Hilgenberg-OC: central claims
Source gap. The folder holds one document only: Scalera and Braun (2003), a secondary summary by Earth-expansion proponents (PDF, 17 of 18 pages OCR'd; readable). None of Hilgenberg's own works are in the folder, so every statement of his physics, his experiments and his numbers below is the authors' paraphrase or quotation. The 1933 Magnus-effect reports (and Z. Techn. Phys. 14, 211-214), the 1939 flow-experiment booklet, the 1965 Geol. Rundschau paper (source of the 4590 km figure), the 1974 Geotektonische Forschungen 45 and the Scalera and Jacob 2003 volume should be obtained. Added after QE: Hilgenberg's 1934 paper 'Vergleich der Laengenzunahme der Meterprototypen mit der errechneten Zunahme des Erddurchmessers' (Gerlands Beitr. Geophys. 42, 409-412), which bears on claim 2 (matter grows) and is known only from its title [read: p.16]; and the English translations of Hilgenberg's unpublished manuscript and of selected parts of his 1976 Erdentstehung und Entwicklung inside the 2003 volume (the page range printed as 'pag.178-28' is truncated by OCR) [read: p.9, p.15]. Later steps must say plainly when a conclusion rests on [memory] alone. The document has no equations.
- Gravity is the accelerated flow of space (a Cartesian ether with slight energy density) towards massive bodies, each acting as a sink. [read: p.7-8]
- The inflowing ether is converted inside planets into new atoms and particles, so the Earth gains mass and expands, with an exponentially growing mass. No rate, constants or equations are given in the document. [read: p.8-9]
- The Earth's radius has nearly doubled since the Paleozoic; the text gives Paleozoic size as 60% of present, Permian radius as 4590 km, and growth as 4 mm per year (these three numbers do not agree with each other as printed). [read: p.7, p.10, p.13]
- Ether flow towards the Sun together with the "inverted Magnus effect" (laboratory fluid-dynamics experiments at TH Berlin, 1933 reports, one effect said to be "completely proven") spins planets up until an equatorial ring detaches. The authors themselves call this part less valid today. [read: p.9-10]
- Continental outlines moved between globes of smaller radius, with paleopoles, give a consistent paleogeography (Carboniferous to Tertiary) and explain trenches, rifts and Benioff zones without plate subduction. [read: p.10-13]
- The real question is "Earth expansion with or without creation of new matter"; his hydrodynamic ether view is analogous to and may converge with general relativity, and a star whose ether inflow reaches light speed is equivalent to a black hole (1974, open letter to Wilson, Beloussov and van Bemmelen; no reply reported). [read: p.13-15]
Notes added after QE (these do not change the six claims above): - Claim 3: the arbiter and two reviewers, working from the Investigator's reading of the 1933 book (second-hand, not in the folder), take the "60%" as a diameter ratio (0.62-0.65), not a Permian radius. The folder document itself prints "60 per cent of its present size" [read: p.10]; the claim is kept as the folder prints it, with the tension noted. - Claim 2: Hilgenberg's 1934 metre-prototype paper is an unread, possibly empirical, laboratory-scale claim on this point. What data he used and what he concluded is open. - Lineage (authors' statements): Mantovani (1889, 1909) as the first to tie expansion to drift; Yarkovski (1888) and Hilgenberg's reported knowledge of Russian; Lindemann 1927 "known and quoted by Hilgenberg in 1933"; Bogolepov (1922) and Hixon (1920). The authors also say he "may very well not have been aware that the expansion theory had come earlier" [read: p.3-4]; they do not reconcile the two. - Training: Mechanical Engineering [read: p.2] versus electrical machine engineering at TH Berlin 1919-1922 [web: de.wikipedia, via Investigator]; both recorded. - The authors' argument from analogy, the Turner (2000) vacuum-energy quote [read: p.8], is theirs; it supports only that an ether energy density is not excluded and gives no number for claim 2.