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From: gordon@uw-june (Gordon Davisson)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Dinosaurs in Distress
Message-ID: <241@uw-june>
Date: Fri, 13-Sep-85 19:55:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.241
Posted: Fri Sep 13 19:55:07 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Sep-85 00:17:47 EDT
References: <369@cornell.UUCP>
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 44

>[Michael I. Schwartzbach]
> [Ted Holden] claims that the gravity on earth in ancient time was
> felt to be lower, since Saturn was hanging somewhere in the sky and
> causing tremendous tidal-effects. Now, on the hemisphere closest to
> Saturn gravity would indeed be lower, but on the far side gravity
> would in the same manner be much higher (right?).

Nope.  You're forgetting that up is the opposite direction on the far
side of the earth, so the 'felt effect' of gravity is low at both the
near and far ends, and normal on the great circle halfway between them.
(actually, there are some nonlinearities, but a first approxamation is
close enough for this).

>                                                   So unless Saturn
> was in a geosynchronous orbit the poor dinosaurs would we squashed
> periodically, and hence succumb.  If on the other hand Saturn was
> fixed relatively to earth's position, then only one hemisphere would
> be inhabited by dinosaurs; in fact, the far hemisphere would be
> totally void of life except for turtles perhaps. Is that the case?

Ted seems to think the earth's north pole always pointed toward Saturn,
presumably with the earth's axis rotating once per orbit.  This, of
course, violates conservation of angular momentum, but Ted seems to be
very good at ignoring problems like that.

From this and Ted's theory that Ultrasaurs couldn't support themselves
in normal gravity, we would expect to find them at both poles (or just
one.  They'd have a hard time spreading...), but not near the equator.
Funny, I seem to reember some excitement a while back about dinosaur
fossils being found quite a ways off the equator, implying that this
was rare.  (can anyone back me up on this, or is my memory flaking out
again?)

> And would any astronomers care to comment on the stability of a
> system as described above.

Stability?  Like I said above, it's not unstable, it's impossible!
(Thou shalt not violate conservation of angular momentum, and all that)

--
Human:    Gordon Davisson
ARPA:     gordon@uw-june.ARPA
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