there was a time when i was a kid that i knew that old things--ruins of ancient cities, dinosaurs, etc.--were underground and that by digging down archeologists and/or paleontologists were effectively looking back in time. i also knew that meant that as time passes things get covered up by dirt. and i knew that some day whatever was left of my house would be something someone would have to dig to get to.
so during this period of my childhood (whenever it was) i would periodically wonder whether that meant that the earth was getting bigger. if the surface of the earth everywhere is getting covered by dirt than doesn't that mean that the planet would fatten up over time? or maybe the ground was sinking? but if it was sinking then what was happening to the stuff underneath it? and if it was getting fatter where did all this extra dirt come from? dirt comes from the ground, i knew that. so maybe dirt from the earth's core was moving up into the air so that it could settle down on the stuff on the surface, thus causing the stuff sitting on the surface to sink and then get covered up by the dirt that used to be underneath it. you know, like a gigantic conveyor belt. but where was this belt? and what made it work?
it's funny the things that i would obsess about when i was a kid. i hadn't thought about the fattening earth problem for quite some time. but this morning on the train it suddenly popped into my head. it was then that i realized that while i could answer some of my old fattening earth questions, i still couldn't satisfactorally answer all of them.
