COMMENTS BOARD
Welcome to the (Archived) comments page.
Makes sense to me
In one of my astronomy classes the professor said that the earth was gaining weight. I had wondered, if over hundreds of millions of years, what effect it would have on the size and mass of the animals.
I hope to see more studies done on this subject. It seems only logical to me.
Michael Ahlquist
PS/LV:Above Black:The Electric Universe
Hello, Paul Sproviero from Las Vegas, NV. here
This subject is addressed by the validation of the Electric Universe Model(originally proposed by Immanual Velikovsy in _World's in Collision_1950) the is now published by the Kronia.com group...
They provide data that indicated that gravity WAS less but not for the reasons of the "expanding earth hypothesis" .....Their work redefines how the universe really is: Plasma that is ionized, it totally blows the current paradigm out of the water....I refer you to the Newsletters section from above reference.....
Also check out audio archives from lauralee.com where Dave Talbott and Wallace Thornhill will dazzle you with their one hour lectures on the electric universe data. It is really exciting and fascinating.........I have published 3 briefs that were posted on Hollowplanets.com e-mail lists......If you are interested send me an appropriate e-mail and I will fwd as a courtesy.........My column can soon be found on my colleague's soon to be launched website:
zolartv.net
He will be offering new HOT UFO flicks never seen before. My column will be located there in addition to e-mail books--I have just secured the rights to _The Alien Within Me_by Lee Zesch,where he chronicles his abduction experiences when he was employed at the world famous AREA XX,it had to be cleared all the way to the Pentagon!
Peace, Love, Light, Spirit
Paul Sproviero
Interesting Theory
This is a very good site, simple but clear and with lots of information. I was only recently introduced to this theory but I think it really fits all the current facts... Fascinating subject!
Mathieu
Very interesting material
This is very interesting material indeed!!!!! But have you considered the fact that some small mammals entered the picture in the late Jurassic ERA and co existed with the dinosaurs? Also have you considered that People who grow to abnormal heights suffer from a genetic disorder, namely that there is an extra set of genes? Also, that the giant race living inside the earth who grow to be 12 ft. tall on the average could suffer from this as well as the above mentioned animals did? Or is the gravity inside the hollow earth lighter than on the surface? There are several scriptural mentions in the OT concerning Giant who grew to statures of 3-4 m tall. I do have a lot of Q's. I have learned that truth is stranger than fiction and that we should not base our knowledge on science alone because the senses can be deceiving as well.
sincerely,
Petra C. Ferrell
Other forces
You think that the force that is holding back animals from getting very large is gravity. I think it is man. Notice that we had a
wide variety of super-fauna at the dawn of humanity, many as large as your average dinosaur. When man appears the super-fauna die out. This is probably not just a coincidence, man, a skilled hunter, would naturally go after the biggest prey. After all, the biggest animals we have today live in Africa, were they have had millions of years to adapt to man. You claim that the general size of animals has gone down over time, actually it's bobbed up and down.
Again I�d like to remind you that there are many species that haven�t changed at all over million of years. Again, wouldn�t they be different if gravity changed? Just a few examples I can think off the top of my head: cedar trees, horseshoe crabs, dung beetles, and the echidna. I�m not saying there were never larger variants of these species; but there are specimens of normal, healthy adults of these species that aren�t anatomically different from the modern day descendants dating from millions of years ago. Many of
them were contemporaries of the dinosaurs or giant mammals. Why didn�t a gravity change at all effect these species?
Also, if we had a lighter gravity likewise we�d have a lighter atmosphere. A lighter atmosphere retains less heat, so you�d assume that earth would be colder in a low gravity environment. From everything we can tell about ancient animals it was, if anything, hotter than the present. How do you explain that?
Thanks,
Ian
Interesting Theory
Wow, that is a truly interesting theory. I've loved dinosaurs since I was a little kid, mainly due to their size and strength. It is nice that some light is being shed on this topic.
Matthew Gibson
EARTH SIZE
I AM COLLEGE EDUCATED BUT NOT IN ARCHAEOLOGY. SO THIS IS AN UNEDUCATED GUESS. I HAD THIS SAME THEORY ABOUT THE SIZE AND MASS OF THE EARTH AND IT'S GRAVITY AFFECTING DINOSAUR SIZES. I TOLD ONE OF MY FRIENDS ABOUT MY THEORY SEVERAL YEARS AGO AND HE JUST LAUGHED AT ME. THAT'S WHY I WAS GLAD TO SEE THIS SITE. I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE. TO ME IT SEEMS THE ONLY LOGICAL EXPLANATION. IT'S NOT TOO FAR FETCHED.
THANKS,
MONK
More Dinosaurs?
I liked the site and thought it was interesting, but I was wondering if you were going to put more pictures in your gallery. I like the two you got there now the Tyrannosaurus and Allosaur.
Daniel Bush
Big Dinosaurs
Interesting, still a few but's.....
Dino's are hard to find because of 1. less favourable physical conditions on the earth to grow very large 2. people will kill a dino when they spot one, which they did only centuries ago 3. they suppose to have lives 60 million years ago, not today, so no one is looking anymore or believes sightings of them.
Chew on this for a while , dear folks
Oscar Steenweg
Size of animals
The size of the Earth, from what I have been reading would have been in the ballpark of say 60% of the current radius, and since gravity is a function of the square of the distance between objects, the gravity would have been greater roughly 200my ago, and even though the earth gathers meteorites and dust, thus gaining mass, the earth�s average gravity would decrease gradually because the expansion and differentiation of the material would dominate from -200my to -65my.
Therefor the dinosaurs grew larger for other reason, same as why humans are getting bigger through time. It is in the diet, available O�, available CO� for plants, selective hunting pressures, (eating the small and the weak) that drives species to gradually become larger. In contrast, man hunts the largest of a given species, and as a result the maximum size of trophy animals is getting progressively smaller. I think that it will eventually come out that in the beginning there were numerous small dinosaur species, and at the end there were a few large species left.
Expanding Earth, Density Shifting, Atmospheric Pressure etc.
This is my second comment, I hope that I am allowed two. I have been studying Expanding Earth for several months now and sometimes you run across titbits of knowledge that trigger a cascade of understanding. One such that I just read in your comment section has to do with the pressure inside a bubble of amber. I had predicted that if the Earth had expanded and the radius had doubled, then the surface area would be four time as greater now than in the recent past, and the atmospheric pressure would have been a maximum of four times as high prior to expansion as it is now. If we could be so lucky as to have bubbles that have not leaked, then we have another method to get a correlation between date and atmospheric pressure, and the radius of the Earth. Another method to estimate the Earth�s radius, through atmospheric density (pressure) is to determine at what density would a pterodactyl be able to float on a rising column of warm air. Since the total volume of the atmosphere would not change significantly in a few hundred million years then a doubling of the radius would lead to an atmospheric pressure of roughly one fourth of the original.
I also had come up with the idea of density shifting in which the average density of the planet decreases only slightly while the distribution changes significantly. An analogy would be an under sea slump where a slope fails and resembles a decaying exponential curve. The maximum density at the center of the core is around 11,000 kg/m^3 and the rock just under the surface is below 2900 kg/m^3. The average is now down to around 5512kg/m^3 ( my calculation )and may be slowly decreasing. Through migration of materials of different densities due to the differing rates of rotation within the Earth, the heaviest materials migrate toward the core, and the lightest materials migrate toward the surface. Since the planet is predominately made of lighter weight materials ( 80%) the net result is more expansion than compression. I'm glad somebody came up with this before I did, and I look forward to reading their book.
Now for something that I have not seen anywhere else. I suspect that the Earth has been growing each and every year for the last 4.6 to 5.1 Billion years by the annual accumulation of an average of 1.38mm to 1.25mm of space dust. The minimum and maximum accumulation may be related to a combination of the forward velocity of the galaxy, and the rotation of the galaxy. The maximum is around 950km/sec, and the minimum is around 250 km /sec. This changes the rate of exposure to dust and debree by a factor of 3.8 to 1. The long and the short of it is that the thinnest layer will be around 0.45mm (compressed into rock), and the maximum will be around 1.7mm to 1.9mm. I think I have located samples of the thinnest layers in the Morrison ( Lyons sandstone ), and I am looking for thicker layers around 115,000,000 up strata, and 115,000,000 down strata from there. The galaxy takes 230,000,000 years to rotate one time. If there any fools who would like to join me in this quest ( tilting at windmills ) be my guest. The strata are highly compressed lake varves. A varve consists of a light summer layer, and a dark winter layer. The trick is to find the deeper mid ocean samples that very uniform, both horizontally and vertically, then get a magnifying glass, and start counting and measuring. I have also tried saw cutting the samples at a 45 degree angle, and polishing the cut face. A strong light source reflected at a low angle is very helpful. The layers are very thin so they are hard to see. I almost never get the same count twice. Anyone up for counting 230,000,000 layers of rock? The total cycle ( the last galactic rotation ) would have provided around 300 km of new growth. In a mere 20 to 22 rotations of the galaxy you can construct the entire Earth. I still haven't figured how continual growth, expansion, density shifting, density decreasing, long term compression, short term expansion, and various other things work together.
The only major problem that I have encountered with expanding Earth is that the average density changes with the cube of the radius, so the current Earth compressed to around 5000 km radius would have the density of a solid sphere of compressed iron, and an expansion to 8000 km would lower our density to that of the gas giants. This conundrum has baffled me. Oh by the way the ocean floors are being extruded out from under the continents, not subducted down and under them. Try the NOAA web sites, and study the images. The extrusion is radial to the continents, and it extends one half to two third of the way to the spreading centers. Therefor expansion is faster than extrusion, and the rest has to be filled in by faster moving deeper, more liquid mantle material. There is also a problem with the age of the Pacific Ocean, it needs to be much older than the Atlantic.
Prior to expansion there was a global equatorial mountain belt caused by the slightly faster rotation of the planet, and a relatively thin crust floating atop a liquid mantle.
Density shifting would have increased the rotational rate, while normal growth slows it back down. The mountain belts form during the speed ups, and then are carried away from the equator during the expansion. Look at a spherical map. the Brooks range in Alaska, and the Alps in Europe are all part of the pre-expansional global equatorial mountain range. There is a lot more, like the 18 hour day, a 7000 hour year, we were closer to the sun, the moon was closer to us, and if you are interested I spent seven and a half weeks of sheer madness deriving a single average density equation for four of the inner planets of the solar system.
Space dust, growth, expansion, and the food pyramid
I have been reading the archived comments from your readers and have been truly impressed as to how many have at least some insight as to the problems and the solutions associated with the highly complex issues of expanding Earth and the maximum size of its prior inhabitants. Since this is my third comment I will attempt to be more explanative as to how I view the entire process of the relationship of animal size to gravity, density, earth�s size etc.
As the Milky Way Galaxy moves through the cosmos it encounters varying amounts of space dust and debre. These varying amounts are evident in the differing annual thickness of the varves that collect on the bottoms of lakes and oceans.
Varves are typically a few millimetres thick and consist of a summer layer that is lighter in color, and thicker alternating with a winter layer that coarser, thinner, and unmodified. In other words, it hasn't been digested by the formanifera, and other one celled animals that "eat" the space dust and thus form the foundation of the oceans food chain or pyramid. On the land the space dust nourishes the trees, aids in forming nucleus for rain drops to form, or snow flakes to form. In short, and I don't think that I could shout this too loudly, SPACE DUST IS THE BASIS FOR LIFE ON THIS PLANET. Short term variations in the quantity of space dust have little effect on the size of life in the oceans, and the size of life on the land. Very long term variations in the quantity of space dust has a profound influence on the maximum size of animals and trees.
The 230,000,000 cyclical rotation of the galaxy changes the exposure to space dust by a factor of 3.8 to 1 in conjunction with the net velocity of the solar system within the galaxy. At its slowest we move at 600 - 350 =
250 km/sec, and at its fastest we move 600 + 350 = 950 km/sec. 950/250 = 3.8, thus the 3.8 to 1 ratio. The motion can be viewed by gluing a glow stick to the rim of your car, and driving slowly forward at night, or you can make it with a kids toy called a spirograph. Small, quick curves at the bottom of the cycle, and long smooth arcs at the top of the curve. At its smallest the 0.45 mm of space dust ( compressed and lithified ) spread evenly over the current surface of the Earth accounts for an amazing 2.5 x 10^19 kg accumulation each year, and that is the smallest annual increase in dust. At the other end of the range, when the dinosaurs peaked, the amount of dust was just under 1.0 x 10^20 kg annual accumulation of space dust. The base of the food pyramid was nearly four times as massive at the top of the time curve as at the bottom of the time curve. I think that we are approaching the bottom of the curve, because as you have pointed out after the dinosaurs there was another maximisation of mammal size, followed by a gradual decline down to the current maximum size of herbivores today. The biggest land animal left is the elephant and its numbers are dwindling. 13 tons is the usual top for an elephant, so at the dinosaur end of the spectrum the average size should be 4 times as big or 54 tons. There are always exceptions, and there were some dinosaurs bigger than the brontosaurus ( apatosaurus ), but the 4 to 1 ratio seems plausible. I live a short way from dinosaur ridge, which has foot prints pressed ito the mud (now rock) that were made by a brontosaurus of about 45 tons. About 200 foot higher up the strata are Iguanodon footprints, that could have been made by a large Rhino. The detail is amazing right down to a split toenail, and you can even make out the shape of the pad. The point that I would like to make is that by 65 million years ago the dinosaurs were smaller than at 130 million years ago, because they were maximised for the available food supply at that time, just as ultrasaurus was maximised for the available food supply at his time, and borontosaurus at his time. These animals ate trees, and trees were very tall at that time. Carnivorous animals are also in proportion to their food supply, thus T-rex, and his relatives in South America and in Egypt were properly sized (indirectly) to the available supply of Space dust.
Undoubtedly gravity had a determining role in the proportions of the bone structure, and musculature of dinosaurs, just as it affects all animals today, and 115,000,000 years in the future the increased gravity at that time will have a significant influence in the proportions of bones and muscles for future animals, but I will still bet that the maximum size of at least a few species will be determined the 4 fold increase in space dust that will be inevitable in that time period. Who knows, maybe the rate will be greater, and the animals larger than ultrasaurus.
As for expanding Earth I am leaning toward a significantly longer time frame than 220 million years for the Pacific opening. The expansion rate of a seven to 12 ratio doesn't bother me, or 6 to 12 or even 5 to 12 (de stretching the continents), only the short time period. It is way too short for that much expansion, and the inference of the density being related to the CUBE of the radius makes it impossible to reduce the Earth below 5000 km now, or even a paltry 230 million years ago. The slightly over 11,000 kg
barrier is formidable, impregnable, and impossible to achieve at any Earth accumulation of mass scenario. It constitutes a solid Iron planet of uniform density, top to bottom, and this too is impossible. So the opening of the Pacific is way, way older than is currently thought, but the conundrum of a young ocean floor and a very old expansional split is baffling. I would guess that the Pacific opening is between 2.3 and 2.6 Billion years old, but the Pacific floor is only 220 million years old. I won't quibble about the Atlantic�s age, they probably have that one right at 200 million years plus or minus. The inference is that the expansion is primarily due to the normal cyclical growth caused by the annual accumulation of space dust, and only partly due to density shifting near the end of the last 5 billion years.
I do have a suspicion that the last expansion is due to a loss of the ability of the Earth to cool itself after the majority of the water was squeezed out and up to the surface. Previously the water acted as means to cool the Earth of its compression and differential rotation associated internal heating. The water acted as a large heat sink loosing heat to space, and now that it is virtually all atop the planet the interior has heated and commenced a liquefaction and differentiation process that causes the late majority of expansion. I call this density shifting where the average density of a pie shaped segment shown removed from the Earth would start with its balance point at 66.7 % of the way from the tip, and end around 40% of the way from the tip due to the extreme difference between the density of a solid iron core and the light density in the upper mantle after differentiation.
Well it is well past midnight so I will end this lengthy explanation for now.
Michael W. Clark
P.S. I really enjoy the e-mails from those who tilt at windmill as I do, and are just as determined that their view is right too.
Dinosaurs and Gravity
I am proposing that the evolution of the Dinosaurs is proof of gravity is actually diminishing in strength over time and could very well be the result of the expansion of the universe. As time passes and the universe expands, the strength of the gravitational push diminishes - This is directly related to the increase in the volume of the universe.
Consider that the Dinosaurs began their evolutionary voyage several million years ago, when the effects of gravity were much more intense (because the universe was much smaller back then). Could it not be that over time they developed large frames and muscles to prosper in a world where gravity played a much more significant role in the life and evolution of the creatures that existed back then. It stand to reason that the heavier you lift the bigger the muscles in your body become, etc.... They roamed the world for millions of years. The genes that carried them along their evolutionary path were prone to continue in the direction they began (that is larger and stronger is better). A cataclysmic event occurred that wiped out the dinosaurs of the day and the evolutionary cycle began again. This time, because gravity was not the force it was when the first evolutionary wave of life began, bigger was not necessarily better, so new dinosaurs did not evolve as they did the first time around.
H.Marcotte
My theory
Dinosaurs wiped out by gravity
Emrys Jones
I love your book!
Hi Stephen,
I am writing to you for two reasons. The first is to commend you on your book 'Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth' I found it most fascinating to read. I believe without a doubt that all life was larger in the past because gravity was much less! However I have a different proposal for this change in gravity. This bring me to my second reason for this email.
I want to introduce you to a book which I have written with my dad over the last 12 years. It is a book that focuses on the relationship between an expanding Earth and the effects such an Earth has on the evolution of life. The book is called 'The Land of No Horizon' Within our book we propose new ideas for both the driving force behind Earth expansion and the changing value of gravity.
One thing I believe you have missing in your book is the effects of centrifugal force on an expanding Earth. Isn't it amazing how the largest dinosaurs are always found near the equator. What we propose in our book is that when the Earth was much smaller, it was also spinning much faster and thus the resultant effects of gravity were less in equatorial regions. As the Earth expanded it's rate of rotation slowed causing the centrifugal force to have less effect on reducing gravity. As a result, as the Earth expanded, gravity increased at equatorial regions.
We propose that the Earth is expanding, not because it is increasing in mass but instead because of mass rearranging within. We talk about all these things in great detail in our book.
Please feel free to visit our website http://www.tlonh.com. If you have any comments on our site or our book we would love to hear them.
Regards,
Matthew Taylor
Would like to see Future Prediction Models?
I found all of the information quite compelling. However, I find Mr. Gilbert's suggestion of an ancient earth spinning more rapidly a more plausible explanation for change in gravity as opposed to try to account for the additional mass. Although the 30 million year oscillation of our solar system through dense cosmic debris area certainly could have been a profound contributor to the mass extinctions.
I have a particular interest in the properties and appearance of the earth in the distant future if these processes were to continue. I realize such predictions would be rough at best but even a broad general model would be welcomed. Please contact if such information is available.
Many thanks and much encouragement with your work.
J. Hawkins
Dinosaurs, gigantic land animals and the force of prehistoric gravity
The fact that there are no more land based animals of large stature as there used to inhabit the earth, is an indication that conditions for life on earth must have changed since our ancient fauna were conceived. Where are the mastodons? and the ground sloths? The megatheriums? Such vegetarian beasts should have been able to survive a complete global catastrophe in some few numbers. The fact that only smaller beasts have followed on, seems to indicate that there have been ecological changes to affect the conditions for future life on earth, that we have not taken into consideration yet.
An increase in global gravity would in my opinion, explain this phenomenon to a certain extent. In the past, such long necked creatures as seismosaurus would not be feasible to an engineer's eye with the physical laws we are familiar with today.
Brian Mills
Feel free to submit your own comments for inclusion here.
Nebraska, USA
Las Vegas, NV.
England
USA
St. Louis, USA
Ga, USA
USA
Like to add a few facts and theories to this subject.
Dino's were lizards, as long as they live they never stop growing! Dino's lived in an area of temperate weather, abundant food, 10% more O2, twice as much atmospheric pressure - (all this found in a bubble of air in stuck in amber).Also, there was less solar radioactivity caused by a different (denser) atmosphere, which reduces dramatically the damaging effects of e.g. free radicals, this can then be related to a healthier animal, which lives very long( yes maybe up to 500 years old) There in no direct proof or different gravity (maybe only to say the earth rotates slightly slower today which could cause higher gravity).
If anyone has the courage they could go to central Africa and check out living dino's for themselves or research the almost 11000 witness reports of the Loch Ness monster, so far we haven�t found a good reason yet why they disappeared.
USA
Golden Colorado
Ontario, Canada
Wales
USA
London, England