Expanding Earth and declining gravity: a chapter in the recent history of geophysics

Kragh, H.

doi:10.5194/hgss-6-45-2015

Articles | Volume 6, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-6-45-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hgss-6-45-2015

© Author(s) 2015. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Articles | Volume 6, issue 1

Review article

|

05 May 2015

Review article |

| 05 May 2015

Expanding Earth and declining gravity: a chapter in the recent history of geophysics

H. Kragh

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Latest update: 13 Mar 2026

Short summary

This paper discusses the hypothesis of the expanding Earth in the period ca. 1950-1975 and how it interacted with Paul Dirac’s cosmological hypothesis of a decreasing gravitational constant. It pays particular attention to the models in which the expansion of the Earth was thought to be caused by a varying gravitational constant. These models, primarily due to Pascual Jordan, László Egyed and Robert Dicke, were for a decade or so considered interesting alternatives to continental drift.