The ocean floor has been mapped to give a detailed account of the age of the Earth’s ocean floor. By removing the ocean floor that is known to be younger than a particular age, it is possible to reconstruct the ancient Earth by rejoining the remaining ocean floors.
This program first calculates all the outlines of the continents and ocean floors using spherical trigonometry on the Earth of today’s diameter and stores that data in a three dimensional format, so each plate is stored as a set of specific locations in three dimensions. Then, using an ancient Earth diameter which is smaller, the outlines of the continents and ocean floors are recalculated for each plate on this smaller world. By moving and rotating these plates and then re-calculating their outlines it is possible to adjust the diameter of the Earth until all the outlines mesh together.
There is one problem with this method of calculation which cannot be overlooked - if a section of a globe is cut and placed on a larger globe, the section will not fit without distorting it. There are two possible methods of distorting this section – either the outer edges of the section can be torn to fit the larger diameter, or the inner part of the section may be crumpled. In terms of deforming the Earth, both of these methods should leave clear signs in the Earth’s crust. If the central section is crumpled and crushed it would tend to produce mountains by folding of the Earth’s crust. But although the expansion of the Earth may result in mountain building in areas where the continental crust is weak, the major portion of the continental crust seems to remain solid despite the distortions imposed on it. Fortunately the continents only cover a small portion of the Earth’s surface. Most of the Earth’s surface is covered by ocean floor, and this gives every indication of having been torn apart at the outer edges. On examining the newly-formed ocean floor at the ocean ridges it is possible to observe transform faults running at right angles to the ocean ridges. These faults are kilometres wide in places. An indication of how these transform faults would occur on an Expanding Earth can be gained by imagining a section of any small sphere being placed on a larger sphere. The smaller section will not fit unless the outer edges of the small section are torn apart. This same effect would tend to tear the outer edges of the ocean floor to produce the transform faults. We can see these transform faults on the Google Earth picture shown below.
Since the continents are small compared to the ocean floors, I decided to calculate the ancient plates’ size and shape by assuming that most of this distortion was caused by being torn at the ocean ridge as the diameter of the Earth increased.