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From: js2j@mhuxt.UUCP (sonntag)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: "light" gravity/ replies to Throop & Sonntag
Message-ID: <1216@mhuxt.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Oct-85 13:28:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxt.1216
Posted: Mon Oct 14 13:28:47 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Oct-85 20:21:59 EDT
References: <424@imsvax.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 116

Ted Holden writes:
>     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.

     Then you've been reading too many of your own articles, Ted.
> 
> To Jeff:
> 
>     I appreciate the effort (the calculations on Saturn), but you're wasting 
> your time with this one for two reasons. 
      
      Someone already warned me that I was wasting my time.  It seems they
were right.

> Number one is that Saturn may have
> been more massive prior to the flood than after.

       Right.  If it had had 20-30 times as much mass, the Earth *could*
concievably orbit close enough to Saturn for tidal effects to cause the
effectively lighter gravity you've been expounding.  Of course, Saturn
would have been big enough to ignite and be called a star then... no
wonder the dinosaurs all became extinct, huh, Ted?

> A number of mythological
> sources indicate that the flood was preceded by seven days by a steller
> blowout within our own solar system, 

     Oh, so you're going to ignore the calculations which show your position
to be untenable, and look for evidence in mythology.  All of that stuff with
math is just too hard to bother with anyway, right Ted?

> 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....."

     Well, I've considered it.  In 7:4, the story says that God said he'd
cause a flood, starting in seven days.  In 7:10, it says that the flood
happened, as predicted.  What happened to the mythological sources which
were supposed to indicate that the flood was preceded by seven days by a 
'stellar blowout' (and just what the heck *is* a stellar blowout supposed
to be?  Did the Sun get a flat?  And how does this relate to Saturn losing
95-97% of it's mass?)
> 
> 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 guess this is in line with my conclusion that a Saturn as immense as Ted
imagines it was would have ignited like a 'sun'.  But what do you suppose he
thinks kept everybody from getting terminal sunburn, orbiting just above the
surface of the Saturn 'sun'?  Maybe the famed 'canopy of vapors'?  (I really
shouldn't keep teasing him like this.  He probably agrees that this is a
likely explanation.)
> 
> 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.  

      If you're suggesting some other mechanism which is within the realm
of the laws of physics as they are currently understood, please explain 
this mechanism so we can all judge its sufficiency.  If you are, instead,
as the excerpt below seems to imply, suggesting that some mechanism which
is beyond our understanding of the laws of physics are at work, then I am
at a loss to explain why you think my calculations relating orbital distance
to tidally-produced lighter gravity were a waste of time.  "We might not
understand all of the laws of physics, so it's a waste of time to bother
calculating anything with the ones we do know."  If this is your attitude,
then why bother posting to a scientifically oriented forum such as this?

> 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? 

     Well, since no experiment has ever shown any relation between gravity
and electromagnetism, and since many types of magnetic field generating systems
can reverse their field without affecting the size of the gravity well they
produce, I'll have to *guess* that the past reversals of the Earth's
magnetic field were unacompanied by any changes in its gravitational field.

> Your guess is as good as mine.

     *I'll* be the judge of that, thank you.

     Oh, well... that's all of the debunking I'm up for with this posting...
I'll be waiting for a follow up from Ted, explaining how Saturn lost so
much mass, and how those ancient religionists saw Saturn's rings overhead
through the canopy of vapors, and how the canopy of vapors stood up to
such an intense flux of saturnine radiation (maybe they had a reflective
mylar layer on top?), and maybe how any rational being can possibly hold
the views he does...  Maybe I'll have to wait for awhile...
-- 
Jeff Sonntag
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