David Ford

David Ford
Residence	Townsville, QLD, Australia
Nationality	Australian
Alma mater	James Cook University
Known for	Expanding Earth Excess Mass Stress Tectonics
Scientific career
Fields	Geology

David J. Ford is an Australian geologist based in Townsville, North Queensland, who is known as a proponent of the Expanding Earth model and as a collaborator in the development of Excess Mass Stress Tectonics (EMST), an alternative geodynamic framework to conventional plate tectonics.

Biography

Ford studied geology at James Cook University in North Queensland. During his first week of study he encountered S. Warren Carey's 1976 book The Expanding Earth in the university library, and became interested in the expanding-Earth interpretation of the planet's geology. He has recounted that the model received little serious treatment in his undergraduate lectures, with instructors either unfamiliar with it or dismissive of it, which motivated his continued interest in the subject.

Scientific contributions

Ford advocates the Earth expansion model as an alternative to the standard plate-drift and subduction framework of plate tectonics. He argues that plate tectonics, although widely used as a working interpretive framework, leaves numerous geological observations unresolved, and that an expanding-Earth model offers a more integrated explanation of the planet's tectonism and history.

Ford has collaborated with the Greek seismologist and geophysicist Stavros T. Tassos of the Institute of Geodynamics, National Observatory of Athens, on Excess Mass Stress Tectonics (EMST). EMST proposes a solid, quantified, growing and radiating Earth, in which geodynamic phenomena are attributed to excess mass stress rather than to a thermally driven heat engine. Within this framework, new mass is held to form in the Earth's interior and to be added to the overlying mantle, with implications the authors extend to topics such as the inorganic (abiotic) origin of hydrocarbons.

Expanding-Earth and EMST ideas are not accepted within mainstream geology, which regards plate tectonics as well established and the expanding-Earth hypothesis as lacking a viable physical mechanism.

Abstracts

• 2005 - "Excess Mass Stress Tectonics - EMST" (Read in full)
• 2005 - "Z-infinity Space"

External links

• "Excess Mass Stress Tectonics - EMST" abstract