picture of the big bang as an explosion of an original mass consisting
of neutrons was part of Gamow’s theory in the late 1940s, but in 1980 it was obsolete.
112 3 The Expanding Earth

T  G9=4  t9=4

instead of the Dirac–Teller variation T ~ t
9/4. The primitive Earth would thus have
been very cold. Moreover, the G ~ t hypothesis implied a slow contraction of the
increasingly warmer Earth. According to Chow, this was contrary to “paleogeo-
graphical and other evidence [which] points to expansion and not contraction of the
earth.”216 Nothing more was heard of the increasing-G hypothesis.
The British theoretical physicist Paul Wesson wrote in the 1970s several com-
prehensive reviews of geophysical theories and their relations to cosmology.
Contrary to most other physicists and astronomers involved in the dynamics of
the Earth, Wesson had an extensive knowledge of the geological and geophysical
literature and published some of his papers in journals devoted to the earth sciences.
All the same, earth scientists rarely referred to him. According to Wesson, the new
plate tectonics was inadequate to account for geophysical data and possibly inferior
to the expansion hypothesis.217 Listing a large number of shortcomings of the
global theory of plate tectonics he concluded that “the continents have almost
certainly not moved with respect to each other.”218
In a comprehensive review article of 1973 on what he called “geophysics on a
global scale” Wesson came out in support of the expanding Earth, if not of
expansion driven by a decreasing G. Perhaps, he wrote, “sea-floor spreading may
be something of an illusion caused by the continents sitting still while the globe
expands beneath them.”219 Wesson thought that the Earth had expanded from a
state with half the present radius, or that its circumference had increased at a rate of
about 10 cm per year. None of the existing G(t) hypotheses could explain an
expansion of this scale. As an alternative he suggested that the expansion might
be caused by continuous creation of matter proportional to the mass of the Earth.
What kind of matter creation? Obviously the one provided by the classical steady-
state theory was irrelevant, since it only amounted to 10
43 g s
1 cm
3. Wesson
needed matter creation of a rate about 7  10
18 g s
1 cm
3, and unfortunately
there was no experimental evidence whatever for such drastic creation processes.

216
Chow (1981), p. 120. An earlier proposal of a steady contraction of the Earth, but without
basing it on an increasing gravitational constant, can be found in Kapp (1960). The notion of a
contracting Earth was also defended by R. Lyttleton, see Sect. 4.1.
217
Wesson (1970).
218
Wesson (1972), p. 185.
219
Wesson (1973), p. 43.
Chapter 4
After Plate Tectonics

Jordan and Dicke were not the only cosmologists who thought that varying gravity
and other exotic ideas from fundamental physics might be relevant for the earth
sciences. In the 1970s Fred Hoyle developed a revised steady-state model of the
universe with implications for the history and structure of the Earth. In the same
decade Dirac returned to his favourite hypothesis of a decreasing gravitational
constant. Attempts to test the G(t) hypothesis in one of its several versions came
from physics, astronomy and geology until it gradually became clear that the
constant is indeed constant—as far as measurements can tell. In the same period
the expanding Earth hypothesis ran out of power and separated increasingly from
mainstream geophysics. The hypothesis of a smaller Earth in the past continued to
be defended but without being taken seriously any longer by the majority of earth
scientists.
Apart from dealing with the declining phase of the two heterodox hypotheses
this chapter also compares the two revolutions in science that occurred in the 1960s,
namely, plate tectonics and big-bang cosmology. Was it just one of history’s many
coincidences that the two fundamental theories won acceptance in the same period
of time?

4.1 Steady-State Cosmology and the Earth

As we have seen, in the 1960s and 1970s there were in some quarters of the earth
sciences a feeling that a proper understanding of the Earth must involve consider-
ations of a cosmological nature. The common denominator of geophysics and
cosmology was usually regarded to be the force of gravitation.
Creer, a mainstream geologist, found the G(t) hypothesis to be interesting, but in
his view a larger G in the past could not alone have caused a substantially smaller
Earth. “Are we, in extending the range of our experience to phenomena occurring
during aeons of time, about to be faced with another revolution in physics?” he

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 113

H. Kragh, Varying Gravity, Science Networks. Historical Studies 54,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24379-5_4
114 4 After Plate Tectonics

asked. “Perhaps the constants of physics change in time in such a way that the
beginning of time, defined as the time of the creation of the universe, is meaning-
less.” Creer did not explain precisely what he had in mind, but perhaps he was
thinking of the infinitely large gravitation constant that in a formal sense appeared
in Dirac’s theory at the singularity corresponding to t ¼ 0. According to Creer, it
was natural to infer from the G(t) hypothesis that at least some of the other
fundamental constants must also have changed in time. His argument was as
follows: “Otherwise the sun would have been tens of times brighter when the
earth’s radius was about half its present value. Thus the earth’s surface would
have been molten at a time when we have reason to believe that it was solid.”1
By the mid-1960s the expansion of the universe had been known for than three
decades and was regarded as an established fact by the large majority of astrono-
mers. Could the hypothetical expansion of the Earth somehow be related to the
factual cosmological expansion? There is no reason to assume that the early
advocates of the expanding Earth were inspired by some kind of universe-Earth
analogy or related the terrestrial expansion to the one discovered by the astrono-
mers. But in a few cases they compared the two phenomena. It was quite natural for
Holmes to include in his textbook of physical geology a section with the title “The
Expanding Earth and the Expanding Universe.” After all, “New ideas of atomic
structure at one end of the scale of dimensions and of the expanding universe at the
other, necessarily demand new ideas about the earth herself.”2 At about the same
time Fairbridge vaguely suggested a connection: “According to Einstein, the
Universe is expanding, and Dirac (1938) concluded that gravitation must decrease
with time. . . . A test of such a theory would be the demonstration of a slow
expansion of our globe.”3
Carey was another prominent geologist who toyed with the idea of some deep
but unspecified connection between the expanding Earth and the expanding cos-
mos. “This universal dissipation [of continents and oceans] implies an expanding
earth,” he said, “just as the universal red shift of stellar spectra is taken to mean an
expanding Universe.”4 In 1963 a group of four Canadian physicists called attention
to the “remarkably close agreement between the rate of increase of the Earth radius
and that of the universe according to Hubble’s law.”5 According to the empirical

1
Both citations are from Creer (1965b), p. 39. Creer speculated that the permittivity of free space
(ε0) and hence Coulomb’s electrostatic law might vary in time. As mentioned in Sect. 3.3, a similar
hypothesis had been proposed by Dicke in 1957. Since the speed of light is given by c ~ ε0½ it
follows that c must be time-dependent. Neither Creer nor Dicke mentioned the c(t) hypothesis,
which in other contexts had been suggested since the 1930s and much later would enter cosmo-
logical theory. See Kragh (2011), pp. 185–189.
2
Holmes (1965), p. 35.
3
Holmes (1965), pp. 983–987, Fairbridge (1964), p. 60.
4
Carey (1958), p. 316.
5
MacDougall et al. (1963). See also Dearnley (1965), p. 1286. A similar observation was made
independently in Brezhnev et al. (1966).
4.1 Steady-State Cosmology and the Earth 115

law discovered by Edwin Hubble in 1929, galaxies at a distance r from us recede at

a velocity

v ¼ Hr;

where H is the Hubble constant. The value H ¼ 100 km s1 Mpc1, widely accepted
at the time, translates into H ¼ 1.03  104 mm year1 km1 and if inserted in the
Hubble relation with r equal to the radius of the Earth, the result becomes
v ¼ 0.66 mm year1. The Canadian physicists suggested that the “remarkably
close agreement between the rate of increase of the Earth’s radius and that of the
universe” might be worth a closer study. It might be coincidental, they admitted, but
it might also indicate some hitherto unrecognized connection between geophysics
and cosmology.
The speculation of John MacDougall and his colleagues attracted little attention
and was ignored by the astronomers.6 However, some years later a few scientists
took up similar speculations. By the late 1970s Carey had reached the conclusion
that “to understand the expansion of the earth, we must seek to understand the
expansion of the universe.”7 Not only did he believe that the Earth increased in
volume, he now also thought that the mass of the Earth increased according to
Dirac’s idea of M ~ t2. As mentioned in Sect. 2.2, Dirac had abandoned the
hypothesis of spontaneous matter creation in 1938, but when he returned to
cosmological theory in the 1970s he also returned to matter creation. Carey
wrote: “What then does Hubble’s law mean? It means that what I found to apply
to the earth also applies to the whole universe—volume expansion and mass
increase go hand-in-hand.”8 Carey suggested that terrestrial expansion was due to
the formation of new matter in the interior of the Earth, most likely in the form of
iron because of its minimum energy per nucleon. He was unable to explain how the
iron atoms came into existence and how they gave rise to atoms of other elements—
this was another problem he handed over to the physicists.
In a lecture of 1977 Carey speculatively presented a combination of the classical
law of gravity and Hubble’s expansion law.9 Without further argument he stated the
combined force law in the form
 
1 aH4 2
Fðr Þ ¼ Gm1 m2  4 r
r2 c

Here a is a pure number to be determined by observation and which Carey thought

was approximately 1020. As he noted, the fraction (H/c)4 is so small that the

6
But see Klepp (1964).
7
Carey (1988), p. 328.
8
Carey (1988), p. 330. Carey’s late and highly unorthodox views are summarized in Oldroyd
(1996), pp. 275–277.
9
Carey (1978, 1988, pp. 329–347).
116 4 After Plate Tectonics

repulsive force corresponding to the last term only becomes significant at very large
distances. The factor in front of r2 is roughly 1044 m4. There is no need to deal in
detail with Carey’s law, which lacked any foundation in physics and astronomy,
except pointing out that the repulsive term can be seen as corresponding to
Einstein’s cosmological constant Λ.10 Indeed, the law has some similarity to the
classical modifications of Newton’s law that Hugo von Seeliger and a few other
astronomers proposed before the emergence of general relativity.11 Seeliger’s
modification of 1895 was
m1 m2 Λr
F ðr Þ ¼ G e ;
r2

where Λ is a small constant and the extra factor corresponds to a repulsive force at
very large distances. Seeliger’s Λ was a classical analogue of Einstein’s cosmolog-
ical constant.
Carey’s excursion into cosmology included what he called the “null universe,”
which was a version of Edward Tryon’s idea of a zero-energy universe given by
GM/R ¼ c2 (see Sect. 2.3). But according to Carey the hypothesis of the null
universe went farther, for it asserted that “everything in the universe cancels—
matter, energy, charge, momentum.”12 Contrary to Tryon, Carey did not associate
the idea with the big bang, which he much disliked. He dismissed the explosive
origin of the universe as a “myth,” a mathematical fabrication with no basis in
reality. “Mathematicians revel in harmless sophisticated fantasies, and
new-cosmologists buy them as real estate,” he quipped.13 As regards the cosmic
microwave background, Carey denied that it was evidence of a big-bang event more
than 10 billion years ago. He offered no alternative.
Tryon was the only cosmologist of repute who expressed critical interest in
Carey’s highly unorthodox views concerning the expanding Earth and the
expanding universe. Participating in a symposium on the expanding Earth at the
University of Sydney in 1981, Tryon used the opportunity to distance himself from
Carey’s null universe and other attempts to account for the Earth’s expansion by
means of matter creation. “It seems very difficult to understand,” he said with an
understatement, “how matter creation could be the cause of Earth expansion.”14
Tryon further emphasized that the expansion of the Earth, if real, was entirely
different from the expansion of the universe. The Sydney symposium was attended
by a large number of scientists, although most of them from Australia and with only
very few of the attendees being earth scientists of international reputation. Almost
all the contributions expressed empirical support for an expanding Earth, whereas

10
Carey (1988) was aware of the formal analogy between the term involving H/c and Einstein’s Λ.
11
For early attempts to modify Newton’s law, all of them without involving a time dependence of
G, see North (1965), pp. 30–49.
12
Carey (1976, p. 459, 1983, p. 369).
13
Carey (1988), p. 332.
14
Tryon (1983), p. 355.
4.1 Steady-State Cosmology and the Earth 117

the physical cause of it was given little attention. The G(t) hypothesis was only
mentioned casually.
The triumphant theory of the big-bang universe did not mean an end to the
steady-state theory, just as little as the triumphant theory of plate tectonics meant an
end to the idea of an expanding Earth. In both cases the rival theories were further
marginalized, but they did not quite disappear from the scene of science. In a series
of papers starting in 1962 Hoyle and his young collaborator Jayant Narlikar
developed new cosmological equations that were modelled on those of general
relativity but nonetheless described a modified steady-state universe.15 In a paper of
1965 Creer referred to the “recent modification of the Einstein theory of relativity”
proposed by Hoyle and Narlikar. According to the new theory, he wrote, G would
decrease in time, and if “one imagines that half the distant universe could be
removed, as if by magic, G would be greater and the earth’s orbit would tighten
round the sun.”16 However, at the time the Hoyle–Narlikar theory did not include a
varying-G hypothesis. It did refer to the kind of magic mentioned by Creer, causing
the Earth to be “fried like a crisp” (as Hoyle and Narlikar expressed it), but this was
not an effect of G decreasing in time as Creer apparently thought.17 The two
cosmologists only suggested a G(t) theory some years later.
The mathematical framework of the Hoyle–Narlikar theories of “conformal
gravity” had a great deal of similarity to that of the Brans–Dicke theory, including
that the theories allowed a variety of ways in which G might vary in time. Among
the models was one which incorporated several features of the Dirac–Jordan
cosmology, including the LNH, creation of matter, and a gravitational constant
varying as 1/t.18 The temporal variation of G was either
 
1 dG 1
¼ 2H0 ¼ ;
G dt 0 T

close to the one originally suggested by Dirac, or it might be even stronger,

following G ~ 1/T2. The dependence of G on the redshift z followed

GðzÞ ¼ G0 ð1 þ zÞ2

Hoyle and Narlikar not only discussed the astrophysical consequences of their
theory—including the increased luminosity of the Sun in the past, as first mentioned
by Teller—but also the consequences for the structure of the Earth. “In principle
geophysics could be of decisive importance to cosmology,” they wrote in

15
For the series of Hoyle–Narlikar steady-state models, see Kragh (1996), pp. 358–373.
16
Creer (1965b), p. 39.
17
Hoyle and Narlikar (1964), p. 204.
18
Hoyle and Narlikar (1971, 1972). See also Wesson (1978), pp. 38–44, 184, and the review of G
(t) cosmologies in Narlikar and Kembhavi (1988).
118 4 After Plate Tectonics

agreement with the research strategy previously adopted by Jordan and Dicke.19
The two Cambridge cosmologists suggested that the expansion of the Earth, a result
of the decreasing force of gravity, provided the horizontal force that makes the
continents drift apart. Based on a three-zone model of the Earth (fluid core, solid
core and a thin crust), they obtained for the rate of increase of the Earth’s radius

dR
ffi 10q km per 108 year;
dt

where q is a number about unity.

Based on “discussions we have had with geophysicists” Hoyle and Narlikar
claimed that their theory received “powerful support” by solving for the first time
the problem of a physical mechanism that could move the continents. This was a
reference to Jeffreys’ old complaint that physics was unable to explain continental
drift, a phenomenon which Jeffreys consequently held to be “impossible.”20 How-
ever, by 1972 plate tectonics had largely solved the problem, at least to the
satisfaction of most, if not all geophysicists. Jeffreys, a long-time foe of continental
drift and defender of the contraction theory, continued to criticize the drift hypoth-
esis for its lack of a physical cause. As late as 1977 Dan P. McKenzie, one of the
pioneers of plate tectonics, admitted that a proper dynamical theory for the drifting
continents was still missing. The theory was still “kinematic.”21 Yet, although the
cause of plate movements was still somewhat unclear, this was no longer seen as a
weighty objection to drift and definitely not as an argument for Earth expansion.
On 11 February 1972 Hoyle, serving as President of the Royal Astronomical
Society, gave an address on “The History of the Earth” that dealt as much with
geophysics as with planetary astronomy. Claiming that there was “a considerable
body of evidence” supporting a decreasing G, Hoyle considered the effects on the
motion of the Moon, solar luminosity, the temperature of the Earth in the past, and
the motion of the continents.22 All of these subjects had been covered in detail
previously, but either Hoyle did not know of the earlier work or he did not care to
mention it. He did however refer to the similarity between his own chain of
reasoning and that “followed some years ago by Dicke.” Indeed, the presidential
address had an aura of déja vu, or so it must have seemed to Dicke, Jordan and other
scientists who for years had grappled with the astro- and geophysical consequences
of the G(t) hypothesis.

19
Hoyle and Narlikar (1972), p. 332.
20
Jeffreys (1924, p. 260) described Wegener’s continental drift theory as “an impossible hypoth-
esis . . . [unless] forces enormously greater than any yet suggested are shown to be available.”
21
McKenzie (1977), p. 122.
22
Hoyle (1972). This was not Hoyle’s first encounter with paleoclimatology. As early as 1939, in a
paper with R. Lyttleton, he suggested that changes in the Earth’s climate could be explained as
effects of the Sun passing through interstellar clouds of diffuse matter. See Hoyle and
Lyttleton (1939).
4.1 Steady-State Cosmology and the Earth 119

“With a candid admission that speaking of geophysics was probably ‘dangerous

in the present company,’ he plunged fearlessly into the continental drift debate,” as
Jon Darius, a London astronomer, reported about Hoyle’s lecture.23 Moreover,
“Various eyebrows mounted as Hoyle elaborated on the planetary, stellar, and
geophysical effects of a time-varying G.” Expressing the revolutionary and holistic
spirit at the time in some circles of young scientists, Darius praised Hoyle’s lecture
for its style rather than its substance. “Hoyle’s multidisciplinary approach linking
macrocosmic (universe) and microcosmic (planet Earth), may well prefigure the
Newthink of future scientists . . . [and point toward] a radical rethinking of scientific
attitude and method.”
According to Hoyle’s calculations, at the time of the formation of the Earth 4.5
billion years ago the solar constant was about five times greater than presently. With
β denoting the factor by which the solar constant has increased (β ¼ 1 at the present),
he estimated the absolute temperature of the Earth’s surface to have varied as

T ffi 280 β1=4

For β ¼ 3 or 3 billion years ago, the average temperature on Earth would thus have
been 369 K or 96  C. This he found acceptable given the existence of bacteria living
in hot springs at nearly this temperature. Hoyle further sketched a picture of how
convection in the mantle combined with expansion could explain how the conti-
nental plates were set in horizontal motion. For the rate of increase of the Earth’s
radius he calculated a value between 6 and 10 km per 108 years (that is, of the order
0.1 mm year1). Hoyle concluded: “The hypothesis of a changing gravitational
constant leads one to consider many unusual effects. It does not lead to conflict with
available data. It often fits the data better than the conventional theory.”24 The
similarity to the view expressed by Jordan some years earlier is striking.
Hoyle’s excursion into geophysics was brief and not very convincing. Most earth
scientists ignored it and the small camp of expansionists merely noticed the support
of the famous cosmologist.25 Of the 25 citations Hoyle’s paper received until 1982,
only three were from earth scientists. Hugh Owen, a palaeontologist and cartogra-
pher at the British Museum, was among the few who found Hoyle’s theory
promising. A late advocate of an expanding Earth, he suggested that the Earth’s
diameter was approximately half its current value 700 million years ago but without
offering an explanation of the expansion (Fig. 4.1).26

23
Darius (1972).
24
Hoyle (1972), p. 344.
25
Hoyle apparently did not consider his geophysical G(t) theory to be important, as he did not
mention it in his autobiography. See Hoyle (1994). Carey (1975) mentioned it along with Jordan’s
theory, but only briefly. As pointed out by Wesson (1973), p. 39, some of the geophysical
statements made by Hoyle (1972) and Hoyle and Narlikar (1972) were simply erroneous.
26
Owen (1976, 1984). Contrary to Carey, who believed that expansion was as old as the Earth
itself and had accelerated since the beginning of the Mesozoic, Owen argued for a post-Mesozoic
linear expansion.
120 4 After Plate Tectonics

Fig. 4.1 Owen’s expanding

Earth assuming an
exponential growth in the
radius through time. Source:
Owen (1976), p. 230.
Reproduced with the
permission of The Royal
Society

Hoyle was an amateur in geology who came to the subject in his own way,
relying on his expertise in astronomy and mathematical physics but with no
intention of acquainting himself seriously with the vast literature written by pro-
fessional geophysicists and geologists. Characteristically, he admitted to be
unaware of the relevant geophysical and astronomical data “until I began to hunt
in the literature.”27
Jordan and Dicke were amateurs as well, but in a much more serious manner
than the English cosmologist and controversialist. Hoyle’s attempt of 1972 to revise
the picture of the Earth would not be his last move into territories where he was not
at home. Together with his collaborator Chandra Wickramasinghe, Hoyle argued
since the mid-1970s that life as well as epidemic diseases came from outer space,
and he also suggested a new theory of the ice ages that went flatly against the
established view of geologists and climatologists. According to Hoyle, the source of
the ice ages should be found primarily in a combination of atmospheric dust and
meteorite impacts. Even more disastrous for Hoyle’s reputation was his and
Wickramasinghe’s claim of 1986 that the famous Archaeopteryx fossil
(a primitive bird or feathered dinosaur) was a forgery.28

27
Hoyle (1972), p. 344.
28
Hoyle’s unconventional ideas are covered in Gregory (2005).
4.1 Steady-State Cosmology and the Earth 121

Hoyle’s old friend and collaborator, the Cambridge astronomer Raymond

Lyttleton, was generally in favour of the steady-state theory of the universe but
not of the expanding Earth hypothesis proposed by Hoyle and Narlikar. Contrary to
the majority of geophysicists Lyttleton strongly advocated a version of Ramsey’s
hypothesis of the inner Earth. According to Lyttleton’s version, the core was not
composed of alloys of iron and nickel, but rather of hydrogen turned to a liquid
metal under the very high pressure. He concluded that the primitive Earth was cool
and somewhat larger than the present one, perhaps with a radius of 6740 km.
Although it might initially have increased in size, for most of its history it had
contracted: “A total contraction of 350 km, if spread over say 3.5  109 years,
would mean only 102 cm per year, but it is scarcely to be supposed this would take
place uniformly and continuously.”29 The contraction of the Earth was held to be
responsible for the formation of mountains, something he thought other theories of
the Earth were quite incapable of.
Not only did Lyttleton dismiss an expanding Earth, he also dismissed the new
and, to his mind, falsely promoted dogma of plate tectonics. Many geophysicists, he
wrote, are “inclined strongly to the view that continental drift is occurring, just as
there are probably many people still that are inclined to view that ‘flying saucers’
visit this planet.”30 Lyttleton’s ideas about the Earth stood in sharp contrast to those
of the mainstream geophysicist Runcorn, who severely criticized the astronomer-
turned-a-geophysicist. The disagreement between the two distinguished British
scientists evolved into a public controversy.31
“For the past 40 years a ghost has been haunting the solar system, if not indeed
the universe generally,” Lyttleton wrote in a book of 1982. “Its apparition seems
first to have been perceived dimly and announced by Dirac (1938), and has led to
the notion that the constant of gravitation G may be changing with time.”32 A ghost
it was and nothing but, he thought. Based on arguments from astronomy and
geophysics, Lyttleton concluded that there was no reason to believe in a varying
gravitational constant of either the Dirac–Jordan kind or the Brans–Dicke kind.33
He also used his model of the two zones of the Earth to criticize the picture of the
Earth proposed by Hoyle and Narlikar.

29
Lyttleton (1970), p. 107. Although Lyttleton defended a contracting Earth theory, it was entirely
different from the classical thermal-contraction theory based on the assumption of an initially
molten Earth.
30
Lyttleton (1970), p. 120.
31
See, e.g., Observatory 91 (1971): 164–165, Nature 240 (1972): 459–460, and Nature 241
(1973): 521–523. For Lyttleton’s contracting Earth, see also the monograph Lyttleton (1982)
and Runcorn’s very critical review of it in New Scientist (8 September 1983, p. 706). The
Lyttleton–Runcorn controversy had no direct bearing on either the expanding Earth or the
varying-G hypothesis, for which reason we only mention it.
32
Lyttleton (1982), p. 177. Lyttleton’s critique of plate tectonics and his attempt to revitalize the
contracting Earth theory was covered in a supportive article of January 1983 in the British daily
Guardian. See the quotations in Wood (1985), p. 209.
33
Lyttleton (1976, 1982, pp. 177–194).
122 4 After Plate Tectonics

Lyttleton and his collaborator John Fitch saw no reason to support a version of
continental drift by means of the varying-G assumption, simply because “by far the
greater amount of reliable evidence is entirely in conflict with the hypothesis of
drift.”34 In a critical reply to the Hoyle–Narlikar hypothesis they recalculated the
two-zone model of the Earth on the basis of Dirac’s G ~ 1/t, finding a rate of change
in radius of dR/dt ffi 2.3 km per 108 years, or less than a quarter of the value reported
by Hoyle and Narlikar. “It is clearly impossible,” they concluded, “that a decreasing
G could alone cause expansion on such a scale that a fissure between Africa and
South America would yawn some 5000 km in width.” Based upon astrophysical
arguments the Hoyle–Narlikar cosmology was severely criticized also by Jeno
Barnothy and Beatrice Tinsley, two American astronomers. They concluded that
although Hoyle’s and Narlikar’s theory was “very ingenious,” it “cannot be a valid
representation of the observed universe.”35
Hoyle, Narlikar and Lyttleton were not the only of the small group of steady-
state cosmologists who had an interest in the physics of the Earth. According to
Thomas Gold, who together with Bondi and Hoyle had pioneered the theory of the
steady-state universe in 1948, polar wandering might be the result of a distortion of
the figure of the Earth caused by large-scale tectonic movements. He was
acquainted with Runcorn and in the mid-1950s participated in meetings with him
on polar wandering. While Runcorn at the time was in favour of polar wandering,
but not of drifting continents, Gold was more open to the possibility of continental
drift, although he did not embrace the hypothesis.36 Within a few years polar
wandering came to be seen as closely related to drift. For example, Runcorn’s
conversion to drift was to a large extent the result of his study of pole movement
through time.
In a joint paper with Bondi, Gold studied the damping of the Earth’s nutation,
another problem of geophysics. They showed that the damping was due to elastic
properties of the mantle and not to motions in the liquid core relative to the
mantle.37 The latter view was widely held and supported by the authority of
Jeffreys, but Bondi and Gold claimed that it could not account for the observed
damping. These works in geophysics are worth mentioning, not because they were
particularly important but because they illustrate that cosmologists were not nec-
essarily foreign to problems of the earth sciences. Contrary to the later entrance of
Hoyle in the world of geophysics, the works of Gold and Bondi were strictly
separate from the steady-state cosmological model they defended at the time.
Many years after Bondi had left research in cosmology he and Lyttleton expressed
their disbelief in plate tectonics, a theory they felt lacked incontrovertible support
and was plagued by “the absence of an identifiable driving force.”38

34
Lyttleton and Fitch (1977). See also Wesson (1973), p. 40 and Wesson (1980), pp. 53–54.
35
Barnothy and Tinsley (1973), p. 349.
36
Gold (1955), Frankel (2012b), Hallam (1973), p. 40.
37
Bondi and Gold (1955), Scheidegger (1958), p. 107.
38
Lyttleton and Bondi (1992), who did not refer to the alternative of an expanding Earth.
4.2 New Creation Cosmologies 123

4.2 New Creation Cosmologies

Inspired by an old idea due to the German mathematician Hermann Weyl, in 1973
Dirac proposed a modification of Einstein’s theory of gravitation that accommo-
dated the Large Numbers Hypothesis (LNH).39 In a manner somewhat similar to the
Jordan–Brans–Dicke theory, in addition to the metric tensor gμν the new theory
required a scalar field to describe the gravitational field. It thus belonged to the
family of scalar–tensor theories. Apart from retaining the LNH, the versions of the
cosmological theory that Dirac developed after 1973 also retained the G ~ 1/t
hypothesis and the idea of two different metrics that he originally had inherited
from Milne.40 But he now returned to spontaneous creation of matter, which he
enigmatically described as “a new physical process, a kind of radioactivity, which is
quite different from all the observed radioactivity.”41
According to Dirac matter creation might occur either “additively” (+) or
“multiplicatively” (). According to the first form, matter would be created uni-
formly through space, and therefore mostly in intergalactic regions; on the other
hand, the matter of celestial objects such as the Sun and the Earth would remain
essentially constant. Multiplicative creation meant that new matter would be
created where it already existed and in proportion to the amount present. Conse-
quently the mass of a star or a planet would grow in the same way as in Jordan’s old
theory, namely as M ~ t2. Dirac generally preferred multiplicative creation because
it clashed less violently with standard general relativity. The idea of this kind of
cosmic creation process was not quite new as it had been previously suggested by
the Irish-born physicist William McCrea within the context of steady-state cosmol-
ogy.42 Table 4.1 lists some of the predictions of the various versions of Dirac’s
cosmology.
As far as G(t) was concerned, there was no difference between Dirac’s two
forms, which both led to the rate of decrease

1 dG
¼ H 0 ;
G dt

rather than the three times stronger decrease of Dirac’s original theory. With
H0 ¼ 50 km s1 Mpc1, a value advocated by Sandage and widely accepted in

39
Dirac (1973a, b). After having retired from his chair in Cambridge, Dirac moved to Florida,
where he joined Florida State University in Tallahassee in 1971. He remained there until his death
in 1984.
40
Dirac (1973c, d, 1974). For a lucid review of Dirac’s LNH cosmologies, see Narlikar and
Kembhavi (1988).
41
Dirac (1974), p. 440, Dirac (1978c), p. 12.
42
McCrea (1964). See also Kragh (1996), p. 359. According to the original steady-state theory
proposed in 1948, matter was created uniformly throughout space. While McCrea believed that all
new matter was created in galaxies and stars, he did not consider the terrestrial consequences of his
hypothesis.
124 4 After Plate Tectonics

Table 4.1 Predictions of Dirac cosmologies, atomic units

Later theory Later theory
1938 theory (1970s, þcreation) (1970s, creation)
Gravitational constant G t1 t1 t1
Scale factor R t1/3 t t
1= 1
Hubble parameter H 3t t1 t1
Mass of planet Constant Constant t2
Orbital radius of planet t t1 t
Orbital velocity of planet t1 Constant Constant
Orbital angular momentum Constant t1 t3

the early 1970s, it gives a variation of 5.1  1011 per year. In Dirac’s original
theory the scale factor varied as R ~ t1/3, whereas in the new theory the universe
expanded linearly at least in its later stages. The relation R ~ t was valid for both (þ)
and () creation. This was another point of similarity to Jordan’s cosmology and
also to Milne’s old model, which corresponds to an empty Friedmann universe in
standard relativistic cosmology. The change implied a much longer age of the
universe, which now came out as approximately equal to the Hubble time or
about 18 billion years.
Although Dirac never entered the discussion of an expanding Earth or expressed
any real interest in the geological sciences, at a few occasions he casually referred
to the consequences his theory might have for the Earth. Thus, in a lecture given in
Rome to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in April 1972 he mentioned, possibly
for the first and last time, the expanding Earth. However, he ascribed the expansion
to matter creation and not to the decrease of the gravitational constant, as Jordan,
Egyed, Dicke and other scientists had done:
According to the present theory the earth must have been expanding during geological
times, owing to the continual creation of new matter inside it. The observed drifting apart of
the continents supports this view; also the occurrence of rifts, in the continents and oceans.
P. Jordan has written a great deal on this subject.43

The expansion of the Earth was not the only consequence of multiplicative
creation of terrestrial matter. As Dirac pointed out, spontaneous creation of matter
would have a problematic effect on crystal growth over long periods of time:
It is a little difficult to understand how this [matter creation] can take place in the case of a
crystal. Presumably the new atoms must appear on the outside. The rate of multiplication is
extremely small, so there is plenty of time for the new atoms to appear in the places most
suitable for them. But during the course of geological ages the increase must be quite
appreciable, and should be taken into account in any discussion of the formation of crystals
in very old rocks. It might lead to insuperable difficulties.44

43
Dirac (1973a, b, c, d), p. 11.
44
Dirac (1974), p. 445. See also Dirac (1973c, d).
4.2 New Creation Cosmologies 125

There were other difficulties, for how is it that the continuous creation process
mysteriously reproduces the chemical composition of matter already existing? If
matter were created in some elementary form, for example as protons and neutrons,
ancient terrestrial matter as found in old rocks and meteorites would have a very
large abundance of hydrogen, contrary to fact.45 Dirac’s remark was taken up by a
few scientists, among whom Kenneth Towe, a paleobiologist at the Smithsonian
Institution, pointed out that the lattice dimensions of quartz crystals had remained
the same over 3 billion years. He consequently concluded that Dirac’s hypothesis of
multiplicative creation was unacceptable.46 Runcorn agreed, if for different rea-
sons. According to the British geophysicist, the result of multiplicative creation of
matter would be an unrealistic increase in the Moon’s mass since its formation by
60 % and a corresponding increase in its radius by 20 %.47 The large majority of
earth scientists agreed with Runcorn’s dismissal of Dirac’s new theory, or they
simply chose to ignore it.
The old problem of the Earth’s temperature in the geological past first consid-
ered by Teller in 1948 reappeared in Dirac’s new theory. If the luminosity of the
Sun to varies as L ~ G7M5, the combination of G(t) and M(t) implies that

L  t3 :

Combining the increased luminosity with the change in the Earth’s orbit caused by
the decreasing G parameter, the British astronomer Ian Roxburgh showed that the
temperature of the Earth would vary as

T E  t5=4

Thus the ancient Earth would have been substantially cooler than the present one.
“If our understanding of climatology is at all correct,” Roxburgh wrote, “this would
imply that the Earth was covered with ice and such an ice cover would not have
melted even when the equilibrium temperature reached its present value, because of
the high albedo of an ice-covered Earth.”48
Apart from Dirac’s new theory, varying-G theories in the 1970s included the
Jordan–Brans–Dicke scalar–tensor theory, the Hoyle–Narlikar theory, and a new
“scale-covariant” extension of general relativity proposed by Vittorio Canuto and
co-workers at the NASA Institute for Space Studies.49 The scale-covariant theory

45
Eichendorf and Reinhardt (1977).
46
Towe (1975). See also Gittus (1975) and Van Flandern (1976), p. 53. Vittorio Canuto objected
that Towe’s reasoning was incorrect since it was based on a wrong application of units. Although
Towe admitted his error, he maintained that crystal structure posed a problem for Dirac’s theory.
See Canuto et al. (1976).
47
Runcorn (1980).
48
Roxburgh (1976).
49
Canuto et al. (1977), Canuto and Lodenquai (1977).
126 4 After Plate Tectonics

was consistent with Dirac’s theory and accommodated the LNH. For our purpose it
can be considered an alternative and mathematically more sophisticated way of
interpreting Dirac’s cosmological ideas, including a time-variation of G given by
dG/Gdt ffi 6  1011 per year. Although Canuto’s theory allowed G to vary, it did
not require it.
As H€ onl and Dehnen in 1968 had criticized Jordan’s cosmology because it did
not agree with the spectral shape of the observed microwave background radiation,
so Dirac’s new cosmology faced the same problem. Because of the continuous
creation of photons proportional to t3 in Dirac’s new theory, it was unable to
account in a natural manner for the blackbody spectrum of the cosmic microwave
background. Dirac noted the problem in his Rome address of 1972:
The increase in the number of photons must apply also to the microwave radiation that is
observed falling continuously on the earth and is believed to come from a primordial fire-
ball. . . . With the number of photons increasing, as required by the present theory, the
black-body character is not preserved. . . . It would be against the present theory if the
radiation was observed to be black at the present time, as that would involve an unjustifiable
coincidence.50

At the time Dirac did not consider it a serious problem, simply because he was
not convinced that the wavelengths of the microwave background were really
distributed as required by Planck’s radiation law. He thought that the radiation
might be “grey” rather than black.51 However, new measurements of the back-
ground radiation over a larger range of wavelengths made it increasingly difficult to
deny that the radiation was in fact of the blackbody type. By 1975 measurements of
the microwave background included data in the range from λ ¼ 0.05 cm to
λ ¼ 74 cm, and they all fitted the blackbody spectrum very precisely.
Dirac’s observation that his cosmology with creation of photons was inconsis-
tent with the Planckian form of the microwave background was taken up and
amplified by the Yale astrophysicist Gary Steigman in papers highly critical to
the LNH. According to Steigman, in the early phase of Dirac’s LNH universe there
was not sufficient time for any nuclear reactions to proceed and hence no explana-
tion of the large abundance of helium.52 Moreover, there could be no thermody-
namic equilibrium between photons and electrons, meaning that also the
blackbody-shape of the background radiation was without explanation. Contrary
to this situation, the standard big-bang theory explained naturally and in detail the
microwave background and the helium abundance. Noting that “The application of
the LNH to physics and cosmology is fraught with ambiguity,” Steigman expressed

50
Dirac (1973d), p. 13.
51
Contrary to a black body a “grey body” does not absorb all incident radiation and it emits less
total energy than a black body. For this reason the radiation from a grey body does not satisfy the
fundamental Planck distribution law.
52
Steigman (1976, 1978).
4.2 New Creation Cosmologies 127

surprise of “the recent explosion of interest” in cosmological models of this kind.53

To the mind of Steigman, Dirac cosmologies were scarcely worth taking seriously.
It took a couple of years until Dirac became convinced that the cosmic back-
ground was in fact blackbody-shaped and then decided to revise his cosmological
theory. At a conference held in the University of Miami in early 1975 he came up
with an alternative explanation of the cosmic background quite different to the
standard interpretation in terms of an original decoupling of matter and radiation
some 380,000 years after the big bang event at t ¼ 0. With M ¼ the proton’s mass
and k ¼ Boltzmann’s constant Dirac considered the large dimensionless ratio
 2 3
Mc2 Mc
¼ 4  1012 or ffi 1038 :
kT kT

From this ratio and the LNH Dirac inferred that the temperature T of the microwave
background should vary as

T  t1=3 rather than T  t1 :

With the electron’s mass m instead of the proton’s mass M, the variation would
become T ~ t1/4. In any case it would be much slower than determined in the
conventional theory. To resolve the discrepancy Dirac hypothesized that the present
radiation originated not in a primeval “fireball,” but from a recent decoupling of
photons from a hypothetical intergalactic medium. He described the medium as
“intergalactic ionized hydrogen, sufficiently tenuous not to interfere with ordinary
astronomical observations, yet sufficiently dense . . . to take on essentially the
temperature of the intergalactic gas.”54 With this assumption the temperature
dependence of the radiation would have been t-1/3 (or t1/4) until recently, when it
changed to the ordinary t1 as a result of the decoupling.
The hypothetical intergalactic medium remained hypothetical. Nonetheless,
Dirac stuck to his theory and felt justified to conclude not only that it could account
for the observed radiation background but even that “The microwave radiation thus
provides confirmation of our present picture.”55 Whether based on additive or
multiplicative creation, in the high-frequency region the radiation curves derived
by Dirac differed somewhat from the blackbody spectrum. Thus there was in
principle a way to decide experimentally if Dirac’s alternative was correct or not.
“I have heard that plans are being considered for making microwave observations

53
Steigman (1978). See also Wesson (1980), pp. 15–17.
54
Dirac (1975), p. 452.
55
Dirac (1979), p. 23. Emphasis added. Dirac’s rather ad hoc mechanism for the cosmic micro-
wave background was not the only attempt in the period to explain away its origin in a fireball
caused by the big bang. In 1967 Hoyle and Wickramasinghe claimed that the radiation could be
understood on the basis of the steady-state theory, namely as starlight thermalized by interstellar
grains. See Kragh (1996), p. 356.
128 4 After Plate Tectonics

from a space platform,” Dirac said in his 1975 address. “Thus we may hope some
day to have an experimental check on this theory and an independent way of
deciding between the two kinds of creation.”56
At a symposium in Tallahassee, Florida, in the spring of 1978 Dirac returned to
matter conservation, much as he had done 40 years earlier. Referring to particle
creation following N ~ t2, he now said: “I have been working with this assumption
of continuous creation of matter for a number of years, but find difficulties in
reconciling it with various observations, and now believe it should be given up.”57
In his new theory there was no genuine creation of matter, but only an increase in
the amount of matter in the observable region of the universe. Space was flat and
density and expansion followed the relations

ρ  t1 and R  t1=3 :

As in the earlier versions of the theory, G varied as t1. As to the cosmic microwave
background, Dirac maintained his hypothesis of an interstellar medium.
The problem of the background radiation was also considered by Canuto and
S.-H. Hsieh, according to whom it was far from fatal to Dirac’s theory including
matter creation.58 Not only did they argue that the spectral composition of the
radiation was consistent with the LNH and Dirac’s theory, they also claimed that it
followed naturally from the scale-covariant version of it. On the other hand, it was
argued against the LNH-based theory of Canuto and Hsieh that it did not provide
enough time in the early hot universe to produce large amounts of helium, for which
reason “this cosmological model contradicts observation.” Canuto and Hsieh
denied that this was the case.59 Whereas Canuto found Dirac’s reasoning with
regard to the microwave background to be acceptable, other physicists did not.
Victor Mansfield at Colgate University, New York, showed that there were grave
difficulties with Dirac’s alternative explanation of the background radiation.60 Not
only was the explanation ad hoc and the intergalactic medium hypothetical, the
medium would also have to have properties (electron density and temperature) that
squarely contradicted observations in extragalactic astronomy.
The gravitation theory proposed by Canuto led to astrophysical and geophysical
consequences which in some cases were the same as in Dirac’s theory, but in other
cases were different. Based on the LNH Canuto and his co-workers concluded that,

56
Dirac (1975), p. 454. The COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) project was initiated in 1972
but the satellite was launched into orbit only 17 years later. The data from COBE proved that the
background radiation fitted a blackbody curve of temperature 2.73 K most perfectly.
57
Dirac (1978a), p. 170, Dirac (1979). The 1978 symposium in Dirac’s honour marked the fiftieth
anniversary of the Dirac wave equation in quantum mechanics. Among the participants were
several leading quantum physicists, including Eugene Wigner, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-
Mann, Gerard ‘t Hooft, and Frank Wilczek.
58
Canuto and Hsieh (1978).
59
Falik (1979), Canuto and Hsieh (1980b).
60
Mansfield (1976).
4.2 New Creation Cosmologies 129

if matter creation were assumed, the radius of the Earth would increase at a rate
from 0.2 to 0.3 mm per year.61 Without matter creation the result would be smaller
by a factor of ten. However, the scale-covariant theory also allowed different
variations, including that a larger G in the past implied a larger Earth radius. In a
later paper Canuto suggested that, for a constant mass of the Earth, the radius of the
young Earth might have been slightly greater than today.62
Canuto and his collaborators also obtained new results when re-analysing the
problem which Teller had first addressed in 1948, that is, the effect of G(t) on the
luminosity of the Sun and the past temperature of the Earth (see Sects. 2.5 and 3.5).
According to Teller the luminosity of the Sun varied as L ~ G7M5, which was the
cause of the high heating of the Earth with a larger G in the past. Canuto and Hsieh
argued from standard general relativity that the product GM must be a constant, and
from this they derived that “the Sun’s luminosity is constant in time, independently
of whether G varies or not.”63 When the change in the Sun-Earth distance caused by
G(t) was taken into account, it was found that the past temperature of the Earth
agreed with paleontological data.
Paul Wesson, a specialist in alternative theories of gravity, was impressed by
Canuto’s scale-covariant theory. It yields, he said, “as good (or better) agreement
with all of the standard cosmological tests as does Einstein’s general relativity.”64
However, geophysicists paid even less attention to Canuto’s theory than they did to
the Hoyle–Narlikar theory. The 1977 paper of Canuto and his group was cited
49 times in the period 1977–1982, and none of the citations appeared in journals
principally devoted to the earth sciences.
A result somewhat similar to Canuto’s had been found a few years earlier by
Chao-Wen Chin and Richard Stothers in an examination of Dirac’s theory with
multiplicative creation of matter.65 In this case, although the greater G in the past
would increase the Sun’s luminosity, its smaller mass would have the opposite
effect and the net result would be an energy output of approximately the same
amount as in the standard model of the Sun. The two American space scientists
concluded that the multiplicative (but not the additive) version of Dirac’s theory
was consistent with known facts about solar physics. They added a potential
problem for the creation hypothesis, a fossil analogue of the crystal problem first
mentioned by Dirac: “But why are well-preserved Precambrian and early Cambrian
fossils in essentially perfect shape if their masses have increased by a significant
percentage?”
Yet another examination of Dirac cosmologies was undertaken by André
Maeder, an astrophysicist at the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland who in 1977

61
Canuto et al. (1977).
62
Canuto (1981).
63
Canuto and Hsieh (1980a). See also Canuto and Lodenquai (1977), which contains a derivation
of the Earth’s temperature in the past assuming both G ~ 1/t and M ~ t2.
64
Wesson (1980), p. 35.
65
Chin and Stothers (1975).
130 4 After Plate Tectonics

arrived at about the same result as Chin and Stothers with regard to the effect of
solar radiation on the surface temperature of the Earth: the Dirac model with ()
creation did not lead to the same difficulties as the original no-creation G ~ 1/t
model. Moreover, Maeder concluded that the multiplicative model actually led to a
significantly better agreement with the measured neutrino flux from the Sun than
the standard solar model assuming G ¼ constant. It thus appeared to promise a
solution to the much-discussed solar neutrino problem. This problem, first noticed
in the late 1960s, was that the measured solar neutrino flux was significantly smaller
than the one predicted by the standard model of the Sun’s interior. While Raymond
Davis and associates in 1968 found an upper bound on the neutrino flux of 3 SNU,
calculations based on the standard solar model resulted in approximately 7.5
SNU.66
The conflict between measurements and theoretical predictions persisted for
three decades until it was resolved with the discovery of neutrino oscillations at
the end of the 1990s, implying that neutrinos carry mass and can change between
the electron form νe and the muon form νμ. While Maeder rejected Dirac’s (1938)
model and the later (þ) creation model, he optimistically concluded that “the
non-conservative case with past variable G and mass gives results in extremely
good agreement with reality!”67
In papers from the early 1980s the Japanese physicist Shin Yabushita from
Koyoto University investigated the relationship between Dirac’s G(t) hypotheses
and an expanding Earth. On the assumption of an equation of state for a three-zone
model with liquid core and Dirac’s G ~ 1/t hypothesis with mass conservation he
found a result agreeing with the one obtained by Lyttleton and Fitch, namely

1 dR 1 dG
¼  0:062 :
R dt G dt

From Dirac’s new hypothesis with multiplicative creation of matter Yabushita

deduced

1 dR 1 dG
¼  0:61 :
R dt G dt

With the Hubble time H ¼ 6  1011 year1 this gives

dR
¼ 7  103 cm year1 ðno creationÞ
dt

and

66
One SNU (solar neutrino unit) equals 1036 nuclear interactions per target atom per second. At
the age of 88, in 2002 Davis was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his pioneering work on
solar neutrinos.
67
Maeder (1977), p. 366.
4.3 Testing Varying Gravity 131

dR
¼ 2:5  102 cm year1 ð  creationÞ:
dt

Since Yabushita took the average rate of terrestrial expansion to be 0.48 mm per
year, he concluded that “if the rate of radial expansion in the near past or the radius
at the time of Earth formation is well established, it will give a strong support for
cosmologies with variable G and creation.”68 Of course, the problem was that the
expansion was far from well established. In a subsequent paper Yabushita adopted
Ramsey’s phase-change hypothesis of the inner Earth and now came to the opposite
conclusion: “The multiplicative creation appears to contradict the Earth expansion
as claimed by the geologists.”69

4.3 Testing Varying Gravity

The G(t) hypothesis was considered relevant for early life on Earth and occasionally
it also entered into other fields of paleobiology. The first time might have been in
1971, when Bronisław Kuchowicz, a Polish physicist and radiochemist, pointed out
that according to Jordan’s varying-G theory the gravitational acceleration g on the
surface of the Earth might have been twice as large in the Palaeozoic as it is now
(that is, g ~ 20 m s2). Kuchowicz suggested that the Dirac–Jordan hypothesis was
potentially relevant to biologists and palaeontologists. Among other things, he
speculated that “the rather clumsy shapes of the first land animals, in the periods
when the gravity was larger than now, [might] be at least in some part related to the
relatively larger weight, tending to squash these organisms.”70 He may have
thought of animals such as the mammal-like therapsids. Kuchowicz’s appeal to
the biologists fell on deaf ears, but ten years later an American zoologist wondered
why the largest known land mammal was the Baluchitherium of body mass
approximately 20 tons.71 He argued that this was an upper limit imposed by gravity
to the size of land mammals. In a postscript he referred to Dirac’s hypothesis,
although pointing out that in this particular case the effect of a larger gravity in the
past was negligible. Baluchitherium lived in the Oligocene, only 30 million years
ago and thus at a time when the surface gravity was practically the same as today.
This kind of reasoning, that the weight of prehistoric land animals indicated an
upper limit to paleogravity, was not new. Alexander Stewart, a geologist at the
University of Reading, referred to the thirty tons heavy Apatosaurus—better known
as Brontosaurus—as evidence that in the Upper Jurassic some 150 million years
ago gravity could not have been much greater than today, perhaps g  1.2 g0.72

68
Yabushita (1982), p. 141.
69
Yabushita (1984), p. 45.
70
Kuchowicz (1971), who cited Jordan (1955, 1966).
71
Economos (1981).
72
Stewart (1977). See also Stewart (1970).
132 4 After Plate Tectonics

Several later expansionists have taken up similar arguments to explain the great size
and weight of some of the dinosaurs, but with different conclusions. According to
Stephen Hurrell, an author and engineer, the size of the large dinosaurs can only be
understood on the assumption that the Earth was expanding and gravity had been
much weaker in the past.73 A few other authors, but no professional scientists,
subscribe to the increasing-gravity theory and its implications for the evolution of
large animals.
In the two decades after 1970 much work was done on testing a possible decrease
of the gravitational constant. The LNH conjecture and related ideas motivated a host
of experimental and observational studies.74 A few laboratory tests were performed
in the period, but their accuracy was limited to the level 107 < dG/G < 108, which
made them irrelevant with respect to the theoretical predictions of the order 1010 or
1011 per year.
While geophysical and paleontological tests provided some corroborating evi-
dence for the G(t) hypothesis it was generally realized that tests of this kind were
unable to deliver decisive proof for or against the hypothesis. There were simply too
many uncertain factors involved, such as Dicke had pointed out in the mid-1960s.
For example, examinations of daily, monthly and annual growth rings of fossil
bivalves and corals suggested that the number of days in the year was greater in
Devonian times than at present. Other studies using the “paleontological clocks” or
“speaking stones” indicated that the number of days per lunar month and per year
had decreased significantly since the Ordovician era.75 Similar reasoning had been
applied by Wells in his early attempt to establish a geochronology independent of
geophysical and astronomical data, but at the time with little success. The more
recent data resulted in paleontological evidence for the slowing down of the Earth’s
rotation in the past, which might possibly, but only possibly, be an effect of
decreasing gravity.
The clever method of paleontological clocks led to the result that

1 dG
¼ ð0:5  2Þ  1011 year1
G dt

According to G. M. Blake, the result ruled out Dirac’s early version of the LNH and
also his cosmology with additive creation of matter.76 On the other hand, the result
and the method on which it was based showed that with the hypothesis of multi-
plicative creation Dirac’s G(t) was in “almost as close agreement” with fossil data
as the conventional G ¼ constant hypothesis.77 Still, the growth ring method was
unable to come up with an answer to whether gravity varies or stays constant.

73
Hurrell (2011). See also Scalera et al. (2012), pp. 307–366.
74
Gillies (1983, 1997) are detailed reports on gravitational studies.
75
Pannella (1972).
76
Blake (1977, 1978).
77
Blake (1978), p. 405.
4.3 Testing Varying Gravity 133

Fig. 4.2 Ancient values of

the gravitational constant
G and the surface gravity
acceleration g on the
assumption of Dirac’s
hypothesis and the
expanding Earth hypothesis.
Source: Stewart (1977).
Reproduced with the
permission of The
Geological Society of
London

The verdict from other lines of geological and paleontological inquiry was
hardly more promising. For example, Stewart focused on the gravitational acceler-
ation g at the surface of the Earth rather than on G.78 The two quantities are related
as

M
g¼G 2;
R

where M denotes the mass of the Earth and R its radius. Thus, if the Earth expands
as the result of a weakening G, the variation in g will be stronger than the variation
in G (Fig. 4.2). From a variety of paleontological evidence, ranging from the
permanent existence of an atmosphere since the Archaean to the mineralogical
composition of ancient clays, Stewart concluded that

g0  gðPrecambrianÞ  1:9g0

and

g0  gðPhanerozoicÞ  1:4g0 :

Stewart concluded that the data “flatly contradict rapid Earth expansion models”
such as those preferred by Carey and Owen.79 This kind of accelerated expansion,
which was also favoured by van Hilten, can be represented by the expression

78
Stewart (1977, 1978, 1983).
79
Stewart (1978), p. 155.
134 4 After Plate Tectonics

RðtÞ ffi R0 ½0:6 þ 0:4 exp ðktÞ :

R0 is the present radius of the Earth, t is the time in the past (t ¼ 0 at present) and k is an
empirical constant of the order 5  109 year1. The average expansion is about
1 cm year1 and the primeval Earth is assumed to have had a radius of 0.6
R0 ¼ 1700 km. In the Archaean, some 3.7 billion years ago, the data analysed by
Stewart suggested the limit g  1.2 g0, which corresponds to
dG/Gdt  2.4  1010 year1 under the assumption of M ¼ constant. This was a fairly
sharp constraint, but not quite sharp enough to test the cosmological models assuming
G(t). Stewart noted that models of slow expansion of the Egyed type survived his test,
if only barely so.
After many years of research there still was no unambiguously positive evidence
from the earth sciences that the force of gravity was stronger in the past. One could
still maintain that “the hypothesis of a decreasing gravitational constant is consis-
tent with geophysical phenomena,”80 but this was not enough. Consistency between
a hypothesis and a range of phenomena within the domain of the hypothesis does
not imply that the hypothesis is either confirmed or disconfirmed. It was left to the
astronomers to test more accurately the predictions of the various G(t) hypotheses.
The astronomical methods were essentially based on measurements of the
distances to the Moon and the nearby planets over long periods of time. Using
the technique of radar-echo time delays, in 1971 Irving Shapiro and collaborators
had collected sufficient data for the distances to Mercury and Venus to conclude
that G varied less than 4 parts in 1010 years. In other words, “our result shows no
evidence for a time variation of the gravitational constant.”81 A few years later
Shapiro and his group improved the constraint to
 
 1 dG
  10 1
G dt  < 1:5  10 year :

Other methods based on astrophysical reasoning sharpened the results obtained by

the radar-echo method. If G decreases a cluster of particles will expand and some of
the particles escape from the cluster. Astrophysicists David Dearborn and David
Schramm at the University of Texas, Austin, pointed out that the “particles” might
be either galaxies or stars (as in globular clusters) and that the study of such celestial
objects might give information about the possible variation of G. Their calculations
resulted in a limit even stronger than the one found by Shapiro, namely,

80
Narlikar and Kembhavi (1988), p. 484.
81
Shapiro et al. (1971).
4.3 Testing Varying Gravity 135

1 dG
ffi 5  1011 year1 :
G dt

While the result did not rule out the Brans–Dicke theory, Dearborn and Schramm
concluded that it was inconsistent with Dirac’s G(t) variation and also with the
cosmology proposed by Hoyle and Narlikar.82
It seemed that the heavens conspired against the hypothesis of a decreasing
gravitational constant no less than the Earth did. But in 1975 Thomas Van Flandern
at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, DC created a minor sensation by
announcing a positive and apparently reliable result. New Scientist joyfully
commented that the decrease in gravity was so very slow that “it will not assist
slimmers: a person weighing about 10 stones would lose one millionth of the weight
of a paper clip each year!”83 Too bad! In view of Jordan’s early prize essays to the
Gravity Research Foundation (GRF), it is worth noting that in 1974 Van Flandern
submitted an essay to GRF, essentially a summary draft of the paper published the
following year. The only major difference was the value of the variation of G,
which he gave as dG/Gdt ¼ (11  3)  1011 year1. The essay won a second
prize.84
From a careful analysis of data for the orbit of the Moon Van Flandern found a
value for the secular deceleration of its mean longitude that could not be fully
assigned to known geophysical causes such as tides. He proposed that the residual
was due to a decreasing G and concluded that there is “a secular decrease in the
Universal Gravitational Constant, G, at the rate of (8  5)  1011/year.”85
Although he noted that the conclusion was “not compelling,” he found it to be
“strongly indicated, since the anomalous accelerations almost certainly have a
cosmological cause, and since there is other supporting evidence.” As possible
alternatives to the G(t) assumption Van Flandern mentioned the hypothesis that
space might be expanding uniformly even in solid bodies and small-scale systems.
This kind of alternative was developed by Wesson, but he and Van Flandern
realized that it was speculative and without experimental support.86
Among the supporting evidence Van Flandern referred to the geophysical and
astronomical evidence discussed by Dicke and other scientists, including paleocli-
matology and an expanding Earth. Van Flandern further pointed out that the data
were consistent with the varying-G theories proposed by Dirac, Brans and Dicke,
and Hoyle and Narlikar. In a later article he added to the list Canuto’s scale-

82
Dearborn and Schramm (1974).
83
New Scientist (15 May 1975), p. 364.
84
See http://www.gravityresearchfoundation.org/pdf/awarded/1974/vanflandern.pdf. The first
prize of 1974 went to the British cosmologist Joseph Silk. On Jordan and the GRF, see Sect. 3.2.
85
Van Flandern (1975a), p. 339.
86
Wesson (1980), pp. 71–72.
136 4 After Plate Tectonics

covariant theory, within the framework of which the value of the relative change in
G would be (6.4  2.2)  1011 per year.87
Van Flandern first presented his result in 1974, in a communication to the
American Astronomical Society and also in an address to the Seventh Texas
Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics that convened in Dallas at the end of the
year.88 In the first case he reported as the best estimate dG/Gdt ¼ (9  3) 
1011 year1 and in the second case dG/Gdt ¼ (7.5  2.7)  1011 year1. In
Dallas he emphasized the cosmological significance of the result, noticing how
close the numerical value was to the Hubble expansion rate, which Allan Sandage
and his Swiss collaborator Gustav Tammann had recently determined to
H ¼ 55  7 km s1 Mpc1 or (5.6  0.7)  1011 year1. Van Flandern spoke out
in favour of “the almost inescapable conclusion that the observed universe is more
like that predicted by decreasing gravitational constant than by the usual model.”89
At a workshop in Tallahassee in November the following year Van Flandern
recalculated his data according to Dirac’s theory with () creation, presenting the
result as

1 dG
¼ ð5:8  3:1Þ  1011 year1 :
G dt

He found the agreement with Hubble’s constant to be impressive and an argument

in support of Dirac’s cosmology.90 Another participant at the workshop, the British
physicist Paul Muller, agreed. “It is concluded,” Muller said, “that there are strong
reasons for accepting the cosmological Ġ/G [¼dG/Gdt] found from the observa-
tions, and consistent with the Hubble constant.” Muller thought that Van Flandern’s
results were “very encouraging” and “very strong.”91 But it soon turned out that
Muller’s optimistic evaluation was unfounded.
At the time Van Flandern was completing his 1975 article, Dirac gave a talk in
Sydney, Australia, about his new versions of varying-G cosmology. Referring to
Van Flandern’s value (8  5)  1011 year1 he pointed out that although it
agreed with the “primitive theory” (G ~ 1/t without matter creation) it did not
agree with Dirac’s recent ideas. On the assumption of additive matter creation the
result derived from Van Flandern’s data would be (16  10)  1011 year1
whereas multiplicative creation gave (16  10)  1011 year1. Even though the
latter result compared much better to the theoretical value 6  1011 year1 than
the former one, it still disagreed with it. “Van Flandern has been continually
checking and rechecking his calculations and has been modifying his results
somewhat,” Dirac said. “His most recent results that I have heard about are

87
Van Flandern (1981).
88
Van Flandern (1974, 1975b).
89
Van Flandern (1975b), p. 495.
90
Van Flandern (1978).
91
Muller (1978), p. 113.
4.3 Testing Varying Gravity 137

considerably less than his original [that is, (8  5)  1011 year1] and they are
getting closer to what the theory wants.”92 Dirac was optimistic.
As Van Flandern made clear in a subsequent article in Scientific American, he
thought that observational evidence favoured Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis including
multiplicative creation of new matter. Apart from his own data, which he now
gave as dG/Gdt ¼ (7.2  3.7)  1011 year1, he referred to “the large rift faults
in the crust of the Moon and Mars,” suggesting that they might be the result of the
expansion of the two celestial bodies since they were formed. Expansion, he wrote,
could also help to explain “how a continent such as Antarctica can be almost
surrounded by a mid-oceanic ridge and yet be apparently drifting away from the
ridge at the same time.”93 In a review of Wesson’s Cosmology and Geophysics he
suggested that expansion might be a regular feature of planetary evolution and not a
phenomenon confined to the Earth only.94
Realizing that ex nihilo creation of matter was unpalatable to most physicists,
Van Flandern suggested an alternative mechanism based on the no less heterodox
idea of gravitational shielding, for instance in the form that the gravitational field is
absorbed in the intervening medium.95 In the years to come he and a few other
scientists (as well as non-scientists) would cultivate this and similar unorthodox
ideas, thereby adding to their estrangement from mainstream physical science.96
Not unlike Hoyle, but even more extremely, by the early 1980s Van Flandern
became increasingly dissatisfied with mainstream science and drifted into areas
which were decidedly speculative and non-mainstream, not to say pseudo-science.
He promoted the belief that the major planets sometimes explode, that gravity
propagates with a speed billions of times greater than light, and that there had been
intelligent life on the Moon. He also turned into a vocal opponent not only of
big-bang cosmology but also of expanding universe models, which he claimed were
inferior to models of the static universe. It was Van Flandern’s experience with
testing Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis that first made him critical of the norms and
practices of the scientific community, and eventually deciding to separate from
it. As he wrote, “This experience led me to realize how fragile were the assumptions
underlying the Big Bang and other theories of cosmology, when even the constancy

92
Dirac (1978b), p. 84.
93
Van Flandern (1976), p. 51.
94
Nature 278 (1979): 821.
95
The idea of gravitational shielding or absorption has a long history. The Italian physicist Quirino
Majorana (an uncle to the better known physicist Ettore Majorana) performed in the early
twentieth century delicate experiments to prove that matter is not transparent to the gravitational
flux. Although he came up with a positive result, it was generally disbelieved. Today it is agreed
that there is no such thing as gravitational absorption.
96
See for example Van Flandern (2002), an extensive argument for a classical, finite-range
“graviton” model of gravitation. In his later years Van Flandern published many of his articles
in Meta Research Bulletin, a journal he established as a vehicle for his own ideas and other
non-conventional science. For a collection of his many theories belonging to this class of science
or pseudo-science, see Van Flandern (1993).
138 4 After Plate Tectonics

of gravitation . . . had been called into question.” He described the attitude of most
of his colleagues, namely to deny that G could possibly vary, as “understandable,
but unscientific.”97
Van Flandern seems to have had second thoughts about his result announced in
1974. At the 1978 Tallahassee conference Dirac reported that he had recently
received a letter from Van Flandern in which “he says that in the intervening two
years the accuracy of his result has not increased in the expected way and he is
wondering whether there is not some undiscovered systematic error.”98 Four years
later, at a conference celebrating the centenary of Einstein’s birth, 79-year-old
Dirac again suggested that Van Flandern’s results “are still not conclusive.”99 He
advised to wait “a little longer.” Indeed, Van Flandern’s belief that he had found
solid evidence for a decreasing G turned out to be premature.
Although Wesson found Van Flandern’s result to be valid,100 his data analysis
was criticized by other astronomers who were not convinced that he had fully taken
into account the uncertainties in the influence of tidal forces on the Earth-Moon
system. By the early 1980s his result was generally seen as anomalous and hardly
reliable. Although it had not been shown to be wrong, it had not been confirmed
either and stood in contradiction to a wide range of other determinations of the
possible limits of varying gravity. The case for G(t) “remains unproven” as the
theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson diplomatically expressed it in a critical com-
ment at the Tallahassee conference.101
Nonetheless, in 1981 Van Flandern suggested that his non-zero result was
concordant with preliminary data from planetary radar ranging and lunar laser
ranging. Whereas a few years earlier he had supported the () version of Dirac’s
cosmology, he now switched to the (þ) version, on the basis of which model he
reported his most recent value to be dG/Gdt ¼ (3.2  1.1)  1011 per year. Van
Flandern related his belief in G(t) to the old distinction between atomic and
dynamical time scales going back to Milne’s conventionalist philosophy. He
spelled out its cosmological consequences in a manner strikingly similar to what
Milne had done 40 years earlier:
This new result therefore implies that the big bang singularity can occur in atomic
processes, but not necessarily in dynamical processes! While the universe has an “age”
of about 10 years in atomic time, its “age” in dynamical time must be much greater, and
perhaps infinite. Obviously this idea requires much additional elaboration which is beyond
the scope of this paper. It does, however, represent a curious wedding of the big bang and
the steady state theories of cosmology which contradicts neither, but would considerably
modify our intuitive understanding about the possible origin and ultimate fate of the
universe.102

97
Van Flandern (1993), p. xix.
98
Dirac (1978a), p. 174.
99
Dirac (1982), p. 88.
100
Wesson (1978), p. 166.
101
Dyson (1978), p. 167.
102
Van Flandern (1981), p. 815. See also Van Flandern (1976), p. 52.
4.3 Testing Varying Gravity 139

In any case, the optimistic conclusion about a varying G was soon challenged by
more precise data from the Viking landers on Mars. Based upon more than one
thousand measurements of the Earth-Mars distance determined between 1976 and
1982, Ronald Hellings and collaborators concluded that

1 dG
¼ ð0:2  0:4Þ  1011 year1 ;
G dt

a result that contradicted Dirac’s variation G ~ 1/t.103 Interestingly, Hellings’ team

included Canuto, who until that time had been a proponent of the LNH and varying-
G theories. Commenting on the paper by the American team, New Scientist spelled
out its consequence in plain words: “Gravity does not vary in time.”104 Eighty-one-
year-old Dirac was informed of the result, but without it shook his belief that
G decreases in time in agreement with the LNH. He believed that the experiments
must be wrong, not the theory.105
The astronomical verdict of zero change received further support, should such be
needed, from the planetary sciences and geophysics. According to several
researchers the Moon and Mercury were better testing grounds for gravity-induced
expansion than the Earth. Canadian scientists D. J. Crossley and R. Stevens at the
Memorial University of Newfoundland argued that Mercury’s radius would have
increased by around 100 km if the Hoyle–Narlikar theory were correct.106 They
found no evidence for expansion and hence also no evidence for a decreasing
gravitational force.
Michael McElhinny and his two collaborators S. Taylor and David Stevenson at
the Australian National University in Canberra focused on the Moon. From an
analysis of lunar data, some of them obtained from the Apollo Programme, they
concluded that for nearly 4 billion years the radius of our satellite had changed by
less than 1 km or 0.06 %. For the Earth they used paleomagnetic data to infer that
the radius of our globe cannot have expanded more than 0.8 % over the past
400 million years. The relationship between R(t) and G(t) can in general be written
as

1 dR α dG
¼ ;
R dt G dt

where α is a quantity depending on the equation of state of the Earth. By calculating

α in terms of pressure and density an estimate for the rate of G(t) can be obtained.
McElhinny and collaborators found α ¼ 0.085  0.02 for the Earth and
α ¼ 0.004  0.001 for the Moon. Recall that Dicke had suggested α ¼ 0.1 for the

103
Hellings et al. (1983).
104
New Scientist (17 November 1983), p. 494.
105
See Kragh (1990), p. 354.
106
Crossley and Stevens (1976).
140 4 After Plate Tectonics

Earth.107 Considering not only the Earth and the Moon, but also Mars and Mercury,
the Australian group concluded that “the upper limit of 8  1012 year1 for the rate
at which G decreases in a constant mass theory is realistic.”108 The value ruled out
the Hoyle–Narlikar theory and also Dirac’s cosmology with additive matter
creation.
McElhinny’s improved analysis of paleomagnetic data for continental blocks
confirmed and sharpened his conviction that there had been no systematic change in
the Earth’s radius since the Devonian. At a confidence level of 95 % he concluded
that the average paleoradius was RE/R0 ¼ 1.020  0.028. It followed that the max-
imum possible expansion rate was 0.13 mm per year, “a value sufficiently small not
only to exclude fast expansion rates proposed by Carey (1958, 1977) and
Hilgenberg (1962), but also to exclude the much slower rates proposed by Egyed
(1963) (1 mm per year) or Wesson (1973) (0.6 mm per year).”109 To the mind of
McElhinny and most other geophysicists, there could be no doubt that “all
expanding earth hypotheses can confidently be rejected.”
According to Peter Smith, a geophysicist at the Open University, the day that
McElhinny and his collaborators published their paper was “a bad day for the
handful of people who support the idea of an expanding Earth, [but] a good day
for the few who oppose it.”110 Notice that “the few” referred to earth scientists
actively opposing the expanding Earth hypothesis and not to those who simply
ignored it. On the other hand, the result of McElhinny and co-workers concerning
the gravitational constant was based on expansion rates for the Earth and therefore
more indirect and less accurate than the one derived from astronomical distance
methods. The same was the case with a study by the Dutch astronomer J. van
Diggelen, who used Wells’ coral growth method to conclude that there is “no
evidence for any expansion of the Earth in the past 5  108 year.”111 He conse-
quently suggested that Van Flandern’s conclusion of a decreasing gravitational
constant was erroneous.
Finally, G ¼ constant was convincingly demonstrated by the Lunar Laser Rang-
ing Project starting in the late 1960s and originating to a large extent in suggestions
made by Dicke and his Princeton group even before the invention of the laser.112 In
July 1969 the first reflectors were placed on the Moon by astronauts from the
U.S. Apollo 11 mission. Over the next couple of decades more than 10,000 range
measurements were made. Analysis of data published in 2004 resulted in the limit

107
Dicke (1962a). See Sect. 3.3.
108
McElhinny et al. (1978), p. 320.
109
McElhinny (1978), p. 152. For the reference to Hilgenberg, the veteran of Earth expansion, see
Sect. 3.1 and Hilgenberg (1962). McElhinny’s reference to Carey (1977) is erroneous and should
possibly be to Carey (1976).
110
Smith (1978).
111
Van Diggelen (1976).
112
Bender et al. (1973).
4.4 Degeneration 141

1 dG
¼ ð4  9Þ  1013 year1 :
G dt

Three years later a similar study concluded that

1 dG
¼ ð2  7Þ  1013 year1 :
G dt

The two studies seem to rule out all theoretical models of varying gravity.113 For all
that we know, the gravitational constant is in fact constant, in full agreement with
the standard Einstein theory of general relativity. Of course, experiments can never
prove G to be constant precisely, but only that the time variation is smaller than a
certain quantity given by the experimental uncertainty. All the same, Dirac was
wrong.

4.4 Degeneration

The new plate tectonics had no need for a decreasing G, a hypothesis that also
seemed unnecessary to most astronomers and cosmologists. One might therefore
believe that interest in the G(t) hypothesis waned through the 1970s and 1980s,
finally to disappear, but this is not what happened. Quite on the contrary, scientific
interest in the hypothesis increased markedly, with a growing amount of publica-
tions on the subject written primarily by physicists and astronomers.114 On the other
hand, references to the G(t) hypothesis decreased markedly in the geophysical
literature. Noting that “we are in the middle of a variable-G research boom,” in
1981 Wesson expressed some surprise concerning the popularity of the subject.
After all, it was hard to justify research in the varying-gravity hypothesis from
either a theoretical or an observational point of view (Fig. 4.3).115
The development up to the early twenty-first century demonstrates how studies
of G(t) continued after the acceptance of plate tectonics and the hot big bang, indeed
after Dirac’s death in 1984.116 Whereas the story of the varying-G conjecture is one
of an interesting mistake, the more recent story of the expanding Earth is different.
It is a story of how a scientific hypothesis gradually degenerated into what can
reasonably be described as a pseudo-science or something close to it.
By the early 1970s the expanding Earth was still considered a possibility by
many earth scientists but mostly in the slow-expansion version of Egyed, Creer,

113
Williams et al. (2004), Müller and Biskukep (2007).
114
Reviews are given in Wesson (1978) and Gillies (1983). See also the citations to Dirac’s (1938)
paper in Fig. 2.3.
115
Wesson and Goodson (1981).
116
For a useful summary account of various modern constraints on G(t), including arguments from
astronomy, cosmology, geophysics and palaeontology, see Uzan (2003), pp. 25–31.
142 4 After Plate Tectonics

Fig. 4.3 Number of articles “having some connection with variable-G cosmology” according to
Wesson and Goodson (1981) and based on the bibliographies in Wesson (1978) and Wesson
(1980). The variation for 1937–1978 is in rough agreement with the one shown in Fig. 2.3, but the
numbers undoubtedly exaggerate interest in varying-G theories. Notice the many publications
before Dirac’s first papers in the late 1930s. Reproduced with the permission of The Observatory
Magazine

Dearnley and others. In a review of expansion hypotheses dating from 1973, James
C. Dooley at the Bureau of Mineral Resources, Canberra, developed a test based on
the geometrical consequences of Earth expansion.117 Noting that “the chain of
arguments leading to the conclusion that the earth is expanding is long and
complex,” he concluded that the rapid expansion proposed by Carey could not
have occurred. As regards the slower expansion at the rate 0.5–0.6 mm per year he
thought it was a possibility but not one supported by strong evidence. Dooley’s
cautious and somewhat sceptical attitude was shared by several other geologists
who were interested in an expanding Earth without being committed to the hypoth-
esis (see also Sect. 3.6).
As mentioned, at the time when Jordan’s monograph on the expanding Earth
appeared in an English translation (1971), scientific interest in expansion was in
decline, a process that only accelerated through the decade. Still in 1966
Scheidegger admitted Earth expansion as a possibility, although without having

117
Dooley (1973), who referred to the varying-G hypothesis entertained by Dirac, Jordan, Egyed
and Dicke but without commenting on the validity of the hypothesis.
4.4 Degeneration 143

much confidence in it. Not only was it difficult to bring the hypothesis “into accord
with the commonly accepted principles of physics,” he also pointed out that
expansion implied a homogeneous stress state over the Earth’s surface in disagree-
ment with observed horizontal displacements.118 According to Scheidegger, among
the available geodynamical theories continental drift combined with convection
currents was the best offer. Ten years later, looking back at “the host of geotectonic
hypotheses which had to be discarded at the end of the 1960s,” Scheidegger
mentioned “the time-honored contraction hypothesis” as the most important of
the failed hypotheses. But he also called attention to “the opposite possibility,
that of an expanding Earth, [which] also had to be discarded.”119
The expansion theory or hypothesis was indeed discarded in the sense that the
large majority of mainstream geophysicists considered it to be erroneous, preferring
to ignore the expansion theory rather than arguing against it. And yet it was alive
and defended by a minority of earth scientists. As Anthony Hallam noted with some
surprise in an essay review of 1984, the number of adherents to Earth expansionism
had not diminished. There were even “some very respectable geologists” who
sympathized with the idea.120 A few years later Le Grand similarly judged that
expansionism “may have more adherents now than in the late 1960s.”121 Indeed,
according to a bibliographic data base prepared by Giancarlo Scalera, a geophys-
icist and modern expansionist, the number of publications on or relating to the
expanding Earth peaked in the 1970s and 1980s with 185 and 293 publications,
respectively (Fig. 4.4). His list of 1040 sources “devoted to the expanding Earth”
gives the following distribution over time:

1900–1919 7 publications
1920–1939 51 publications
1940–1959 86 publications
1960–1979 357 publications
1980–1999 533 publications

However, the list is grossly misleading as it includes a large number of publi-

cations which are in no ways devoted to or just relate to the expanding Earth
hypothesis.122 Whereas many advocates of the expanding earth were geologists,
the hypothesis was also defended by amateurs, sometimes in unexpected places. For
example, in 1971 an article on the subject and its relation to varying gravity

118
Scheidegger (1966), p. 141.
119
Scheidegger (1976), p. 143.
120
Hallam (1984), who did not identify the respectable geologists.
121
Le Grand (1988), p. 253. Moreover: “Expansionists are not ruled out as ‘cranks’ even by their
opponents and their articles continue to be published” (p. 263). Ten years later, expansionists were,
by and large, ruled out as cranks.
122
Scalera and Jacob (2003), pp. 419–465. Strangely, Jordan’s important Schwerkraft und Weltall
is missing from the bibliography.
144 4 After Plate Tectonics

Fig. 4.4 Growth in the literature on the expanding Earth. Reproduced from Scalera and Jacob
(2003) with the permission of Giancarlo Scalera

appeared in the Journal of Naval Science published by the UK Ministry of

Defence.123
One of the late expansionists was Hugh Owen who continued to defend the
hypothesis of an expanding Earth and develop it into versions based on speculations
concerning the dynamics of the physical state of the inner Earth. As late as 2012 he
confirmed his belief in an expanding Earth.124 Another late expansionist was
Johann Steiner, who had earlier defended the varying-G hypothesis. In a paper of
1977 Steiner attempted to breathe new life into the expanding Earth hypothesis, this
time by relying on geological data alone and without referring to the cause of the
expansion.125 Steiner reasoned that for a constant Earth the rate of sea-floor
spreading during a given period of time must be approximately equal to the rate
of subduction in the same period. He estimated that since the beginning of the
Jurassic, some 165 million years ago, the sea floor area had increased by 431 mil-
lion km2 while the increase in global subduction had only been 325 million km2.
The 33 % difference he ascribed to an increase in the Earth’s radius, which in the
Jurassic had been 5668 km or 89 % of its present radius. However, the estimated

123
Kirby (1971). The author, who supported the expanding Earth theory, was a science officer
employed by the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment.
124
Owen (2012), who pointed out the similarity between his ideas of the inner core of the Earth
and those proposed by J. Halm in 1935, as mentioned in Sect. 1.3.
125
Steiner (1977).
4.4 Degeneration 145

error in the paleoradius was 13 %, which made his argument less convincing.
Steiner’s analysis was welcomed by the dwindling expansionist camp but failed to
convert anyone of the large majority of non-believers.126
In fact, Steiner’s article was severely criticized by several mainstream geologists
in the pages of Geology, the journal of the American Geological Society in which
the article was published.127 As one of the critics, William Kaula of the University
of California, Los Angeles, pointed out, Steiner’s conclusion lacked a physical
mechanism. If the supposed expansion was due to a weakening G it would require a
rate of about 2  109 per year, much greater than allowed by Van Flandern’s
recent measurements. Another of the critics, Norman Sleep of the North-Western
University, Evanston, concluded that “The speculations presented by Steiner are
invalid and result from the misuse of data tabulated for other purposes.” But he also
mentioned a more general reason to disbelieve in expansion: “The internal consis-
tency of plate tectonics data and the elementary laws of physics remain the best
arguments against significant changes in the Earth’s radius.” In reply to his critics
Steiner maintained the validity of his conclusion. He had no respect for the appeal
to internal consistency and the consensus view of the laws of physics. “A popularity
poll is not necessarily the best way to obtain the truth,” was his answer.
At the time of the Sydney symposium of 1981, the large majority of earth
scientists considered the expanding Earth a lost case that was not worth further
consideration. They were aware of the hypothesis but preferred to ignore it rather
than criticizing it. Nonetheless, two years before the Sydney symposium the
venerable Geological Society of London128 arranged a meeting on the expanding
Earth with speakers arguing for and against the hypothesis. The latter group was
represented by Runcorn and Stewart who both argued against models of strong
expansion such as Carey’s.
The report of Robert Muir Wood in New Scientist gives a vivid but also partisan
impression of the low reputation expansionism had at the time in some quarters of
mainstream geophysics. As Wood described the meeting, during the course of “a
theatrical afternoon” the hypothesis of an expanding Earth was defended by “a
bombastic Tasmanian professor of geology (Warren Carey) and a less flamboyant
English geophysicist (Dr Hugh Owen).”129 Wood suggested that Carey’s new idea
of matter creation under high temperature and pressure was plainly unscientific,
nothing less than a return to “medieval mysticism.” After listing some arguments
against the hypothesis of Earth expansion, he concluded his attack: “Such ideas as

126
See Smith (1977).
127
See Geology 6 (1978): 377–383, with Steiner’s reply on pp. 379–383.
128
Founded in 1807 the Geological Society is the oldest society of its kind and one of the oldest
scientific societies devoted to a particular discipline. The oldest is the Linnean Society, which was
founded in London in 1788 as a society for the study of botany and natural history generally.
129
Wood (1979). See also Wood (1985), pp. 208. A less entertaining but more objective review of
the meeting was given by the Cambridge geologist W. Brian Harland according to whom the
expanding Earth was a challenging but probably wrong alternative to the standard view of a
constant-sized Earth. See Harland (1979).
146 4 After Plate Tectonics

the expanding Earth with its biological metaphoric supply from growth and preg-
nancy, provide entertainment for a cold winter afternoon.”
Understandably, Carey wrote a reply to Wood’s insults, but New Scientist
decided not to publish it.130 In a book published six years later, Wood repeated
his complete disrespect for the expanding Earth hypothesis, unfortunately offering a
caricatured picture by identifying expansionism with Carey’s extreme version of
it. According to Wood, the idea of the expanding Earth was a return to an
old-fashioned geocentricism with roots in nineteenth-century geology based on
the presupposition that “the science of the Earth operates according to laws
different from those of the heavens.”131 This is however quite misleading and
especially so with regard to expansion theories based on a changing gravitational
constant. These theories were attempts to adopt a universal law of nature to the
Earth and in general to integrate elements of cosmology with elements of the earth
sciences. Contrary to Wood’s claim, Earth expansionism was no more geocentric
than was plate tectonics. Besides, most nineteenth-century geology rested on the
uniformitarian principle which ruled out laws of nature that were valid only for the
Earth.
At any rate, from about the time of the London meeting, expansionism was
increasingly drifting apart from mainstream geophysics and indeed from main-
stream science. In the terminology of the influential Hungarian-British philosopher
of science Imre Lakatos, it was a research programme that had entered its
degenerating phase.132
Although the work of McElhinny and collaborators may have been bad news for
supporters of the expanding Earth, it did not silence them. Without questioning the
validity of the geomagnetic evidence provided by McElhinny and others, in 1981
two Australian geophysicists, P. W. Schmidt and B. J. Embleton, argued that in the
Proterozoic the Earth might well have expanded significantly.133 In agreement with
Creer’s earlier assumption they suggested that the radius of the primitive Earth was
only 0.55 times the present radius. The two Australians ended their paper by
repeating Creer’s warning of 1965, that it might not be legitimate “to extrapolate
the laws of physics as we know them to times of the order of the age of the Earth.”
They did not speculate about the cause of the expansion.
As yet another late advocate of expansionism, consider the highly respected
South African geologist Lester Charles King, who in the 1930s and 1940s had been
one of the few supporters of continental drift and in 1956 participated in the Hobart
symposium organized by Carey. Unable to accept the new plate tectonics in general
and sea floor spreading in particular, he turned to expansionism. Arguing the case
purely empirically, he had nothing to say about the force responsible for the

130
Carey (1988), p. 173.
131
Wood (1985), p. 209.
132
Oldroyd (1996), p. 275. According to Lakatos, a theory or research programme is degenerating
if it is kept alive only by auxiliary hypotheses that do not result in greater explanatory or predictive
power. A theory is pseudo-scientific if it fails to make novel predictions.
133
Schmidt and Embleton (1981).
4.4 Degeneration 147

expansion. While sea floor spreading was not a problem for Carey and most other
expansionists, King dismissed it scornfully. “The hypothesis of continuous seafloor
spreading from Jurassic to recent is not tenable,” 76-year-old King wrote in a book
presenting his view of the expanding Earth.134 Also contrary to Carey, King
maintained that the Earth had expanded early on very rapidly and reached its
present size before the Mesozoic era ended. While all the major oceans had
grown in size throughout the Phanerozoic, the continents “have been essentially
the same size through 2000 million years.” King explained:
The difference between oceans basins is apparent, and is measurable, as “continental drift.”
It is like the parade of soldiers who were moved individually (and surreptitiously) so that
each was spaced from his fellows by twice the original distance. Each thought that the
others had moved away from him; but an enlargement of the space they all occupied had
brought about the antipathy evident in each case.135

The new plate tectonics based on continental drift and sea floor spreading was
primarily a Western science dominated by researchers in the United States, Canada,
Great Britain, and Australia. The theory was initially met with serious opposition by
Russian geologists and geophysicists. Vladimir Beloussov, a prominent geologist at
Moscow University, was an outspoken critic of plate tectonics and sea floor
spreading not only in his own country but also abroad. In 1960 he was elected
president of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics and four years
later he became the Soviet editor of the international journal Tectonophysics. “Not a
single aspect of the ocean-floor spreading hypothesis can stand up to criticism,”
Beloussov declared in an article of 1970, regretting that Western plate tectonics had
evolved into what he called a self-confident dogma. Critical voices, he wrote, “can
hardly be heard over the shouting of the fanatic adherents of the ocean-floor-
spreading hypothesis.”136 One might perhaps expect that Beloussov, in his discus-
sion of alternatives to the allegedly dogmatic theory of plate tectonics, appealed to
the somewhat similar criticism raised by Carey and other Western expansionists.
But this was not the case.
Although several Russian earth scientists favoured a kind of expansion or
pulsation hypothesis, it was typically in the limited sense of tectonic processes
increasing or oscillating in time. For example, Evgenii E. Milanovsky, another
important Moscow geologist, wrote several papers on this kind of alternative to
plate tectonics in Tectonophysics. He followed Beloussov in never referring to the
Western tradition of expansionism. Among the few Russians who supported expan-
sion in the sense of a steadily increasing Earth radius was Elena Lubimova (see
Sect. 3.4). Even though there may not have been much interest among Russian
scientists in the ideas of Carey, Egyed and Creer, there was an interest in expansion

134
King (1983), p. 142. According to Hallam (1984), the book was “unlikely to produce any
converts to an expanding Earth model.”
135
King (1983), p. 176.
136
Beloussov (1970), p. 506. On the hostile reception of continental drift and plate tectonics in the
USSR, see Khain and Ryabukhin (2002) and the more contextual account in Wood (1985),
pp. 210–223.
148 4 After Plate Tectonics

or pulsation theories which were the subject of a large conference that Milanovsky
organized in Moscow in 1981.137 According to Victor Khain and Anatoly
Ryabukhin, still at the turn of the century, “the hypothesis of an expanding Earth
is rather popular among some Russian geologists.”138
The hypothesis of Earth expansion driven by decreasing gravity seems to have
attracted only limited attention among Russian physicists interested in gravitation
and general relativity theory. In a paper of 1966 the distinguished theoretical
physicist Dmitri Ivanenko and his co-workers Boris Frolov and V. S. Brezhnev
investigated Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis and its relation to Einstein’s cosmological field
equations. Applying the hypothesis to the Earth, “we obtain for the rate of the
earth’s expansion [dR/dt] ffi 0.05 mm/year, which curiously coincides with the
values on the basis of geological data.” They noticed that the expanding Earth
hypothesis was “still not generally accepted.”139 Four years earlier Ivanenko and
Frolov had organized a symposium in Moscow on “Related Problems in Gravitation
and Geology.”
Cosmology and geology are sciences rich in controversies and the one here
considered is only exceptional because it was neither purely cosmological nor
purely geological. Historians and sociologists have dealt extensively with the
concept of scientific controversy.140 It is generally agreed that in order for a
scientific disagreement to qualify as a controversy it should be of some duration,
be expressed in public, and take place by means of arguments and counterargu-
ments. Moreover, a controversy is more than just a debate or a discussion: the
parties must be committed to one of the opposing views and attack the rival view.
Only if the relevant scientific community considers the disagreement worth taking
seriously will it evolve into a controversy. On this view there is no doubt that the
discussion concerning the expanding Earth was a real controversy although it was
far less important than the greater one between the fixed Earth picture and the
theory of continental drift.
Some controversies are about facts, meaning that scientists disagree about the
empirical basis of a knowledge claim, that is, whether the claimed property or
phenomenon exists or not. A controversy of theory involves different theoretical

137
See Carey (1988), p. 137, according to whom the conference was attended by no less than
700 participants and resulted in 20 papers.
138
Khain and Ryabukhin (2002), p. 194, which is an extended version of the earlier review
Khain (1991).
139
Brezhnev et al. (1966). Ivanenko was an old acquaintance of Dirac, whom he had first met in
1928. He did important work in quantum mechanics and nuclear physics and later in general
relativity and unified field theory. A member of the International Committee on Gravitation and
General Relativity, Ivanenko was instrumental in organizing Soviet research in gravitation physics
and establishing in 1962 a Soviet Gravitation Commission. In 1961 Ivanenko wrote jointly with
M. U. Sagitov a paper titled “The secular increase [sic] of gravity and the expansion of the Earth.” I
have not seen this paper, which seems to have been published in Russian only. The source is given
in Carey (1975), p. 142.
140
See, e.g., Engelhardt and Caplan (1987) and Machamer et al. (2000).
4.4 Degeneration 149

views, whereas a controversy of principle relates to, for example, basic methodo-
logical or ontological principles. The three categories are not mutually exclusive, of
course. The controversy about the expanding Earth, and also the one concerned
with varying gravity, was primarily a controversy of fact with an element of
controversy of theory. While many scientific and technical controversies involve
consequences of a social, religious or political nature, this was not the case at all
with respect to the expanding Earth and varying gravity.
Scientific controversies end in different ways.141 A controversy may be resolved
if the participants and the relevant scientific communities agree that one of the
views is correct and the contesting view is incorrect; or a controversy may come to
an end by the intervention of external authority even though the original disagree-
ment still persists to some extent. Finally a controversy may just wither away, be
abandoned because the scientists lose interest in it. The case of the expanding Earth
contains elements from the first and last of the categories in particular although the
controversy cannot be said to have been finally resolved (given that there are still a
few scientists defending the expansionist cause). At any rate, supporters of an
expanding Earth hypothesis were marginalized and the community of earth scien-
tists tacitly decided that it was no longer worthwhile to deal with the hypothesis.
Textbooks in global geophysics from the 1980s would typically leave Earth
expansion unmentioned, just as textbooks from the 1940s typically left continental
drift unmentioned; or as textbooks in astrophysics and cosmology from the 1970s
typically ignored the steady-state universe. The effect was that many young geo-
physicists would not even know what expansion was all about.
The way the controversy over the expanding Earth reached closure has some
similarity to the contemporaneous cosmological controversy between relativistic
evolution theory and the steady-state theory of the universe. However, there were
also dissimilarities. In the cosmological case the chance discovery of the cosmic
microwave background radiation was of decisive importance, whereas there was no
corresponding “smoking gun” event in the case concerning the Earth. No new
insight, experiment or observation made it suddenly obvious that plate tectonics
was the correct answer, while the expanding Earth was just a wrong idea. Another
difference was that the cosmological controversy included elements of a philosoph-
ical and religious nature. Whether justifiable or not, the big bang was sometimes
associated with theism and the steady-state universe with atheism. The religious
element was wholly absent from the debate over the Earth. Although methodolog-
ical discussions entered at some occasions, discussions of a wider philosophical or
ideological nature played almost no role.
In spite of the de facto exclusion of the expanding Earth theory from mainstream
science, supporters of the theory continued to explore it and argue for its advantages
relative to the now dominant theory of plate tectonics. Carey was the undisputed

141
See Engelhardt and Caplan (1987), which includes an article by Henry Frankel on the
continental drift debate (pp. 203–248). On the end of the cosmological controversy involving
the steady-state theory, see Kragh (1996), pp. 389–395.
150 4 After Plate Tectonics

leader of attempts in the 1970s and 1980s to fight the new orthodoxy—he was a
kind of equivalent to Hoyle in relation to the big-bang theory. Also the German
engineer Klaus Vogel should be mentioned. While still a citizen of the German
Democratic Republic Vogel made elaborate models of the continents fitting on a
globe nearly half the size of the equivalent Earth. By placing the primitive globe
inside a transparent globe of the present Earth he offered a visual argument for
radial expansion as the cause of the separation of the continents.142
To make a long story short, the non-existence of an appreciable expansion of the
Earth has recently been established much more precisely and directly than earlier.
Using advanced geodetic methods and measurement techniques, in 2011 an inter-
national team of researchers led by Xiaoping Wu from NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory published a study that “provides an independent confirmation that the
solid Earth is not getting larger at present, within current measurement uncer-
tainties.”143 Although Wu and his team of American, French and Dutch scientists
found a tiny expansion rate of about 0.1 mm per year, with a measurement
uncertainty of ΔR/Δt ¼ 0.2 mm per year the expansion was not statistically
significant.
Nonetheless, this recent result seems to have had no effect on the believers in
Earth expansion. For one thing, although expansion may not occur presently, it does
not rule out that it occurred only in the geological past, such as claimed by King.
Modern expansionists tend either to ignore Wu’s result or suggest that it does not
follow from the measurements because of a poor sensitivity-signal ratio. For
example, the measurements are claimed to be too insensitive to rule out a radial
expansion of the Earth of about 1.5 mm per year.144 The price to be paid for this
particular hypothesis is that the Moon must contract radially at the implausibly high
rate of 41 cm per year.
I shall deal only briefly with the more recent attempts to keep the expanding
Earth alive, with or without the varying-G hypothesis.145 The main protagonists of
modern expansionism are the Italian geophysicist Giancarlo Scalera and the
Australian geologist James Maxlow who agree that continental drift is just an
illusion created by the insistence that the radius of the Earth is constant. Whereas
the most credible expansion Earth models in the 1960s and 1970s were the slow-
expansion models of the type suggested by Egyed and Dicke, the more recent
expansionists are in favour of rapid expansion—the very kind of expansion which
repeatedly has been shown to disagree with measurements. Carey’s stubborn

142
Carey (1988), pp. 266–269. See Vogel (1992) for a summary of his arguments for the
expanding Earth hypothesis.
143
Wu et al. (2011). According to NASA, the team “confirmed what Walt Disney told us all along:
Earth really is a small world, after all.” http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20110816.
html
144
Nyambuya (2014). For another recent attempt to show that the Earth is presently expanding at a
slow rate (about 0.2 mm per year), see Shen et al. (2011).
145
These attempts are critically reviewed in Sudiro (2014), where further references to the
literature can be looked up.
4.4 Degeneration 151

refusal to accept any subduction is widely followed. In the 1990s Scalera argued
that the Archaean radius of the Earth had been 3500 km, to increase in the Paleozoic
to 4300 km and in the Mesozoic to 5300 km.
Some of Maxlow’s ideas are even more extreme. He has proposed a primeval
Earth with a radius as small as 1700 km, or the same as the Moon. Its density was as
high as 290 g cm3 and its surface gravity no less than g ¼ 138 m s2. Other modern
expansionists have suggested that the original mass was much less than today and
that the Earth’s mass has increased at a rate about 1015 or 1016 kg per year. Only few
modern expansionists have appealed to a decreasing G as the mechanism behind the
expansion. The Dirac–Jordan–Dicke hypothesis is still of some interest to physi-
cists, but it seems to play almost no role at all in what is left of Earth expansionism.
As seen from the perspective of mainstream geophysics the theory of the
expanding Earth has long been dead. Still in the late 1990s the historian and
philosopher of science Richard Nunan concluded that as far as the empirical
validity of expanding Earth models is concerned, “the jury is still out.” Moreover,
“The fortunes of either moderate or fast expansion could improve during the
coming decades.”146 This view was definitely not shared by the large majority of
geophysicists at the time. Today we know that the fortunes of expansion have not
improved and we have good reasons to expect that they never will improve. Despite
its poor scientific reputation, papers, symposia and conferences on the expanding
Earth continue to this day. Paolo Sudiro summarizes the present state of Earth
expansionism as follows:
While expansionists claim that Earth scientists dogmatically follow a theory (plate tecton-
ics) falsified by geological data, they promote or incorporate borderline and pseudoscien-
tific ideas, including generation of new matter inside Earth, variation of cosmic constants,
and exotic matter transformations, conflicting with accepted physical theories.147

This is not, in my view, an unfair characterization. A perusal of the extensive

literature on current Earth expansionism in the form of books, papers and websites
confirms the suspicion that the idea of Earth expansion, which for a period of one or
two decades was a seriously discussed scientific hypothesis, has now deteriorated
into something dangerously close to a pseudo-science.148 The modern theory is
primarily of interest from the point of view of sociology and psychology of science.

146
Nunan (1998), p. 249.
147
Sudiro (2014), p. 144.
148
See, for example, the two symposia proceedings Scalera and Jacob (2003) and Scalera
et al. (2012). An impression of the style of science in current Earth expansionism may be gained
from Maxlow’s website http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/earthexpanding/00_
GlobalExpansionTectonics.htm#menu.
152 4 After Plate Tectonics

4.5 Two Revolutions in Science

Plate tectonics was not the only scientific revolution that occurred in the mid-1960s.
Cosmology experienced one as well. As global plate tectonics was in part a revival
of Wegener’s old theory of continental drift, so the big-bang theory was in part a
revival of the older explosion theories of the universe going back to Lemaı̂tre in the
early 1930s and to Gamow and his collaborators Alpher and Herman in the late
1940s.
Although most physicists and astronomers in the first two decades after World
War II favoured an evolutionary universe governed by the laws of general relativ-
ity, finite-age models with an explosive beginning at the origin of time enjoyed little
support. A significant minority thought that the steady-state theory proposed in
1948 by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold offered a better and more
appealing picture of the universe.149 First and foremost, at the time there was no
shared foundation of cosmology, a science that was widely considered semi-
philosophical because of its lack of relevant observations to decide between rival
models. Preference of one cosmological model over other models was widely seen
as a matter of taste, not something that could be justified in strict scientific terms.
The unclarified situation only began to change around 1960, when radio-
astronomical measurements proved irreconcilable with predictions from the
steady-state theory. The data clearly favoured relativistic evolution cosmology, if
not necessarily of the explosive type. By the early 1960s radio-astronomical
measurements had seriously weakened confidence in the steady-state theory, but
not to the extent that it could be excluded as a possible alternative to the models
described by general relativity. The turning point came in the spring of 1965 with
the recognition that the newly discovered microwave background at wavelength
7.3 cm could be interpreted as a fossil radiation from the early phase of the big-bang
universe.150 While the cosmic microwave background fitted beautifully into the
big-bang theory, it came as an unpleasant surprise to the supporters of the steady-
state theory of the universe.
Preoccupied with the G(t) hypothesis and its geophysical consequences—not to
mention his work as a politician and author of popular works on science and
culture—Jordan was not much involved in the cosmological debate that led to the
standard hot big-bang model. He was aware of the steady-state model at an early
time, but apart from finding the element of matter creation to agree with his own
theory he did not support it. Instead he chose to emphasize “the considerable
differences between Hoyle’s theory and my own.”151 As he pointed out in

149
For a comprehensive account of the steady-state theory and its relation to relativistic evolution
theories, see Kragh (1996).
150
Peebles et al. (2009) is a detailed account of the early history of the cosmic microwave
background. As noted in Sect. 4.2, the discovery caused serious problems for Dirac’s G(t)
cosmology.
151
Jordan (1949), p. 640, Kragh (1996), p. 196.
4.5 Two Revolutions in Science 153

Schwerkraft und Weltall, the steady-state theory did not recognize the unidirec-
tional nature of cosmic evolution and it also denied or disregarded the G(t)
hypothesis which Jordan valued so highly.152 In his 1966 monograph on the
expanding Earth, Jordan referred to the steady-state theory and its recent refutation
by radio astronomers’ discovery of “what must be interpreted as the remnant
radiation of the big bang.”153 As mentioned in Sect. 2.6, a couple of years later
the microwave blackbody background forced him to modify his own cosmological
theory.
Contrary to Jordan, Dicke and his group in Princeton were crucially involved in
the radical transformation that cosmology experienced in the 1960s. As we have
seen, Dicke was strongly attracted to the scalar–tensor theory with a decreasing
gravitational constant. This theory guided much of his thinking about the early
universe which in 1963 led him to consider an initial hot phase filled with black-
body radiation. To a large extent, what became the standard big-bang theory was
indebted to a heterodox theory of gravitation, namely the Brans–Dicke theory. It
was also indebted to another heterodox view, namely, Dicke’s preference for a
cyclic universe and his belief that the big bang had its origin in the contraction of a
preceding universe into a big crunch. As a result of the contraction, radiation in the
earlier universe would be strongly shifted to the high-energy blue frequency region
and therefore capable of destroying heavy atomic nuclei by means of photo-
dissociation. This belief was visible in the paper that Dicke and his three Princeton
co-authors published in 1965, but it was of no importance to the argument of the
paper.
The significance of the Brans–Dicke theory is evident from a review paper that
Dicke and Peebles submitted in early March 1965, shortly before they became
aware of the discovery of the 7.3 cm background constructed by Arno Penzias and
Robert Wilson the previous year.154 In this paper the two Princeton physicists dealt
at length with the geophysical, astrophysical and cosmological consequences of the
Brans–Dicke theory. Using the standard equations of general relativity, at the time
Peebles had reached the conclusion that the intensity of the present background
radiation would correspond to a temperature of about 10 K to avoid excess helium
production in the past. Should the temperature of the radiation turn out to be
considerably less, Dicke and Peebles appealed to the decreasing gravitational
constant of the Brans–Dicke theory. Because, with a larger G in the cosmic past,
“the universe would have expanded through the early phase very much faster than is

152
Jordan (1955), pp. 136–138.
153
Jordan (1966), p. 138. Preface dated February 1966. While the English translation used
“primordial ‘big bang’,” the German original referred to the Urknall, a word for the explosive
event in the past which at the time was common in German literature and is still used.
154
Dicke and Peebles (1965). In a note added in proof Dicke and Peebles referred to the Penzias-
Wilson discovery and their own interpretation of the radiation as a fossil from the early hot
universe.
154 4 After Plate Tectonics

implied by general relativity [and] this would reduce the time available for helium
production, thus reducing the lower limit on the present radiation temperature.”155
A passage to the same effect appeared in the seminal paper in the July 1965 issue
of the Astrophysical Journal in which Dicke and his co-authors Peebles, Peter Roll
and David Wilkinson analysed and interpreted the cosmic microwave back-
ground.156 A few years later Dicke returned to the problem of helium production
in scalar–tensor cosmology, where the scalar field contributes significantly to the
expansion rate. His result was not encouraging: “For a flat universe (present density
2  1029 g cm3, Hubble age 1010 years), zero helium production would be
expected. For the low-density case (present density ~7  1031 g cm3) there are
two possibilities: 32 per cent and 0 per cent helium.”157 From a modern perspective
it may appear that considerations of varying gravity in the formation of the new
big-bang theory were really irrelevant and unnecessary. However, they actually
played a considerable role and indirectly provided a link to the kind of geophysical
work that was similarly motivated. As Dicke saw it, both the Earth and the universe
might serve as a testing ground for the scalar–tensor theory of gravitation that was
the primary target for his long-term research project.
Plate tectonics and the hot big-bang universe appeared at about the same time.
They were turning points in the earth sciences and cosmology, respectively, and
they have both been described as scientific revolutions. But were they really
revolutions and, if so, were there any connections between these two revolutionary
phases in the recent history of science?
With regard to the last question I have argued that there was indeed such a
connection, namely the one mediated by the G(t) hypothesis; but I have also
suggested that this connection was indirect and not, after all, very important.158
The first question is somewhat peripheral to the subject of this study, for which
reason I shall only deal with it cursorily. In retrospect it is tempting to see the
change to the hot big bang in the late 1960s as a genuine revolution in our
conception of the universe. This is today a common view, espoused not only by
physicists and astronomers but also by some historians and philosophers of science.
But from a contemporaneous perspective the change was of a different nature. After
all, a finite-age universe governed by the laws of general relativity was accepted by
a majority of cosmologists several years before the celebrated discovery of the
cosmic microwave background.

155
Dicke and Peebles (1965), p. 451, Peebles et al. (2009), pp. 38–39.
156
Dicke et al. (1965), p. 418.
157
Dicke (1968), p. 22.
158
Theoretical physicist Werner Israel (1996) investigated in an interesting essay the parallel
histories of continental drift and ideas of super-dense celestial bodies (such as neutron stars,
quasars and black holes). Both concepts became part of established science in the 1960s. Whereas
there are noteworthy methodological and sociological similarities between the two cases analysed
by Israel, they are strictly separate with regard to substance, which is contrary to the cosmology-
geophysics case.
4.5 Two Revolutions in Science 155

As far as I know, none of the key actors in the transformation of cosmology,

including pioneers such as Dicke, Peebles and the Russian astrophysicist Yakov
Zel’dovich, described it at the time as a revolution. This is not to say that the term
“revolution” cannot be found in the literature. For example, in 1967 Peebles and
Wilkinson referred to the identification of the microwave background as “a revo-
lutionary development in cosmology.”159 They did not elaborate or relate the recent
cosmological revolution to, say, the Copernican revolution in the late renaissance or
other revolutionary changes in the history of science. Peebles and Wilkinson also
did not refer to Thomas Kuhn’s view of scientific revolutions and paradigm shifts as
relevant to the change their science had experienced. At the time they may have
been unaware of Kuhn’s famous book on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
published in 1962. If one looks for a revolution in twentieth-century cosmology, the
shift at about 1930 from a static to a dynamic universe is a much better candidate
than the shift in the mid-1960s.160
The well-documented case of continental drift and plate tectonics is quite
different. As early as 1963, at a symposium on continental drift in Berkeley,
J. Tuzo Wilson stated that the earth sciences were “ripe for a major scientific
revolution.” He presented the situation as corresponding to that of earlier
pre-revolutionary phases in science, “like that of physics before quantum mechan-
ics.” Wilson did not mention Kuhn’s Structure at this point but later recalled that he
most likely had been inspired by Kuhn.161 Five years later, in a paper read to the
American Philosophical Society on 19 April 1968, he reflected on the recent
developments in the earth sciences and how they related to Kuhn’s “brilliant
analysis of scientific methods.” According to Wilson:
Kuhn makes the point that a change in belief has been the essence of the great scientific
revolutions like those from phlogistics [sic] to modern chemistry, from caloric to modern
thermodynamics, or from special creation to evolution. In our day it would appear that what
earth science needs more than fresh data, better instrumentation, or new techniques is a
simple change from our present belief that the structure of the earth is static to the new
concept that it has long been mobile. This is parallel and similar to the Copernican
revolution and should perhaps be called the Wegenerian revolution from its chief advocate.
. . . We should start afresh and combine all investigations into the study of a mobile earth-
structure under the name of one new science—geonomy.162

The last word in the quotation—“geonomy” as a terrestrial counterpart to

“astronomy”—is not well known and in need of a comment. It was not Wilson’s
invention. Since the mid-nineteenth century the term was occasionally used in
somewhat different meanings, often referring to the physical laws relating to the
Earth. James Stanley Grimes, a nineteenth-century American geological author
who used the term in the title of a book, defined geonomy as “a science which

159
Peebles and Wilkinson (1967), p. 28.
160
On this issue, see Kragh (2014b) and sources mentioned therein.
161
Wilson’s 1963 address is quoted in Cohen (1985), p. 464, and his later recollection on p. 565.
162
Wilson (1968), p. 317. See also Wilson (1977).
156 4 After Plate Tectonics

relates to the physical laws of the earth, and includes all the essential facts of
geology and physical geography.”163
Wilson may have been the first geophysicist to describe the change in the 1960s
as a revolution in something like Kuhn’s sense, but he was not the only one. Within
a few years he was followed by Anthony Hallam, Allan Cox, Ursula Marvin and
half a dozen other geological authors.164 Plate tectonics and revolution rhetoric
went hand in hand. To the mind of Hallam, an Oxford geologist, there was no doubt
that plate tectonics was the new paradigm of a recently finished revolution which
finally had turned geology into a mature science. “The Earth sciences do indeed
appear to have undergone a revolution in the Kuhnian sense,” he emphasized in his
triumphalist book on plate tectonics significantly titled A Revolution in the Earth
Sciences.165 Allan Cox, a leading actor in the construction of plate tectonics and a
critic of the expanding Earth, affirmed that “the development of plate tectonics . . .
fits the pattern of Kuhn’s scientific revolutions surprisingly well.”166 Echoing
Hallam and Cox, the prominent planetary geologist Marvin declared that “the
story of continental drift as a geologic concept . . . bears out in a dramatic fashion
a thesis developed by Thomas S. Kuhn.”167
Among many working earth scientists there was a general consciousness that
they lived during a revolutionary phase in their science, as witnessed by a series of
early historical or semi-historical reviews by the scientists themselves. One looks in
vain for a similar literature written by the physicists and astronomers who at the
same time could celebrate the new big-bang theory of the universe. In most of the
reviews written by geologists and geophysicists, the expanding Earth and varying-
G theories were either ignored or just briefly mentioned. Yet also Carey referred to
plate tectonics as a Kuhnian revolution, but understandably with a focus on the
dogmatism that Kuhn associated with the adoption of a new paradigm. “When a
new fact appears, it is automatically interpreted in terms of this ruling dogma, even
though it may be equally or better explained otherwise,” he complained. “Indeed, if
it were explained in terms of Earth expansion, the report would certainly be sent
back by journal referees for rewriting, if not rejected outright as naı̈ve.”168
Historians and philosophers of science are not so sure that global plate tectonics
qualifies as a bona fide scientific revolution. Rachel Laudan concludes that although
the emergence of plate tectonics can be described as a revolutionary change, it was

163
Grimes (1858), p. 2.
164
See Laudan (1980), Laudan (1983) and Cohen (1985), pp. 446–466. See also McKenzie (1977)
for a comparison of the revolution in plate tectonics and the one of DNA-based molecular biology.
According to McKenzie (p. 121), “plate tectonics was less fundamental a revolution than the
discoveries which began molecular biology.” A good overview is provided in Tetsuji Iseda,
“Philosophical interpretations of the plate tectonics revolution,” http://tiseda.sakura.ne.jp/works/
Plate_tectonics.html
165
Hallam (1973), p. 108.
166
Cox (1973), p. 5.
167
Marvin (1973), p. 189.
168
Carey (1988), p. 197.
4.6 Historiographical and Other Perspectives 157

not a Kuhnian revolution. Among other things, there was no established paradigm
or “normal science” in the previous decades, and there also was no incommensu-
rability between pre- and post-tectonic geological theories. Nor was there any
communication gap between the different camps.169 The empirical-inductive meth-
odology of geophysics before plate tectonics remained basically the same after the
alleged revolution. The relative ease with which Tuzo Wilson moved from
contractionism over expansionism to plate tectonics is but one example among
many that illustrates the continuity of the development and non-Kuhnian nature of
the revolutionary change.

4.6 Historiographical and Other Perspectives

The broader framework of this book is the historical relationship between cosmol-
ogy and geophysics or between cosmology and the earth sciences generally. It is a
topic that has so far attracted very little interest and of which there is no systematic
study in the history of science.170 More specifically I have presented a comprehen-
sive account of two interrelated concepts, the one belonging to physical cosmology
and the other to geology. The two concepts are the hypothesis of decreasing gravity
and the hypothesis of the expanding Earth, and I have focused on how they
interacted in the period from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. It is argued that it
was only with Dirac’s G(t) hypothesis, or rather with Teller’s critique of it from
1948, that modern post-Einsteinian cosmology became of importance to the earth
sciences. Until then the only major problem area shared by the two sciences was the
age of the universe and its relation to the age of the Earth.
Today it is generally agreed that the gravitational constant G does not vary or, to
put it more cautiously, if it varies then the rate of variation is much slower than the
one proposed by Dirac. Moreover, it is agreed that the Earth does not expand
measurably. In other words, most of this lengthy study is about two mistaken
hypotheses that for long have been abandoned by mainstream science and even in
the 1960s were never more than minority views. The study may thus be of little or
no relevance to current science and seem to be just so much ado about nothing. On
the other hand, the case under investigation is not without interest from the point of
view of history of science, a branch of scholarship that is not primarily concerned
with current knowledge. In addition the case provides some insight into the
problems that may occur when scientists from two very different disciplinary
traditions face the same subject matter, in casu the Earth.
Much of the work reviewed in the book was of an interdisciplinary nature, in the
sense that it dealt with subjects belonging to widely different fields of science. The

169
Laudan (1980). See also Le Grand (1988), pp. 267–273 and Marx and Bornmann (2013).
170
The title of Schr€oder and Treder (2007) is inviting but unfortunately misleading. The paper is
not really a historical review of the connections between geophysics and cosmology.
158 4 After Plate Tectonics

expanding Earth and varying gravity appealed not only to geophysicists, astrono-
mers and physicists, but also to palaeontologists, geologists and meteorologists—
even a few biologists and chemists got interested. It is however characteristic of the
period’s literature that the interdisciplinary nature of the problem area was not
reflected in a corresponding interdisciplinary authorship. Only in very few cases did
physicists collaborate with geologists, or cosmologists with specialists in, say,
paleomagnetism. Almost all papers were written by a single author or by a couple
of authors with the same disciplinary background. As a consequence the authors
were sometimes forced to deal with subjects outside their professional compe-
tences, which occasionally resulted in misunderstandings, poor judgments and
superficiality. The way that Teller calculated the past climate of the Earth is one
example; and the way that Egyed and Holmes received Gilbert’s claim of the
consistency of general relativity and varying gravity is another example. The
element of amateurism that one can find in several of the publications is well
illustrated in Jordan’s extensive work and also in Hoyle’s much briefer encounter
with geophysics.
Jordan’s work in geophysics was not only characterized by a certain degree of
amateurism but also by some disrespect for the earth sciences when compared to
fundamental physics. He found the methods of geophysics to be much less satis-
factory than those of the fundamental branches of physics that he knew so inti-
mately and where he felt better at home. One can find a similar attitude among some
other physicists in the period, as when Dicke and Dyson commented on geophysics’
deplorable lack of exactitude (Sect. 3.3).171 Yet another example is Lyttleton, who
was greatly interested in geophysics but whose attitude to the subject was very
much astronomical rather than geological. His astronomy-inspired approach con-
tributed to his dislike of continental drift and plate tectonics.
In 1953 the distinguished physicist and Nobel Prize winner Edward Appleton
contributed to a festschrift for Max Born, his colleague at the University of
Edinburgh. The subject of his paper was geomagnetism and the physics of the
ionosphere. Appleton felt that he had to make excuses for the subject and its
“general untidiness” which he contrasted to “the elegance which characterises
Professor Born’s own contributions to physical knowledge.” As he pointed out,
progress in these untidy geophysical fields “depends on the harvesting of sample
measurements from different parts of our globe and attempting to reconcile them by
tentative hypotheses and theories.”172
It is noteworthy that the originator of the cosmological G(t) hypothesis and its
earliest and most articulate advocate were both pioneers of quantum mechanics, a
theory Dirac and Jordan co-created while in their early twenties. Pascual Jordan

171
According to Stephen Brush, fields such as geophysics and planetary science were for a long
time considered “impure” and for this reason assigned an inferior status in the internal hierarchy of
physics. See Brush (1996b), pp. 41–46.
172
Appleton (1953), p. 1. At the time Vice-Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, Appleton
received the 1947 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the physical properties of the upper
atmosphere.
4.6 Historiographical and Other Perspectives 159

eventually turned towards the cosmology-geophysics connection, which he culti-

vated for nearly two decades. The essay examines in some detail and for the first
time how Jordan strove to vindicate Dirac’s hypothesis by means of geophysical
evidence. The remarkable role played by Joel Fisher, until now a persona incognita
in the history of science, is described as far as the scanty sources allow.
Coming to the earth sciences as an amateur and with little respect for the culture
of geophysics, Jordan was not highly regarded or even known among earth scien-
tists. His extensive work on expansion of the Earth caused by weakening gravity did
not attract a great deal of interest. Nor has it attracted any interest among modern
historians of science.173 The silence stands in stark contrast to the interest historians
have shown to Jordan’s seminal contributions to quantum theory and also, if to a
lesser extent, his premature attempt in the 1930s to create a theory of quantum
biology.174 Jordan’s extensive work in cosmology and geophysics has effectively
been ignored.
Much of Jordan’s work was independently duplicated and deepened by another
prominent physicist and cosmologist, Robert Dicke in Princeton, who was more
successful in crossing the barrier to the community of the geophysicists. What
makes Dicke of particular interest is his seminal role in the revival of big-bang
cosmology in 1965 following the discovery of the cosmic microwave background.
As I point out, there was an indirect connection between the transformation in
cosmology in the 1960s and the geophysical theories examined by Dicke on the
basis of the Brans–Dicke G(t) hypothesis. However, the connection was not very
important, meaning that the Princeton physicists would most likely have arrived at
their interpretation of the microwave radiation even if Dicke had not been preoc-
cupied by the terrestrial and astronomical effects of a weakening gravitational
constant.
I also speculate if the two scientific revolutions of the 1960s, namely global plate
tectonics and the hot big-bang theory of the universe were somehow related. Given
that the main mediator between cosmology and geophysics was the G(t) hypothesis,
and that this hypothesis played a role only with respect to the expanding Earth, it is
more reasonable to see the two revolutions as developing in parallel but largely
independently. The few connections between cosmology and geophysics one can
find in the 1970s were non-mainstream in both areas, as illustrated by the theories of
Hoyle, Wesson and Carey.

173
Among the very few papers on Jordan’s “excursion” into geophysics, see Kundt (2007) written
by a former student and collaborator of Jordan. The article on Jordan in the authoritative
Dictionary of Scientific Biography (vol. 17, supplement II) only mentions his work in the earth
sciences with a single line, stating that “Jordan suggested explaining Wegener’s continental drift
phenomenon as a result of an expansion of the earth.” However, Jordan considered the expanding
Earth hypothesis as an alternative to continental drift and plate tectonics, which theories he did not
accept. The updated entry on Jordan in the more recent New Dictionary of Scientific Biography
(vol. 4) is no more informative with regard to his work in geophysics.
174
On Jordan’s work in quantum biology and his philosophical and ideological views, see Beyler
(1994, 1996, 2009).
160 4 After Plate Tectonics

As far as the expanding Earth is concerned, the book mostly deals with the issue
in relation to the varying-G hypothesis. It has not been my intention to write a full
history of the idea of an expanding Earth, valuable as such a study might be. All the
same, this book covers a substantial part of the history, from Jordan in the early
1950s to Carey and Owen three decades later. It only deals rather briefly with the
later history. Today it is often forgotten that the epic debate about the Earth in the
years from about 1955 to 1970 involved three and not merely two rival theories.
Expansionism was evidently on the side of mobilism and against fixism, but at the
same time it was opposed to continental drift in Wegener’s sense of moving land
masses. Although the debate concerning the expanding Earth is interesting in its
own right, it should be kept in mind that the expansion hypothesis was relatively
unimportant in comparison to the much better known main controversy that took
place between fixists and drifters.
Moreover, varying gravity was only one aspect of many in relation to an
expanding Earth, a hypothesis that in its modern version goes back to the
mid-1950s but can be found decades earlier. There was little unity among the
expansionists, some of whom focused on the mechanism driving the supposed
expansion while others were unconcerned with its cause. Most were in favour of
slow expansion, but an important minority (including Carey, Heezen, and to some
extent Owen) argued for a substantially greater expansion rate. There were also
considerable differences with regard to distribution of the expansion phases over
geological time. According to a few expansionists (such as King) expansion no
longer occurred, while others saw expansion as essentially limited to the more
recent geological periods. Table 4.2 at the end of this section lists most of the
expansion rates proposed in the period covered by the book, starting with Halm in
1935 and ending with Wu and collaborators in 2011.
It was generally accepted that decreasing gravity alone was insufficient to
provide the necessary inflation of the Earth but there was no agreement as to its
importance. Several earth scientists in favour of expansion disregarded the G(t)
hypothesis and some argued against it. Again, whereas some expansionists consid-
ered the expansion hypothesis an alternative to continental drift, there were also
those who considered the two hypotheses to be compatible and complementary.
Expansionists further differed considerably in their commitment to the hypothesis.
Jordan and Carey were devoted to it to an almost dogmatic extent, whereas for
others (Dicke, Wilson, and Holmes, for example) it was merely an interesting
possibility that deserved to be examined. The lack of unity left expansionism in a
much weaker position relative to the new plate tectonics than what otherwise could
have been the case.
Although there was much opposition against the theory of plate tectonics in the
1970s and 1980s, there was no united front. Scientists might be sceptics or oppo-
nents for a variety of reasons and their positions did not necessarily imply a
preference for a definite alternative such as an expanding Earth. It was customary
to associate continental drift and plate tectonics, to see the first as a result of the
latter, but some geologists denied the connection. While accepting the basic plate
tectonic processes (such as sea floor spreading, subduction and transform faulting),
4.6 Historiographical and Other Perspectives 161

Table 4.2 Some Earth expansion rates

Scientist Year dR/dt G(t)? Comment
J. Halm 1935 1.6 No Average expansion rate
B. C. Heezen 1960 ~7 No No definite rate given
J. T. Wilson 1960 ~0.8 (Yes) Finds G(t) to be “an inviting idea”
R. H. Dicke 1962 ~0.05 Yes Based on Brans–Dicke theory
D. van Hilten 1963 ~4–7 No No definite rate given
K. Creer 1965 0.75 No Expansion starts 3.5 Gy ago
R. Dearnley 1965 0.65 (Yes) Expansion throughout Earth history
A. Holmes 1965 ~0.5 (Yes) No conflict between expansion and
continental drift
P. Jordan 1966 ~5 Yes Slow rate up to end of Palaeozoic
V. Brezhnev, 1966 ~0.05 Yes Theoretical derivation based on
D. Ivanenko, B. Frolov general relativity
L. Egyed 1967 0.5–0.65 Yes Expansion starts 500 million years
ago or earlier
E. Lubimova 1967 0.03–0.05 No Denies varying G
S. W. Carey ~1970 5–8 No Accelerating expansion
F. Hoyle and J. Narlikar 1972 ~0.1 Yes Hoyle–Narlikar G(t) theory
J. Dooley 1973 0.5–0.6 No Not convinced of expansion
P. Wesson 1973 ~16 (No) Expansion slowing down; possibly
matter creation
H. Owen 1976 ~0.45 No Exponential growth since 600 mil-
lion years ago
V. Canuto et al. 1977 0.2–0.3 (Yes) Assumes matter creation
M. McElhinny 1978 <0.13 No Denies expansion and varying G
S. Yabushita 1982 0.07 or Yes Depends on matter creation
0.25
X. Wu et al. 2011 0.1  0.2 No No present expansion
The unit of the average increase in the Earth’s radius given in column 3 is mm year1. Column
4 refers to the role played by the G(t) hypothesis in either the Dirac–Jordan version or some other
version. If the assumed expansion rested on or made use of the hypothesis it is marked with “yes,”
while “(yes)” means that the author just considered the hypothesis to be a possible contributing
cause

they denied that these processes implied continental drift. Paul Lowman, a geolo-
gist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, was in favour of combining plate
tectonics with fixed rather than drifting continents. Aware of the expansion alter-
native and the varying-G mechanism, he found the expanding Earth theory to be
“stimulating but quite unlikely.”175
After the demise of the expanding Earth, or rather the marginalization of it, the
decreasing-G hypothesis lived on in a variety of astronomical and physical con-
texts. It still does. After all, theories based on the G(t) conjecture never relied

175
Lowman (1983).
162 4 After Plate Tectonics

crucially on Earth expansion. To mention but one example from the early period, in
1976 Dirac’s conjecture turned up as a possible solution to what is presently known
as the dark matter problem but at the time was usually called the problem of missing
matter. This problem—essentially that the amount of visible matter was insufficient
to keep galactic clusters gravitationally together—was first pointed out by Zwicky
in 1933, and in the 1970s it attracted much attention in astronomy and cosmology.
According to one astronomer, Dirac’s “hypothesis of a variable gravitational
constant can completely solve the ‘missing mass’ problem, and promises to assist
the study of the formation, structure and evolution of galaxies.”176 Although this
turned out to be an exaggerated claim and a blind alley, the consequences of the G
(t) hypothesis were explored in many other ways.
The de facto refutation of Dirac’s hypothesis in the mid-1980s did not have any
major effect on the popularity of varying-G cosmologies among physicists. For
example, in an attempt to explain various problems in the inflation theory of the
very early universe, in 1989 Paul Steinhardt and his collaborator Daile La proposed
an “extended inflationary model” based on a slight modification of the Jordan–
Brans–Dicke theory of gravitation. While this model included varying gravity, it
did not rely on the LNH hypothesis.177 A changing gravitational constant has also
been suggested as a possible solution of the problem of dark energy that was
highlighted with the discovery of the accelerating universe in the late 1990s.
Some versions of superstring theory and related many-dimensional unified theories
predict that G and other constants of nature change in time. In short, although
Dirac’s version of the G(t) hypothesis is dead, the general idea of G varying in time
is not.
Dirac tended to believe that the Large Numbers Hypothesis and its associated G
(t) hypothesis were too beautiful to be wrong, but perhaps it is better to say that they
are too beautiful to be scrapped. At any rate, the general claim that some of the
fundamental constants of nature may vary in time continues to be a subject of
interest among physicists and cosmologists.178

176
Lewis (1976).
177
La and Steinhardt (1989). Paul Steinhardt, one of the founders of the inflationary scenario, later
concluded that inflation was wrong. In 2001 he proposed as an alternative to the inflation theory a
cyclic model of the universe which he since then has developed in various versions and still
defends. See Kragh (2011), pp. 202–208.
178
See Uzan (2003). During the last two decades the possibility of a varying speed of light, a
hypothesis that neither Dirac nor Jordan considered, has attracted much attention.
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Index

A blackbody spectrum, 48, 126–28, 153

Abelson, P.H., 25 Blackett, P., 10, 32–3, 101, 107
actualism, 94 Blake, G.M., 132
Aeronautical Research Laboratories, 27, 45, 75 Bode, J.E., 91
Alpher, R., 42, 152 Bohr, N., 24, 31
amateurism, 36, 61, 66, 78, 120, 158–57 Bondi, H., 10, 28, 54, 57, 70, 97, 122, 152
anthropic principle, 57 Born, M., 28, 158
anti-gravity, 69 Boys, C.V., 18
Appleton, E., 158 Brans, C., 15, 44–5, 48–51, 53
Arnot, F.L., 35 Brans-Dicke theory, 41, 45, 48–53, 57–8, 81–7,
Arrhenius, S., 6–7 105, 117, 125, 135, 153, 159. See also
Atkinson, R., 31 scalar-tensor theories.
Brezhnev, V.S., 148, 161
Bullen, K.E., 68, 84, 107
B Burnet, T., 1
Baade, W., 102
Babson, R.W., 68–70
Bahcall, J., 41, 83–4 C
Baille, J.-B., 17 Canuto, V., 125, 128–29, 139
Bargmann, V., 54 Carey, S.W., 30, 62–5, 81, 87–95, 98, 107–8,
Barnett, C.H., 72 140, 145–47, 149, 160
Barnothy, J., 122 cosmology, 114–17
Bartels, J., 9 revolutions in science, 256
Beck, A., 99–100 Carter, B., 57
Becker, G.F., 10–11 Cavendish, H., 16–18
Beloussov, V., 147 Chamberlin, T., 6–7, 111
Bergmann, P., 30, 45–6, 54 Chandrasekhar, S., 25
Bern conference, 54–5 Chapel Hill conference, 54–6, 80
beta decay, 26, 30–3, 56 charge-excess hypothesis, 10
big-bang theory, 11, 29, 42, 87, 97–8, 108, Chin, C.-W., 129
111–13, 116–17, 127, 137–38, 149–50, Chow, T.L., 111–12
152–54, 159 Clairaut, A.-C., 2
Binge, H.-J., 74–5, 90 Clausius, R., 5
Birch, F., 109 Clerke, A.M., 4
Birkeland, K., 6 conformal gravity, 117

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 179

H. Kragh, Varying Gravity, Science Networks. Historical Studies 54,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24379-5
180 Index

Conrad, V., 9 earth sciences, 57–8, 80–8, 103, 139

constants of nature, 16–19, 21–2, 25–6, 32, Mach’s principle, 50, 54
114, 162 scalar-tensor theory, 44–5, 49–53
continental drift theory, 59–64, 72–3, 100–1, Dietz, R., 81, 89, 108
105–10, 120–22, 147–50, 160 Dingle, H., 25
Blackett, 32–3 Dirac, P.A.M., 20–6, 37–8, 123–30, 136–38,
Dicke, 81–4, 88 158–60, 162
Egyed, 93–6 background radiation, 126–28
Halm, 13 creation cosmologies, 22, 123–28, 36–8
Jeffreys, 118 discussion with Gamow, 40–4
Jordan, 76, 85, 158–59 large-numbers hypothesis, 20–6, 123–28
Wilson, 100–1, 155 quantum theory, 20–1, 158
continental spreading, 93 Dirac-Gilbert hypothesis, 91–2, 94
contractionism, 12, 99–100, 157 Doell, R., 105
controversies, scientific, 148–49 Dooley, J.C., 142
convection, mantle, 60, 80, 84–5, 88, 98, 101, Du Toit, A., 13, 60, 64
106–8, 119, 143 Dyson, F., 44, 47, 86, 138, 158
Cook, M., 99
corals, fossil, 79, 94–6, 132, 140
Cornu, M.-A., 17 E
cosmical physics, 5–6, 9 Eardley, A., 100
cosmic background radiation, 47–8, 87, 97, Earth, 1–3, 65. See also expanding Earth
116, 126–28, 149, 152–55, 159 age, 7–9, 23, 31–2, 42
cosmogony, 1, 3–7, 11 energy, 36, 84–5, 99–100
cosmological constant, 8–9, 20, 23, 29, 46, formation, 6, 90, 93, 119
50, 116 inner structure, 68, 84, 90, 121, 131
Couderc, P., 29, 38 mass, 13, 120
Cox, A., 105, 156 paleoclimate (see paleoclimatology)
Creer, K., 109, 113–14, 117, 146 pulsating, 109–11, 147–48
Croll, J., 4–6, 10 rotation, 9, 64, 85, 94–5, 132
Crossley, D.J., 139 shape, 2, 18
crystal growth, 124–25, 129 surface gravity, 131, 133–34, 151
temperature, 13, 37–9, 57–8, 102–4, 119,
125, 129
D earthquakes, 81, 90
Darius, J., 119 Eddington, A.S., 8, 11, 19, 21–2, 25, 34, 55
Darwin, C., 5 Egyed, L., 63, 88–98, 105–9, 134, 140, 158
Darwin, G.H., 83 Eichendorf, W., 104
Davis, B., 19 Einstein, A., 9–10
Davis, R., 84, 130 Einstein-de Sitter model, 9, 23, 40, 51, 53
Dearborn, D., 134–35 elementary charge, varying, 43
Dearnley, R., 108–9, 142 Ellis, G.F.R., 45
Dehnen, H., 47–8, 126 Elsasser, W., 82
Delbrück, M., 27 Embleton, B.J., 146
Dennis, J., 72 ether, 56
Descartes, R., 1 Everett, H., 56
Deser, S., 54 expanding Earth, 59, 113, 145–46, 160
DeWitt, B., 54–6 Carey, 62–5
DeWitt-Morette, C., 54 Dicke, 87–8
Dicke, R.E., 14–15, 59, 65, 78–9, 95, 120, 140, early ideas, 11–13, 61–2
159–60 Egyed, 89–95
anthropic principle, 57 expansion rates (table), 161
cosmology, 50–3, 111, 153–55 Jordan, 68–79
Index 181

modern, 143–44, 149–51 Haldane, J.B.S., 35–6

Expanding Earth (Jordan), 77–9, 88 Hallam, A., 143, 147, 156
Halm, J., 11–14, 61, 64, 160
Hapgood, C., 9
F Harland, W.B., 145
faint young Sun, 104 Harwit, M., 54
Fairbridge, R., 41, 63, 93, 102–4, 111, 114 Hawking, S., 70
Fermi, E., 31–2 heat death, 5
Feynman, R., 54 Heckmann, O., 102
Ficker, H., 9 Heezen, B., 62, 95–6, 101, 105, 160
Fierz, M., 47 Heisenberg, W., 21, 27, 33
Fisher, J.E., 68–73, 159 helium production, 126, 128, 153–54
Fitch, J., 122 Hellings, R., 139
Freud, S., 60 Helmholtz, H., 5
Friedmann theory, 8, 42, 46, 53, 98 Herman, R., 42, 152
Frolov, B., 148 Hess, G.B., 87
Hess, H.H., 80–2, 100
Hilgenberg, O., 61, 140
G Hobart symposium (1956), 64–5, 146
Gamow, G., 11, 24, 36–44, 152 H€
onl, H., 47–8, 126
Gamow-Teller objection, 39 Hoffmann, B., 70
Gell-Mann, M., 128 Holmes, A., 7, 32, 43, 60–2, 91, 95–9, 114, 158
general relativity, field equations, 20, 23, 42, Hooper, W.J., 69
44, 96, 98, 148 Hospers, J., 106
geochemistry, 10–11 Houtermans, F., 31–2
geochronology, 7, 10, 23, 132 Howard, R., 103
geological periods, 43 Hoyle, F., 10, 97, 102–3, 108, 113, 117–22,
Geological Society of London, 8, 145 127, 152
geomagnetism, 6, 9–10, 32, 158. See also Hoyle-Narlikar theory, 108, 117, 122, 125,
paleomagnetism 129, 139–40
geonomy, 155 Hsieh, S.-H., 128
Gerstenkorn, H., 74 Hubble, E., 115
Gilbert, C., 42–3, 91–4, 98 Hubble law, 35, 114–15
Glashoff, H., 79 Hubble radius, 29
Gold, T., 4, 54, 70, 122, 152 Hubble time, 8–9, 29, 38, 41, 51, 124, 130
Goldberg, J., 27, 45 Hurrell, S., 132
Goldenberg, H.M., 87 Hutton, J., 3
Goldschmidt, V., 11 hypsographical problem, 72–3
Goudsmit, S., 55
gravitational constant, 15–20
gravitational shielding, 137 I
gravitation, Newton’s law, 2, 15–16 ice ages, 4, 10, 41, 75, 120
gravity, increasing, 34, 111–12, 132 Infeld, L., 73
Gravity Research Foundation, 54, 68–71, 135 inflation theory, 162
Green, W.L., 61 interdisciplinarity, 5, 157–58
greenhouse effect, 104–5 intergalactic medium, Dirac’s, 127–28
Griggs, D., 111 Irving, E., 64, 105
Grimes, J.S., 155 Israel, W., 154
Ivanenko, D., 148

H
Haas, A.E., 29–30 J
Härm, R., 102–3 Jeffreys, H., 25, 60, 72, 85, 101, 118, 122
182 Index

Joksch, H.C., 73 M
Joly, J., 7, 36, 60 MacDougall, J., 115
Jordan, E.P., 22, 26–33, 39, 44–8, 56–7, 61, Mach, E., 50
65–80, 83, 88, 91, 124, 153–54, 158–60 Mach’s principle, 30, 49–50, 54, 86
cosmology, 26–32, 46–7, 154 Machado, F., 110
Dirac’s principle, 27–30, 71 MacMillan, W., 6
expanding Earth, 65–80, 90 Maeder, A., 129–30
Nazi past, 27, 65 Mainz Academy, 79
quantum theory, 26 Majorana, E., 137
radioactivity, 31–2 Majorana, Q., 137
scalar-tensor theory, 45–8 Mansfield, V., 128
Just, K., 47 Marvin, U., 156
matter creation, 56, 99, 104, 117, 129–31,
136–38
K Carey, 115–16, 145
Kaluza, T., 45 Dirac’s theory, 22, 44, 123–28
Kanasewich, E., 32 Jordan’s theory, 28–9, 46–8, 152
Kapp, R.O., 99, 112 Wesson, 112
Kaula, W., 145 Maupertuis, P.-L., 2
Kelvin, Lord, 5 Maxlow, J., 150–51
Kessler, E., 10 McCrea, W., 66, 123
Khain, V., 148 McElhinny, M., 139–40, 146
kinematic cosmology, 34 McKenzie, D.P., 118, 156
King, L.C., 146–47 McVittie, G., 65, 97
Kirillov, I.B., 72 Menard, H., 96
Klein, O., 33, 45 Mercury anomaly, 51, 87
Kothari, D.S., 25 Meservey, R., 110
Kuchowicz, B., 131 meteorites, 85–6, 120, 125
Kuhn, T.S., 100, 155–57 Michell, J., 17
Kundt, W., 76, 159 microwaves, cosmic. See cosmic background
radiation
Milanković, M., 75
L Milanovsky, E.E., 147
La, D., 162 Milne, E.A., 20, 34–6, 42, 111, 138
Lakatos, I., 146 Moon, 9, 76, 82–3, 118, 134, 136–40, 151
Large Numbers Hypothesis, 21–2, 54, 57, age, 74
104, 123, 162 contraction, 150
Laudan, R., 156 expansion, 74, 140
Leclerc, G., 102 formation, 56, 58, 74, 83, 95
Lee, T.D., 55 mass, 125
Le Grand, H., 79, 147 rills, 68, 74, 137
Leibniz, G.W., 2 temperature, 58
Lemaı̂tre, G., 8, 102 Morgan, W.J., 81–2
light, varying speed, 114 Moulton, F.R., 6
London symposium (1979), 145–46 mountain formation, 69, 73, 82, 89–90, 99,
Lowman, P.D., 161 108, 111, 121
Lubimova, E.A., 93, 147 Mullen, G., 104
Ludwig, G., 46 Müller, C., 46
Lunar Laser Ranging Project, 138, 140 Muller, P., 136
Lyell, C., 3–4, 94 muon, 32, 130
Lyttleton, R., 118, 121–22, 130, 158 Murphy, C.T., 84–5, 87
Index 183

N prehistoric land animals, 131–32

Narlikar, J., 117–22 primeval atom hypothesis, 8, 20–1
National Medal of Science, 82 Principles of Physical Geology (Holmes),
nebular hypothesis, 4–7 32, 97
neutrino flux, solar, 41, 83–4, 130 pseudo-science, 25, 62, 137, 141, 151
neutrino oscillations, 130
Newcastle conference (1967), 72, 93, 109
Newcomb, S., 87 Q
Newman, M., 105 quantum biology, 26, 66, 159
Newton, I., 2–3, 15 quantum gravity, 26, 54
null universe, 116 quantum mechanics, 20, 26–7, 56, 128, 155
Nunan, R., 151

R
O radar-echo method, 134
Öpik, E., 39–41, 102 radioactivity, 7–8, 10–11, 23, 26, 30, 34, 36,
orogeny. See mountain formation 60, 84–5, 90, 99, 123. See also beta
oscillating world models, 7, 41–2, 97–8, 111, decay
153, 162 Ramsey, W.H., 90, 121, 131
Owen, H., 119–20, 144, 160 Ranalli, G., 93–4
Rankama, K., 11
Reinhardt, M., 104
P Reitan, P., 93
Page, T., 36 renaissance, general relativity, 53–4, 70
paleobiology, 38, 131 revolutions, scientific, 154–59
paleoclimatology, 36–41, 58, 65, 93, 104–5, Ringwood, A., 102
118, 135. See also Earth, temperature Roll, P., 154
paleomagnetism, 61, 94–5, 105, 139–40, 158 Rood, R., 105
paleoradius, 64, 91–2, 108, 120, 140 Roxburgh, I., 125
Patterson, C., 42 Runcorn, K.S., 95, 101, 107, 121–22, 125, 145
Pauli, W., 31, 45, 67, 74 Ryabukhin, A., 148
Pearson, K., 61
Peat, D., 35
Peebles, J., 85–6, 153–55 S
Penrose, R., 70 Sagan, C., 104
Penzias, A., 153 Sahama, T., 11
perfect cosmological principle, 4 Salisbury, R.D., 6
physical eschatology, 103 Sambursky, S., 23
Picasso, P., 60 Sandage, A.R., 40, 123, 136
Piccard, A., 10 Savage, J., 32
Pirani, F., 54 scalar gravitational waves, 81
Planck, M., 100 scalar-tensor theories, 44–6, 48–53, 67, 78,
Planck’s principle, 100 81–2, 123, 153–4. See also Brans-
Planck units, 19 Dicke theory; Jordan
plate tectonics, global, 59, 61–2, 64, 79–82, scale-covariant theory, 125, 128–29
110, 118, 141, 145, 160–61 Scalera, G., 143–44, 150–51
opponents of, 112, 121–22, 146–48, 149–51 Scheidegger, A., 73, 97, 143
revolution, scientific, 154–57 Scherrer, W., 45
Pochoda, P., 39–41, 83, 102 Schmidt, A., 9
polar wandering, 122 Schmidt, P.W., 146
Pontifical Academy (Dirac), 44, 124 Schneiderov, A., 111
positivism, 4, 29, 50, 77 Schramm, D., 134–35
Poynting, J.H., 17, 19 Schücking, E., 66
184 Index

Schwarzschild, K., 37 Teller, E., 15, 24–5, 30, 36–40, 75, 90, 101–4,
Schwarzschild, M., 37, 39–41, 83, 102–4 129, 158
Schwerkraft (Jordan), 46, 65–8, 73, 75, 79, ten Bruggencate, P., 30
92, 153 ter Haar, D., 39, 75
Sciama, D., 30, 70 Termier, G., 89
Scrutton, C., 94 Termier, H., 89
sea-floor spreading, 80–1, 100, 110, 112, 144, Tharp, M., 95–6
146–47 Thetys (ocean), 64
Shahiv, G., 83–4 t’ Hooft, G., 70, 128
Shapiro, I., 134 time-scale problem, 8–9, 23, 40
Silk, J., 135 time scales, Milne’s, 34–5, 138
Sleep, N., 145 Tinsley, B., 122
Slipher, V.M., 7 Titius, J.D., 91
Smith, P., 140 Titius-Bode law, 91
solar constant, 39, 58, 75, 92, 119 Towe, K., 125
Solomon, J., 26 Tozer, D.C., 107
Sommerfeld, A., 31 Trabert, W., 6
Soviet Union, plate tectonics, 147–49 Tryon, E., 30, 116
steady-state theory, 10, 96–9, 113, 117–18,
121–23, 127, 149, 152–3. See also
Hoyle-Narlikar theory U
Holmes’ dislike of, 96–8 uniformitarianism, 3, 94, 100, 146
Stegena, L., 92 universe, 1–4
Steigman, G., 126–27 age, 8–9, 15, 20–4, 29–30, 33, 39–40, 51,
Steiner, J., 109–10, 144–45 53, 57, 91
Steinhardt, P., 162 expanding, 13–14, 114, 116, 137
Stevens, R., 139 zero-energy, 30
Stevenson, D., 139
Stewart, A., 131, 133–34, 145
Stoner, J.O., 81 V
Stoney, G.J., 18–19 Van Andel, S., 106
Stothers, R., 129–30 Van Diggelen, J., 140
Strakhov, N., 89 Van Flandern, T., 135–40
Str€omgren, B., 102 Van Hilten, D., 105–7, 133
subduction, 64, 144, 151, 160 Vogel, K., 150
Sudiro, P., 151 volcanism, 74–5
Suess, E., 64 von Herzen, R., 85
Sun, 5, 40–1, 83, 91, 94 von Humboldt, A., 5
age, 30, 53 von Seeliger, H., 116
luminosity, 30, 39, 58, 102–4, 114, 117,
125, 129 (see also solar constant)
shape, 87 W
supernovae, 28 Ward, M., 106
Sydney symposium (1981), 116, 145 Wegener, A., 13, 59–61, 64, 73, 82, 96, 101,
155, 159
Weizsäcker, C.F., 11, 33
T Wells, J., 94–5, 132, 140
Tallahassee workshop (1975), 25, 136 Wesson, P., 78, 112, 129, 135, 138, 141–42
Tammann, G., 136 Weyl, H., 19, 123
Taylor, F.B., 59 Wheeler, J., 33, 54, 70
Taylor, S., 139 Whiston, W., 1
Tectonophysics, 79, 106, 147 Wickramasinghe, C., 120, 127
Index 185

Wigner, E., 25, 29, 128 Y

Wilczek, F., 128 Yabushita, S., 109–10, 130–31
Wilkinson, D., 154–55 Yang, C.N., 55
Wilson, J.T., 67, 97, 100–1, 155–56
Wilson, R., 153
Wood, R.M., 145–46 Z
Wu, X., 150, 160 Zel’dovich, Y., 155
Wunderlich, H.G., 79 Z€
ollner, C.F., 19
Zwicky, F., 25, 162