Expanding Earth

Proponents of an expanding Earth hypothesis claim that the explanation for the position and movement of continents and the appearance of new crustal material at mid-ocean ridges is that Earth's volume is increasing. Modern scientific evidence does not support this idea, rather plate tectonics is almost universally accepted as correct. The small number of proponents of an expanding earth claim that the continents drifted away from each other because of further expansion at the rip-zones, where oceans currently lie. This contradicts the scientific consensus plate tectonics theory by stating that significant destructive plate boundaries do not exist. There are various forms of the expanding earth hypothesis including some proposals which say that the Earth's mass has remained constant (and thus the gravitational pull at the surface has decreased over time), that Earth's mass has grown with the volume in such a way that the surface gravity has remained constant, or that the gravitational constant of the universe has changed over time (a hypothesis used to explain how the mass and gravitational pull of the earth could remain constant during growth).