throopw@rtp47.UUCP (Wayne Throop) (09/19/85)
> To Michael: > The evidence from the realm of mythology is that only one side of this > planet was inhabited during the age of Kronos. From this and other comments, I gather that the "age of Kronos" was supposedly a period of time during which Earth orbited Saturn, and was affected by tidal effects in such a way that perceived gravitation at some points Earth's surface was significantly less than it is currently. This "simple" picture is complicated by the requirement that these reduced gravity zones be stationary, since (supposedly) some species of (relatively oversized) life depended upon the lower gravity. There are certain "small" problems with this, such as how Earth was extracted from Saturnian orbit and injected into the current orbit, how the gravity-reduced zones were maintained stationary over long periods of time without running into (one or more) violations of angular momentum conservation, why there is no evidence for this other than the (disputed) difficulty some life forms might have had with current gravity, and so on and on. And even with these issues neglected, I find that I am supposed to believe (as near as I can tell from Ted Holden's articles) that tidal effects would cause *increased* perceived gravity at some points on the surface of the earth. All this from someone who says we should "think things through" for ourselves? Isn't this a case of "do as I say, not as I do"? I find it very difficult to believe that someone who doesn't seem to understand simple classical mechanics with regard to leverage, tidal effects, and angular momentum conservation has really "thought things through" in any depth at all. All in all, having "thought it through", I think it is *far* more plausible that pterosaurs can fly and that mythology is not factual than the alternatives promoted by Ted Holden. -- Wayne Throop at Data General, RTP, NC <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!rtp47!throopw