Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site imsvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!elsie!imsvax!ted From: ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: "light" gravity/ replies to Throop & Sonntag Message-ID: <424@imsvax.UUCP> Date: Wed, 9-Oct-85 11:31:14 EDT Article-I.D.: imsvax.424 Posted: Wed Oct 9 11:31:14 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 13-Oct-85 03:29:54 EDT Organization: IMS Inc, Rockville MD Lines: 100 My apologies to anyone who has seen this article more than once. We've been having major problems with usenet in the D.C. area. Since Sept. 15, when the CVL computer at U. Md. was taken down with no warning to anyone below it on usenet (which is most of the D.C. area), very little has gotten through one way or the other. For awhile, it will be difficult to tell what has gotten through and what hasn't. To Wayne: You have indicated that your own notions of arithmatic in such matters show the ultrasaur to be "just barely possible". What then is your opinion of the Breviparopus, the creature known only by tracks, described in the Avon Field Guide to Dinosaurs and in other recent articles, which, to judge from the tracks, would have totally dwarfed even the ultrasaur? I mean, 160 feet long, 48 feet at the shoulders, 800,000 to 1,200,000 lbs? Serious, I'm not making this one up. The article concerning the possibility that sauropods simply had no adult size and grew until the square-cube problem killed them shows better thinking than I am used to seeing on net.origins. As I understand it, the best clues we have to actual sauropod behavior and life-styles come from groups of tracks found in Texas. I am sure scientists would have noticed if any of these "herd" tracks consistantly showed a preponderence of juvenile creatures, and only a few of the really large ones. Further, we have to consider the fact that a great many creatures living today have ancestors far larger than themselves; rhinos - super-rhinos, elephants - imperial elephants, eagles - pteratorns, and so on. It seems more likely that gravity itself is the limit on size for any particular design for a living creature; that gravity was less in ancient times, and hence, animals simply grew larger. Something like a pteratorn simply would not evolve in our present gravity. I have one (non-catastrophism oriented) book which shows an ostrich and says "the ostrich is too large to fly and its wings have atrophied and become vestigial". Think about that, and then think about the pteratorn, which was heavier than an ostrich, and its non-vestigial wings. There is one other effect which one would expect in an environment of lessened gravity. Gravity is the main source of stress on land animals. One would expect creatures living in lessened gravity to last longer than we do. Every mythology book from any antique nation which had any memory of the world prior to the flood reads true on this one. Chapter five of Genesis is no different from most in this regard. To Jeff: I appreciate the effort (the calculations on Saturn), but you're wasting your time with this one for two reasons. Number one is that Saturn may have been more massive prior to the flood than after. A number of mythological sources indicate that the flood was preceded by seven days by a steller blowout within our own solar system, and that this blowout involved Saturn. Consider the language of the story of Noah in Genesis in which the seven days prior to the flood are mentioned twice within seven verses: Genesis 7:4 "For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days....." and Genesis 7:10 "And it came to pass, after seven days....." Seven days of what? The Old Testament is laconic to a fault, and it seems likely to me that it wasn't intended to be terribly readable in and of itself. Many stories which its authors assumed to be common knowledge are glossed over, or get one or two sentences. The whole thing may actually have been meant as a sort of index to larger bodies of Midrashim. At any rate, the seven days are mentioned in only one other place to my knowledge: Isaiah 30:26 "Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of the seven days, in the day that the Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound." The seven day light festivals of the ancient world, including Hannukah as well as the Roman Saturnalia, seem to have been related to this event. Thus, it is unlikely that the figure you were using for the mass of Saturn was relevant. The term "sun", prior to the flood, meant Saturn. I said there were two reasons. The second is that nobody is sure whether the tidal pull of Saturn was the ONLY contributer to the lessened gravity of the earth in ancient times. It is well known even by scientists who claim to be total uniformitarians that the earth's magnetic field has reversed itself more than once during the age of man and that this field was once far stronger than it is now. Could gravity have been lessened for this reason as well, due to some unified field type of efect? Your guess is as good as mine. There is a great deal of evidence suggesting that stars are electro-magnetic as well as thermo-nuclear phenomena, and the evidence from mythology books is that Saturn exhibited more than its share of this sort of thing. Finally, let me say that the evidence from the realm of mythology which supports the notion of our having once been a planet of Saturns is overwhelming.There is no question on this one, amongst those who have kept up with the Velikovsky theories. This evidence may be read in David Talbotts book, "The Saturn Myth", Doubleday, 1980. Talbott was a friend of Velikovsky's and an editor of the Pensee Journal, the old Student Academic Freedom Forum. The book is still available, inexpensive, and gives a far better account of the topic than anything I could write in a few lines on net.origins. :