Monday, January 21, 2013

An odd but interesting theory

The earth is many times larger than the moon.

Meher Baba said the following surprising thing about the earth and our moon.
The moon, which gives us light at night, was once an earth, just like our earth; and there are a number of such cooled-down earths. Millions of years ago the condition of our earth was quite different from its present condition, and millions of years hence, it will be just like the moon. (The Awakener Magazine, Vol 15, Numbers 1 and 2, p. 23)
Now, before I go on, let me preface the following thought by saying that I have no idea if the theory shown below is true, and am not qualified to even comment. However, the theory is called the Expanding Earth Hypothesis, and it would seem at first sight to go rather nicely with what Baba said about the earth and the moon. 



Once again, I am not endorsing this hypothesis, but only sharing it as a thought-provoking and interesting possibility.

Consider for a moment this is true, that the earth grew. Consider also for a moment that all planets expand like this from a smaller size as they mature and heat, then as they age and cool they shrink back down to their original smaller size again. So is it possible that just as our earth grew, our moon (once an earth) was once the same size as our earth, but then as it died and cooled it shrank back down to its current smaller size? Would this then account for how our moon could have once been an earth, just like our own?

One problem that strikes me with such an idea (that the moon was once the size of the earth), is that its overall mass as it cooled and compressed would nonetheless have remained a constant, and thus its gravitational pull would continue to be the same as the earth -- which is not the case. But it's still fun to visualize and think about.

Earth and moon comparison



So here is another strange possibility, inspired by yet another peculiar statement by Baba, and taken to its own bizarre possible conclusion.

Baba said, “After a billion years, man will only be five inches in height at the most . . .” (Lord Meher, p. 1872)

If this is so, and assuming that in a billion years from now man will be on a new earth, might that future earth be proportionally small along with the size of its people? In such a scenario the ratio of human height to the size of that future earth would continue to be the same as it is now on our own -- and thus subjectively the experience of that new smaller earth would be (for its little people) no different than ours.

Assuming that some point in the past for the moon was like this as well, and that our little moon once had likewise little people on it, in this odd scenario the moon need not have shrunk as it cooled. Rather it was a miniature of our own earth, with similarly miniature people, plants, and animals.

Below is a to-scale comparison between the sizes of the earth and the moon.

Scale comparison of moon to earth 
I reiterate, I don't mean any of these thoughts to be taken too seriously. They are just fun to think about.

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