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Title: Dinosaurs say: Gravity was weaker in the past!
Source:
The Impossible Dinosaurs
URL Source: http://www.kronia.com/symposium/holden.txt
Published: Feb 2, 2007
Author: Ted Holden
Post Date: 2007-02-02 07:37:50 by YertleTurtle
Keywords: None
Views: 483
Comments: 32
THE IMPOSSIBLE DINOSAURS Ted Holden A careful study of the sizes of the giant dinosaurs creatures and of what it would take to deal with such sizes in our world, the felt effect of gravity being what it is now, indicates that something was massively different in the world which these creatures inhabited. A look at sauropod dinosaurs as we know them today requires that we relegate the brontosaur, once thought to be one of the largest sauropods, to welterweight or at most middleweight status. Fossil finds dating from the 1970's dwarf him. The Avon field Guide to Dinosaurs shows a brachiosaur (larger than a brontosaur), a supersaur, and an ultrasaur juxtaposed, and the ultrasaur dwarfs the others. Christopher McGowan's "Dinosaurs, Spitfires, & Sea Dragons", Harvard, 1991 cites a 180 ton weight estimate for the ultrasaur (page 118), and (page 104) describes the volume-based methods of estimating dinosaur weights. McGowan is Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum. This same look requires that dinosaur lifting requirements be compared to human lifting capabilities. One objection which might be raised to this would be that animal muscle tissue was somehow "better" than that of humans. This, however, is known not to be the case; for instance, from Knut Nielson's, "Scaling, Why is Animal size So Important", Cambridge Univ Press, 1984, page 163, we have: "It appears that the maximum force or stress that can be exerted by any muscle is inherent in the structure of the muscle filaments. The maximum force is roughly 4 to 4 kgf/cm2 cross section of muscle (300-400 kN/m2). This force is body-size independent and is the same for mouse and elephant muscle. As creatures get larger, weight, which is proportional to volume, goes up in proportion to the cube of the increase in dimension. Strength, on the other hand, is known to be roughly proportional to cross section of muscle for any particular limb, and goes up in proportion to the square of the increase in dimension. This is the familiar "square-cube" problem. The normal calculation for this is to simply divide by 2/3 power of body weight, and this is indeed the normal scaling factor for all weight lifting events, that is, it lets us tell if a 200 lb athlete has actually done a "better" lift than the champion of the 180 lb group. Consider the case of Bill Kazmaier, the king of the power lifters in the seventies and eighties. Power lifters are, in the author's estimation, the strongest of all athletes; they concentrate on the three most difficult tota -body lifts, i.e. benchpress, squat, and dead-lift. They work out many hours a day and, it is fairly common knowledge, use food to flavor their anabolic steroids with. No animal the same weight as one of these men could be presumed to be as strong. Kazmaier was able to do squats and dead lifts with weights between 1000 and 1100 lbs on a bar, assuming he was fully warmed up. STANDING UP AT 70,000 LBS Any animal has to be able to lift its own weight off the ground, i.e. stand up, with no more difficulty than Kazmaier experiences doing a 1000 lb squat. Consider, however, what would happen to Mr. Kazmaier, were he to be scaled up to 70,000 lbs, the weight commonly given for the brontosaur. Kazmaier's maximum effort at standing, fully warmed up, assuming the 1000 lb squat, was 1340 lbs (1000 for the bar and 340 for himself). The scaled maximum lift would be a solution to: 1340/340^.667 = x/70,000^.667 or 47,558 lbs. That is to say, the maximum weight his muscles could lift when scaled to the size of an Brontosaur would be 47,558 lbs. If he weighed 70,000 lbs, he'd not be able to lift his weight off the ground! To believe then, that a brontosaur could stand at 70,000 lbs, one has to believe that a creature whose weight was largely gut and the vast digestive mechanism involved in processing huge amounts of low-value foodstuffs, was somehow stronger than a creature its size which was almost entirely muscle, and far better trained and conditioned than would ever be found amongst grazing animals. That is not only ludicrous in the case of the brontosaur, but the calculations only get worse when you begin trying to scale upwards to the supersaur and ultrasaur at their sizes. Another way to look at the problem of size vs. strength under present Earth gravity is to ask- how heavy can an animal get to be in our world? How heavy would Mr. Kazmaier be at the point at which the square-cube problem made it as difficult for him just to stand up as it is for him to do 1000 lb squats at his present size of 340 lbs? The answer is simply the solution to: 1340/340^.667 = x/x^.667 or just under 21,000 lbs. In reality, elephants do not appear to get quite to that point. McGowan (Dinosaurs, Spitfires, & Sea Dragons, p. 97) claims that a Toronto Zoo specimen was the largest in North America at 14,300 lbs. One has no difficulty visualizing the slow, lumbering, weight encumbered movements of elephants. Clearly they are operating at the limits of biological size. Even the scaling up of the Rhinoscerous, as the popular Paleontoligist Bob Bakker is fond of doing in defense of sauropod mobility, would run you straight into the scaling formula cited above, independent of leg length proportions. Again, in all cases, we are comparing the absolute maximum effort for a human weight lifter to lift and hold something for two seconds versus the sauropod's requirement to move around and walk all day long with scaled weight greater than these weights involved in the maximum, one-shot, two- second effort. That just can't happen. SAUROPOD DINOSAUR'S NECKS A second category of evidence for attenuated felt effect of gravity arises from the study of sauropod dinosaurs' necks. Scientists who study sauropod dinosaurs are now claiming that they held their heads low, because they could not have gotten blood to their brains had they held them high. McGowan (again, Dinosaurs, Spitfires & Sea Dragons) goes into this in detail (pages 101-120). He mentions the fact that a giraffe's blood pressure, at 200-300 mm Hg, far higher than that of any other animal, would probably rupture the vascular system of any other animal, and is maintained by thick arterial walls and by a very tight skin which apparently acts like a jet pilot's pressure suit. A giraffe's head might reach to 20'. How a sauropod might have gotten blood to its brain at 50' or 60' is the real question. Two articles which mention this problem appeared in the 12/91 issue of Natural History. In "Sauropods and Gravity", Harvey B. Lillywhite of Univ. Fla., Gainesville, notes: "...in a Barosaurus with its head held high, the heart had to work against a gravitational pressure of about 590 mm of mercury (Hg). In order for the heart to eject blood into the arteries of the neck, its pressure must exceed that of the blood pushing against the opposite side of the outflow valve. Moreover, some additional pressure would have been needed to overcome the resistance of smaller vessels within the head for blood flow to meet the requirements for brain and facial tissues. Therefore, hearts of Barosaurus must have generated pressures at least six times greater than those of humans and three to four times greater than those of giraffes." In the same issue of Natural History, Peter Dodson ("Lifestyles of the Huge and Famous"), mentions that: "Brachiosaurus was built like a giraffe and may have fed like one. But most sauropods were built quite differently. At the base of the neck, a sauropod's vertebral spines unlike those of a giraffe, were weak and low and did not provide leverage for the muscles required to elevate the head in a high position. Furthermore, the blood pressure required to pump blood up to the brain, thirty or more feet in the air, would have placed extraordinary demands on the heart and would seemingly have placed the animal at severe risk of a stroke, an aneurism, or some other circulatory disaster. If sauropods fed with the neck extended just a little above heart level, say from ground level up to fifteen feet, the blood pressure required would have been far more reasonable." It turns out that a problem every bit as bad or worse than the blood pressure problem would arise, perceived gravity being what it is now, were sauropods to hold their heads out just above horizontally as Dodson and others are suggesting. Try holding your arm out horizontally for more than a minute or two, and then imagine your arm being 40' long and 30,000 lbs... An ultrasaur or seismosaur with a neck 40'-60' long and weighing 25000-40000 lbs, would be looking at 400,000 to nearly a million foot pounds of torque were one of them to try to hold his neck out horizontally. That's crazy. You don't hang a 30,000 lb load 40' off into space even if it is made out of wood and structural materials, much less flesh and blood. No building inspector in America could be bribed sufficiently to let you build such a thing. And so, sauropods (in our gravity) couldn't stand, couldn't hold their heads up, couldn't hold them out either. Moreover, the fossil record shows that there were a large number of "giant" species- giant insects, giant mammals such as a beaver the size of a kodiak bear, giant fish and flying creatures that have not survived into our present era. The only way of making sense out of this evidence is to understand that at one time and for whatever reason, the force of gravity operated differently on planet Earth.
Poster Comment: Why aren't there any big creatures anymore? All of them used to be huge -- bugs, mammals, dinosaurs. All gone? Why?
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#1. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
They probably lived in marshes and swamps where the water buoyed them up. Like a hippo does today. This would also explain the blood pressure problem.
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T-Rex didn't live in a swamp. Most dinosaurs did not. Swamps don't explain the enormous size of everything back then, including sea creatures. There are no creatures today anywhere near the size of prehistoric ones. What is the difference between then and now that prevents modern creatures from growing to the size of those in the past?
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." -- Marshall McLuhan, after Alexander Pope and William Blake.
I think increased oxygen level is cited as a possible explanation for 4 foot wide dragonflies and such.
I don't know where you got this article, but it's bunk. I was watching a Discovery Channel special on the giant bugs from our distant past the other day. The difference was not gravity, but air oxygen content. The reason giant dragonflies were able to flit around despite wingspans of three feet and what not and the reason giant dinosaurs could support their massive weight was because there was about two times the amount of oxygen in the air than there is now. Ergo, muscles and everything else operated more efficiently. The guy even did an experiment of putting himself in an oxygen deprived atmosphere to demonstrate the difference even a small reduction in oxygen makes. The mass of the Earth was not significantly different, the amount of oxygen in the air was, and this is demonstrable through paleontological chemistry.
the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
So was it decreased oxygen levels that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?
Katrina was America's Chernobyl.
How does extra oxygen overcome structural constraints, i.e, the laws of physics? How could enormous dinosaurs in the past run so fast, and why do not such enormous animals exist today?
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." -- Marshall McLuhan, after Alexander Pope and William Blake.
Very good. Exactly right, and not only content, but pressure of the air as well. When the dinosaurs lived, the actual oxygen content was near to 38%, and the atmospheric pressure was about 2 1/2 times greater than what we have today. This did two things; fueled the bodies of the giant creatures, and, permitted men, and animals, to live for a very, very long time. And that is what accounts for the massive size of such animals; they lived for a long time, so they could grow to be giants. Most people do not understand that when it talks in the Bible of men living to be 900 years old, it ain´t a joke or a misprint, but it was not only the men who lived so long. Everything did, and, the plants were massive and much more lush as well! Why? Because animals of that size produced a LOT of CO2 to be used by the plants. (Oh, by the way, a great big increase in co2 levels means a lot more plant growth, which blances out the co2 levels, naturally -- just thought I would throw that in.)
The Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
As to that, I don't know, although it makes a likely culprit. The special talked at length about the processes that reduced oxygen content, and primarily there was some kind of explosion in bacterial content or something that used a bunch of oxygen up. But there were a lot of small dinos this wouldn't seem to have impacted, and I don't know how they got extincted.
the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
The laws of physics are malable, according to what criteria are used. When you infuse a body with very high oxygen content, the body can not get tired, can not get sick, and can, in our case as an example, run all day without resting. It also greatly increases your phyiscal strength, i.e., the same size body can do a lot more, lot heavier work. One example I will give you about those massive creatures is how could they live, irregardless of the gravity, with the oxygen content of todays air? They would have needed bellows for their lungs in order to fuel those massive bodies. There are a lot of things wrong with this story as you posted, and much of it is obvious if you just think it through.
The Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
The first law of engineering. If it doesn't fit, apply more force. The oxygen content means that each cubic inch of muscle delivered much more force, and therefore could impel much more movement, structural lift, etc., etc. As to the sizes of creatures, an elephant is pretty dang big, and our modern blue whale rivals the size of any giant creature from the past. There are two parts of any given gravitic equation. First, the amount of gravity, which in this case is going to be pretty close to constant, 1 standard G (in the absence of the sudden addition of some gigantic mass, the size of which would have to be ENORMOUS, like two or three of our moons hitting the Earth, which would have certainly evaporated all standing water and extinguished all life). The second factor is bilogical, and has to do with the strength of bones and their supporting structures. The strength of bones issue you pretty much have to assume is a relative constant (I've certainly never heard that dinosaur bones had any particuarly different chemistry; ie- higher aluminum content or iron content or some fundamentally different form or structure than reptile bones today); which leaves the strength of muscle as the remaining factor that is NOT a constant, because the amount of fuel in those muscles; the oxygen, was different. This also introduces the possibility that dinosaurs were much smarter than we think they were given their brain size. Smaller brains with more oxygen would be just as smart and possibly faster than our poor, big, oxygen-deprived ones.
the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
True. Possible solution: Dinosaur blood was pumped like food through an esophagus. If they had multiple brains, why not multiple hearts? Why aren't there any big creatures anymore? All of them used to be huge -- bugs, mammals, dinosaurs. All gone? Why? Speed kills.
If you're not a racist, you're anti-white.
I've seen those roaches. They're like an inch-and-a-half long. I've seen reproductions of prehistoric roaches at museums. A foot long! Those I am glad do not exist today.
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us." -- Marshall McLuhan, after Alexander Pope and William Blake.
Well, oxygen is not really "used" up because all carbon dioxide is is oxygen with a carbon atom attached. Animals put carbon into the air, and plants take it out. Animals eat plants and the cycle is repeated. If oxygen levels were higher compared to other gasses, then what was the composition of the atmosphere, and was was the air pressure. Was there truely more oxygen, or might there have been less nitrogen? But there also seem to be presumptions in the article about dinosaur tissue being similar in mass as mammel tissue. As for the extended necks, perhaps the animal only kept it suspended for short times, or perhaps the circulation was biologically inhibited while the neck was raised reducing the need for the heart to pump high pressures. They also wondered about how dolphins could dive to many hundreds of feet under the ocean since the math didn't add up regarding O2 levels and consumption rates. They finally determined the dolphin conserved O2 by not actually swimming that far down but more by simply "falling", thus saving O2 levels. Could be something similar with dinosaurs, in addition to other factors. Finally, the earth is bombarded with meteors continuously, so is probably more massive today than it was in dinosour times. It may be that some of the atmosphere has bled off due to solar wind, which might balance that somewhat, but at the same time, might also explain atmospheric differences between then and now.
T-Rex wasn't much bigger mass wise than an elephant. Most other dinosaurs were not as big as the giant sauropods either. If you look at that fiberglass mockup in front of the natural history museum in San Diego it's obvious that it's an aquatic creature. It's basically a snake with tiny (by comparison) vestigial legs. It's all tail and neck with a bump in the middle that is the body.
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Can men run fast on the moon? Not exactly. Lower gravity would lower the impulse they could get from their feet. They'd be even more lumbering than elephants. How do we know they ran at all?
If you're not a racist, you're anti-white.
The bar of soap is a standard size hotel soap. I took the picture in my hotel room in Puyo, Ecuador last year, which is on the jungle side of the Andes. That roach is closer to 2 inches. In the jungle, bugs get big. The hotel was otherwise pretty decent, and at 8-9 bux a night, it should be.
The increased O2 concentration is the official explanation for the giant bugs. There were also six foot long centipedes and spiders the size of an ash can lid. Insects breath through their skin through a sort of osmosis and don't have good oxygen transport systems. The square cube law is a real limit on their size. The skin area goes up with the squarer of thier length and the mass that must be provided O2 goes up with the cube. Plants are the same way. When the O2 concentration goes up, plants and bugs get huge.
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That was one of the things that helped give rise to the theory that dinosaurs were warm blooded. Some fossilized tracks were found and trackers and others familiar with animal signs were sure the animal was running. Given the mass of the animal and the ground disturbance, a cold blooded animal shouldn't have been able to move that way for the length of tracks.
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In addition to the points made earlier about pre-Pleistocene higher oxygen content, there are particle/quantum physics problems with this "explanation". Gravity is a field effect of matter. It cannot be arbitraily different on earth than anywhere else. Gravitational field strength varies with matter density, but their relationship is fixed. It won't change on earth without also changing on the Sun, because matter is matter (protons, electrons, neutrons albeit in varying quantities and atomic configurations) and it generates the same fields on the sun as it would on the earth. Which means for gravity to have been .667 weaker on earth it would also be .667 weaker on the Sun. But being gaseous and under internal pressure due to nuclear fusion, the Sun would have expanded its core and photosphere considerably, and consequently changed conditions on the inner planets. An expanded photosphere would also be cooler as well as closer. I don't know the math involved or how it would net out, other than I doubt the same nuclear fusion processes as they are presently undestood would work the same (i.e. we'd have a vastly different Sun) and conditions on the earth's surface would be vastly different, because a roughly 1/3 weaker gravitational force could conceivably permit the Sun's photosphere to expand outward considerably and "fry" the earth. The earth would "expand" as well under weaker gravitational fields, but not being gaseous and under pressure of nuclear fusion, its "expansion" would not be nearly as much, but the direction regardless would put the earth's surface closer to the expanded solar photosphere. Not a good thing. There is no evidience I'm aware of such a large solar change, nor a recent contraction of the photosphere commensurate with a gravitional field increase on earth back to "normal". Gravitional fields are local phenomena, but the "laws" governing them (and the consequences) are not. One wonders how this escaped the author. (in hindsight, I realize the author never did quantify the presumed gravitational change, and my assumption that it was .667 was wrong. But the problem of surviving the expansion of the Sun's photosphere remains, how much expansion still depends on the math and the some change in the gravitational constant - but that change shouldn't be assumed as .667)
(Be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves)
I wouldn't go so far until things have been unified.
If you're not a racist, you're anti-white.
So, if we raise the oxygen content in the air, will that make people smarter? With a raised oxygen content, how many more fires would we have?
Katrina was America's Chernobyl.
Apparently scientists have discovered evidence of some of the Pleistocene fires. They think there were explosive contintent wide blazes as a routine matter. Discovery Channel had something on this.
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The world record for weightlifting is 472.5 kg or 1039.5 lbs, so I don't think Kazmaier was doing it on an everyday basis. A chimpanzee, however, can practically do that one-handed due to superior muscular and skeletar structure. OTOH, it is fair to say that there was less gravity millions of years ago, since tons of meteorites and so on crash into the earth each year, adding to its mass. Since more mass = more gravity, gravity is increasing every year, assuming the net change to the earth's mass is positive.
The national nightmare has ended... Now begins two years of watching the Congress play "Kick the Gimp".
With a raised oxygen content, how many more fires would we have? Stronger, faster, smarter....danananah! Re; the fires, I suspect we'd have more, but don't know. Chaos systems as complex as our ecosystem tend toward equilibrium and tend to resist rapid change, or so I understand; although then you get into chaos mathematics which I do NOT understand and the whole notion of precipice systems and climatalogical carrying capacity. Ie- increased oxygen content might cause so many fires that CO2 would also increase precipitously, which would cause catastrophic increases in heat, etc. etc. Basically you get into the idea that a major shift in one variable will either send the wheel spinning out of control or the wheel simply counters the new variable by spinning it into a new, stable, equilibrium. On the one hand the dinosaurs are wiped out seemingly all at once, but on the other hand life carries on and pretty soon the earth is burgeoning with new forms of life that have adapted to the change and are doing quite well... Sophisticated and complex interdependent forms of life (like humans) tend to not do well when rapid and radical change is introduced; whilst simpler forms (like bugs) seem to be able to adapt more rapidly. OTOH, when you factor in humans' ability to change their own environment, all bets are off. Given basic survivability for one or two years, humans could and likely would establish permanent and self-sustaining colonies on Mars. Whereas other complex organisms without the capacity to adapt; ie-Lions, Tigers, Bears, O My, can't survive radical changes in even Earth's environment.
the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
Yeah, but a chimp can't run a country worth a shit, as we've seen...
the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal bread.
LOL, our chimp can't even ride a bike, unlike the ones in the circus!
The national nightmare has ended... Now begins two years of watching the Congress play "Kick the Gimp".
You raise an excellent point. Yet under Einstein's relativity, it actually could since time is relative. I think it's been theorized that the speed of light may has changed over "time", perhaps due to some cosmic quantum atrophy, but if true and if time is relative, then perhaps this cosmic atrophy occurs at different rates throughout the cosmos. It's perhaps a stretch to suggest that the earth gravity might have degraded at a significantly higher rate than the Sun's, but according to Einstein, time within the Sun's gravity field would pass more slowly than here since gravity slows time. Obviously very doubtful it could ever be a factor in explaining dinosour weight but thought I'd nitpick...
Assuming big-bang cosmology and further assuming a GUT is determined, the practical implications would largely affect our understanding of the first 10^-50 to 10^-40 seconds or so, over which timeframe the universe is still only something like 10^-60 (assuming an "inflationary" expansion phase) or 10^- 10 meters in radius, and after which time radiation forces dominate, and consequently any symmetry breaking effects attributable to gravitation are already "baked in the cake". i.e., I don't think unification alters the inapplicability of gravity to the author's premise.
(Be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves)
Yes, but only when the two reference planes are moving at speeds relativistic to each other, which the Sun and planets clearly were not, as such motions and velocities would have irreversibly ripped the solar system apart, rather quickly.
(Be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves)
But just being in a gravitational field alters time. It's believed that black holes are actually prevented from shrinking down to a single point by this very principle. That is, gravity becomes so strong that time slows to almost a complete stop, and without the passage of time, the black hole is prevented from self compressing further. The more it compresses, the slower time goes, slowing the compression speed. The sun is in a much stronger gravity well than is the earth. Ergo, time on/in the sun passes more slowly than on earth. Has nothing to do with actual motion, except that I think Einstein found some kind of connection between gravity and acceleration. (Accelerating in a space ship will create a gravity effect inside the ship, as occupants are constantly pressed against the ships floor).
But that again is relative to some other gravitational field. Given two gravitational fields of equal strength (and not moving at speeds relativistic to each other), their respective observed time vectors will be likewise equivalent. Black holes are anomalies insofar as we don't really know what goes on inside them below their event horizon, at which there also appear to be relativistic effects. Regardless, neither the Sun nor Earth approximate black holes. Yes, but it's gravity well is produced by the same unchanging characteristics of matter as is the earth's. Yes, but not on any scale that matters to the author's premise of changed gravity on earth.
(Be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves)
#2. To: ... (#1)
They probably lived in marshes and swamps where the water buoyed them up. Like a hippo does today. This would also explain the blood pressure problem.
#3. To: YertleTurtle (#2)
#4. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
Dinosaurs say: Gravity was weaker in the past!
#5. To: bluedogtxn (#4)
#6. To: bluedogtxn (#4)
The difference was not gravity, but air oxygen content
#7. To: bluedogtxn, historian1944, YertleTurtle, ..., all (#4)
but air oxygen content.
#8. To: aristeides (#5)
So was it decreased oxygen levels that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?
#9. To: YertleTurtle (#6)
the laws of physics?
#10. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
Why aren't there any big creatures anymore?
#11. To: YertleTurtle (#6)
How does extra oxygen overcome structural constraints, i.e, the laws of physics?
#12. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
He mentions the fact that a giraffe's blood pressure, at 200-300 mm Hg, far higher than that of any other animal, would probably rupture the vascular system of any other animal, and is maintained by thick arterial walls and by a very tight skin which apparently acts like a jet pilot's pressure suit.
#13. To: Neil McIver (#10)
#14. To: bluedogtxn (#8)
The special talked at length about the processes that reduced oxygen content, and primarily there was some kind of explosion in bacterial content or something that used a bunch of oxygen up.
#15. To: YertleTurtle (#2)
T-Rex didn't live in a swamp. Most dinosaurs did not.
#16. To: YertleTurtle (#6)
How could enormous dinosaurs in the past run so fast
#17. To: YertleTurtle (#13)
I've seen those roaches. They're like an inch-and-a-half long.
#18. To: bluedogtxn (#4)
#19. To: Tauzero (#16)
How do we know they ran at all?
#20. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
(Edited)
The only way of making sense out of this evidence is to understand that at one time and for whatever reason, the force of gravity operated differently on planet Earth.
#21. To: Starwind (#20)
Which means for gravity to have been .667 weaker on earth it would also be .667 weaker on the Sun.
#22. To: bluedogtxn (#11)
#23. To: aristeides (#22)
#24. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
No animal the same weight as one of these men could be presumed to be as strong. Kazmaier was able to do squats and dead lifts with weights between 1000 and 1100 lbs on a bar, assuming he was fully warmed up.
#25. To: aristeides (#22)
So, if we raise the oxygen content in the air, will that make people smarter?
#26. To: Indrid Cold (#24)
A chimpanzee, however, can practically do that one-handed due to superior muscular and skeletar structure.
#27. To: bluedogtxn (#26)
Yeah, but a chimp can't run a country worth a shit, as we've seen...
#28. To: Starwind (#20)
Gravity is a field effect of matter. It cannot be arbitraily different on earth than anywhere else. Gravitational field strength varies with matter density, but their relationship is fixed.
#29. To: Tauzero (#21)
I wouldn't go so far until things have been unified.
#30. To: Neil McIver (#28)
You raise an excellent point. Yet under Einstein's relativity, it actually could since time is relative.
#31. To: Starwind (#30)
#32. To: Neil McIver (#31)
But just being in a gravitational field alters time.
It's believed that black holes are actually prevented from shrinking down to a single point by this very principle.
The sun is in a much stronger gravity well than is the earth.
Ergo, time on/in the sun passes more slowly than on earth.
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