ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) (09/03/85)
Immanuel Velikovsky believed, David Talbott believes, I
believe, and the various contributors and readers of the Kronos
Journal believe that, less than 10,000 years ago, there existed
on this planet an age of wonder, a true golden age when, as
Hesiod and Ovid claimed, Cronos (Saturn) was the king of heaven.
This was an age when the inhabitants of this planet, looking into
the Northern skies, beheld an dazzling light spectacle, radically
unlike anything we have ever seen. It was an age of eternal
springtime, with no seasons. It was also an age when the
felt effect of the force of gravity on this planet was far less
than what we experience now, and when creatures of the earth grew
far larger than they possibly could now.
That world came crashing down and vanished forever when a
stellar blowout within our own solar system triggered the most
horrific catastrophe our planet has ever withstood, the Noachian
Deluge. David Talbott's book, "The Saturn Myth", Doubleday 1980,
describes the mythical symbolism of that world. Articles on the
same and similar topics appear regularly in the Kronos Journal,
subscriptions available ($15/yr) from:
Kronos Subscription Dept.
P.O. Box 343
Wynnewood, Pa. 19096
The most obvious proof of the existence of this former world
on our planet has to do with the large animals. Scientists
studying dinosaurs in the last century determined that the big
sauropods could not stand on land, that they were simply too
heavy, and must therefore have lived in water where water
bouyancy would help carry their huge bodies. In so doing, they
(the scientists) ignored the lack of any obvious adaptation for
aquatic life amongst the sauropods. More recently, scientists
have come to believe that sauropods lived on land, due both to
the lack of aquatic adaptation and to tracks found in Texas and
other places which clearly show large sauropods having moved on
land. However, they are now ignoring the problems of weight.
Something is wrong here, one way or another.
I claim that the only possible way sauropods could have
lived was for the effect of gravity in the ancient world to have
been considerably less than what we now experience. This is what
one would expect from Velikovsky and Talbott's theory and it
solves the sauropods' problem outright. In the traditional view
of origins, both for this planet and for the solar system
generally, there is absolutely nothing which could account for
such a lessening of the felt effect of gravity at any time in
this planet's history.
Stanley Friesen and several other commentators on the net
have replied in numerous articles that they don't really
understand the reason why a hundred foot long, three hundred
thousand pound ultrasaur would have any insurmountable problems
functioning in our gravity. This article is dedicated to them.
Generally, whenever an animal doubles it's size, all other
factors being equal, it's power to weight ratio gets cut in
half. It's weight is proportional to volume, a cubed figure
which goes up by three factors of two when size is doubled. It's
strength, however, is proportional to cross sections of bones and
muscles, a squared figure which only goes up by two factors of
two as size doubles. For creatures like the ultrasaur, as well
as for large pterasaurs or pteratorns which required being able
to fly for survival, this problem of power-to-weight ratios would
quickly become critical in our gravity.
Books describe the ultrasaur as 100 feet long, 150 tons,
about 28 or 30 feet at the shoulders. About 35 or 40 of the 100
foot length is neck, another 25 or 30 feet is body between the
shoulders, and another 30 or 35 the tail. The animal is about 18
or 20 feet deep at the front shoulders and slightly less than ten
feet wide (collarbones are about 8.5 feet long). By way of
contrast, the heaviest of Guderian and Rommel's panzers, the
tiger tank, weighed 55 to 65 tons, depending on how it was set
up. Even with treads, the tiger often got stuck in wet ground;
it was just too heavy. Modern tanks are lighter. An 18 wheeler,
fully loaded with all of a typical Harry Homeowner's possessions,
goes about 100,000 lbs. By any account, the ultrasaur was
heavy. I would like to calculate a minimum muscle mass for the
ultrasaur's legs if he were to have any hope of lifting his own
weight off the ground. Any animal has to be able to do this.
Yet, it is fairly easy to show that this would have been an
insurmountable problem for the ultrasaur, given our gravity.
The strongest man of our generation, and possibly any
generation in recorded history, is Bill Kazmaier. He stands
about 6-4, goes about 330 lbs., and is the reigning king of
American powerlifters. In heads up tests against the strongest
men from other sports and, particularly, men from other branches
of weightlifting, Kaz has repeatedly come out on top by
considerable margins. Powerlifting is a specialized branch of
weightlifting which focuses on the three most difficult lifts
from a total body system viewpoint, the benchpress, the deadlift,
and the squat. It is this last exercise which we are interested
in. This amounts to putting a bar on ones shoulders, coming to
squat position, thighs paralell with the floor, and then coming
back up with the weight. This is approximately what an elephant
or an ultrasaur must do to get up off the ground after lying down
for a nap or for whatever reason.
The most any man has ever squatted one time is about 1003
lbs. Kaz has managed squats of about 950 lbs. Generally,
heavyweight and superheavyweight powerlifters are considered
strong when they can squat six or seven hundred pounds. I should
point out, however, that if anabolic steroids were to be taken
out of the picture, all weightlifting records of every sort would
go down at least 20 percent, and possibly 30. Of course, the
ultrasaur didn't have access to dianabol. I am going to say
that, as a ballpark figure, the best we could hope for from the
strongest men alive under natural conditions, would be to squat
about 1000 lbs, INCLUDING THEIR OWN WEIGHT. I am also going to
say that, as a ballpark figure, they need thighs about 30
to 35 inches around in order to do this. Kaz's thighs are about
35 or 36 inches around; Mark Chaillet's are about 33. Likewise,
I am going to use 5 inches as a ballpark figure for the radius of
these men's legs at the thigh. The constant of proportionality I
spoke of, "K" for short, will thus be given by:
1000 lbs = K * pie * (5 ** 2)
using the old Fortran notation in which "*" means "times", and
"**" means "raised to the power of". K will thus be taken to be
12.74, both for human heavyweight powerlifters, and for the
ultrasaur. The K factor is understood to incorporate the factor
of two, for the human's two legs or one pair of the ultrasuar's
legs. The fact that I am using radius of thigh rather than
radius of any one particular muscle is again ballpark, but it
favors neither Kaz and his pals nor the ultrasaur. In all cases
being considered here, the thigh consists mostly of muscles used
directly for lifting weight straight upwards.
This value for K is thus crude, but it gives the ultrasaur
two large benefits of doubts. First, the ratio would, in
reality, be higher for a maximally trained human athlete than for
any herbivore, particularly a laid-back one like an elephant or
sauropod which wasn't into sprints or anything amounting to
maximum efforts. Secondly, we are talking about what the human
can lift just once as a maximum total effort i.e. with no margin
for error. In reality, if Kaz or one of his pals were shooting
for a squat of 800 lbs at a meet, a practice might consist of
four or five repititions with 500 lbs, followed after a fifteen
minute rest by two or three reps with 650 or 700, followed by the
attempt for a single squat at 800. That is to say, to have any
margin for error, you must subtract at least a hundred and fifty
lbs. or so from the human athlete's lift and then compute the
ratio.
All of this being given, let's see what the ultrasaur would
need by way of a radius for his thigh muscles in order to lift
his 300,000 lb bulk off the ground, first assuming that his front
and rear leg-pairs were each lifting 150,000 lbs. Considering
the ultrasuar's load on one leg pair to be 150 times that
required by the human, the equation becomes:
Ultrasaur Heavyweight Powerlifter
K * pie * (R ** 2) = K * pie * 150 * (5 ** 2)
R ** 2 = 3750
R = 61.
Sixty inches is five feet; the ultrasaur would need thighs
slightly over ten feet in diameter to have any hope of lifting
his own body off the ground! Of course, the fudge factors in the
equation heavily favor the ultrasaur. A realistic figure might
be more like eleven or eleven and a half feet.
Of course, the books do not show the ultrasaur with legs ten
feet in diameter; that would make for a funny looking animal
indeed, with legs greater in diameter than in length. Just the
weight of the legs would bring the poor guy's weight up to
400,000 lbs. But that's not the end of it. They would have to
double the animal's width to 20 feet or so (actually wider than
it would be deep) to provide a base for two legs which were ten
feet in diameter. Of course, such a doubling of width would
bring the cauculation for weight up past 600,000 lbs. As you can
see, the whole thing gets ridiculous in a hurry.
The Avon Field Guide to Dinosaurs shows the ultrasaur with
legs about four feet in diameter, judging from the human figure
which is in the picture for scale; about what you would expect
from a normal feel for animal bodies and certainly the way any
artist familiar with animals would draw him. However, such an
intuitive view would be dead wrong in the case of the ultrasaur.
Using our K figure of 12.74, we can see that the most a pair of
even five foot diameter legs could ever hope to lift would be
about:
12.74 * pie * (30 inches **2) = 36,003 lbs. Off by quite a bit
in the case of what is needed for the ultrasaur.
It would thus seem that, given our gravity, there is a
threshold for size and weight beyond which no animal could be
wide enough to provide a base for the legs it would take to bear
it's own weight. An animal beyond that threshold should properly
be regarded as a mathematical impossibility in our world, given
our gravity. The ultrasaur is beyond that point by a
considerable margin.
One of the most interesting dinosaur books of recent years
is Adrian Desmond's "The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs". The section on
flying dinosaurs, roughly from page 178 to page 183, without
Desmond seemingly intending it, reads like a catalogue of reasons
why pterasaurs could not function or live in our world. On the
relatively small (40 lb., 23 ft. wingspan) pteranodon, Desmond
writes:
"The combination of great size and negligable weight must
necessarily have resulted in some fragility. It is easy to
imagine that the paper-thin tubular bones supporting the
gigantic wings would have made landing dangerous. How could
the creature have alighted without shattering all of its
bones?"
This sounds like Desmond has seen some films of albatross
landings. Regarding pteranodon take-offs, Desmond writes:
"Many larger birds have to achieve a certain speed by
running and flapping before they can take off and others
have to produce a wing beat speed approaching hovering in
order to rise. To achieve hovering with a twenty three foot
wingspread, Pteranodon would have required 220 lbs of flight
muscles as efficient as those of hummingbirds. But it had
reduced its musculature to about 8 lbs., so it is
inconcievable that Pteranodon could have taken off
actively."
So Desmond sees the pteranodon as a glider, needing a 15 mph
wind in order to take off. But any airborne creature which could
only glide would have all sorts of problems, not the least of
which would be going hungry on windless days. At the mercy of
the winds, there would be no place on earth for it to call home;
its life would be a continual migration. How then did it raise
its young back at the nest? And there is another really terrible
problem it would have due to the fact that it must necessarily
have been a carrion feeder (a glider simply wouldn't have had
much luck trying to catch airborne prey). Desmond puts it this
way:
"How they could have taken to the air after gorging
themselves is something of a puzzle. Wings of such
extraordinary size could not have been flapped when the
animal was grounded. Since the pterasaurs were unable to
run in order to launch themselves, they must have taken off
vertically. Pigeons are only able to take off vertically by
reclining their bodies and clapping the wings in front of
them; as flappers, the Texas pterosaurs would have needed
very tall stilt-like legs to raise the body far enough to
allow the 24 foot wings to clear the ground. The main
objection, however, still rests in the lack of adequate
musculature for such an operation. Is the only solution to
suppose that, with wings fully extended and elevators
raised, they were lifted passively off the ground by the
wind? If Lawson is correct and the Texas pterosaurs were
carrion feeders, another problem can be envisaged. Dinosaur
carcasses imply the presence of dinosaurs. The ungainly,
Brobdignagian pterosaurs were vulnerable to attack when
grounded, so how did they escape the formidable dinosaurs?
Left at the mercy of wind currents, take-off would have been
a chancy business."
In other words, the nature of the pterosaur's line of work
was such that he must have needed to have been capable of quick
get-away takeoffs, something a glider couldn't ever count on.
Desmond doesn't have anything to say about the 200 lb pterotorn,
which was a modern bird rather than a pterosaur, and definitely
built for powered flight rather than gliding. On the subject of
flight and weight, however, he notes:
"With each increase in size, and therefore also weight, a
flying animal needs a concomitant increase in power (to beat
the wings in a flapper and hold and maneuver them in a
glider), but power is supplied by muscles which themselves
add still more weight to the structure. The larger a flier
becomes, the disproportionately weightier it grows by the
addition of its own power supply. There comes a point when
the weight is just too great to permit the machine to remain
airborne. Calculations bearing on size and power suggested
that the maximum weight which a flying vertibrate can attain
is about 50 lbs: Pteranodon and its slightly larger but
lesser known Jordanian ally Titanopteryx were therefore
thought to be the largest flying animals."
Sound familiar? Desmond goes on to state that the Texas
pterosaur finds were obviously much larger than that without
offering any real guess as to a solution to the enigma thus
posed, much less to the far worse enigma posed by the pteratorn.
I repeat, there is only one solution to the problem of the
giant flying animals, even as there is only one solution to the
problem of the ultrasaur. These were all creatures of another
world, even though that world existed on this planet. And one of
the characteristics of that world was that the FELT EFFECT of
gravity was far less than what we now experience.padraig@utastro.UUCP (Padraig Houlahan) (09/04/85)
> All of this being given, let's see what the ultrasaur would > need by way of a radius for his thigh muscles in order to lift > his 300,000 lb bulk off the ground, first assuming that his front > and rear leg-pairs were each lifting 150,000 lbs. Considering > the ultrasuar's load on one leg pair to be 150 times that > required by the human, the equation becomes: > > Ultrasaur Heavyweight Powerlifter > > K * pie * (R ** 2) = K * pie * 150 * (5 ** 2) > > R ** 2 = 3750 > > R = 61. > Is this a case of pie in the thigh? :-) Padraig Houlahan.
mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) (09/05/85)
In article <387@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes: > Sixty inches is five feet; the ultrasaur would need thighs > slightly over ten feet in diameter to have any hope of lifting > his own body off the ground! Of course, the fudge factors in the > equation heavily favor the ultrasaur. A realistic figure might > be more like eleven or eleven and a half feet. > > Of course, the books do not show the ultrasaur with legs ten > feet in diameter; that would make for a funny looking animal > indeed, with legs greater in diameter than in length... > > The Avon Field Guide to Dinosaurs shows the ultrasaur with > legs about four feet in diameter, judging from the human figure > which is in the picture for scale; about what you would expect > from a normal feel for animal bodies and certainly the way any > artist familiar with animals would draw him.... Ted, your calculations and observations include a number of fundamental errors. First, extrapolation of human strength to heavy-bodied quadruped dinosaurs does not take into account the fact that the mechanical advantages of the differently proportioned limbs are quite different. Differing muscle attachment points would give the dinosaurs' muscles much greater leverage, perhaps several times more. Your observations from imaginative drawings in books are also wildly inaccurate: your "ten foot diameter" legs should be measured in the upper thigh, which in most modern quadrupeds is well above the belly. I'm sure you would also disprove horses and elephants by their small leg cross-section below the belly. In addition, quadrupods seldom have a circular thigh cross section, else they would bulge in the way you claim the ultrasaur should. As others have mentioned, please check original research literature, rather than popular books. That's where the science is: popular books are usually pale reflections, drained of details and facts that won't sell to scientific illiterates. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
csdf@mit-vax.UUCP (Charles Forsythe) (09/06/85)
Ted Holden proves his ignorance of science and math thus: > Scientists > studying dinosaurs in the last century determined that the big > sauropods could not stand on land, that they were simply too > heavy, and must therefore have lived in water where water > buoyancy would help carry their huge bodies. Scientists studying electro-magnetic radiation in that last century determined that the "waves" traveled in a medium called "ether". They were wrong, Ted. > 1000 lbs = K * pie * (5 ** 2) > > using the old Fortran notation in which "*" means "times", and > "**" means "raised to the power of". K will thus be taken to be > 12.74, both for human heavyweight powerlifters, and for the > ultrasaur. I think we can all follow the notation, Ted. Thanks anyway. Also, I don't know what the "pie" constant is, but you might want to use "pi" which is a much more interesting one. Another question. Why is "K" this same for men and Ultrasaurs. Why isn't it half or something? > Of course, the > ultrasaur didn't have access to dianabol. Of course. I suppose that because humans do not produce luminous chemicals then neither do fireflyes? > This value for K is thus crude, but it gives the ultrasaur > two large benefits of doubts. First, the ratio would, in > reality, be higher for a maximally trained human athlete than for > any herbivore, particularly a laid-back one like an elephant or > sauropod which wasn't into sprints or anything amounting to > maximum efforts. You mean the same "laid-back" elephants that stampede large trucks and smash them? Be consistent, Ted! The value for K is crude. It is almost completely made up. I'm glad you follow weight-lifting Ted, but your comparing apes and lizards here. Also, I though the mighty ULTRASAUR was a mean and nasty killer (who had to out-run his prey in the lighter gravity). > Secondly, we are talking about what the human > can lift just once as a maximum total effort i.e. with no margin > for error. In reality, if Kaz or one of his pals were shooting > for a squat of 800 lbs at a meet, a practice might consist of > four or five repetitions with 500 lbs, followed after a fifteen > minute rest by two or three reps with 650 or 700, followed by the > attempt for a single squat at 800. That is to say, to have any > margin for error, you must subtract at least a hundred and fifty > lbs. or so from the human athlete's lift and then compute the > ratio. Maybe the Ultrasaurs did Aerobics. (After all, wasn't Jane Fonda around in the Velikoskian world?) > Stanley Friesen and several other commentators on the net > have replied in numerous articles that they don't really > understand the reason why a hundred foot long, three hundred > thousand pound ultrasaur would have any insurmountable problems > functioning in our gravity. This article is dedicated to them. This is no intuitive leap for anybody. We all realize that a creature like that wouldn't last very long in the world. In fact, it might even become extinct. -- Charles Forsythe CSDF@MIT-VAX "We pray to Fred for the Hopelessly Normal Have they not suffered enough?" from _The_Nth_Psalm_ in _The_Book_of_Fred_
carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) (09/10/85)
In article <387@imsvax.UUCP> ted@imsvax.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes: > Immanuel Velikovsky believed, David Talbott believes, I > believe, and the various contributors and readers of the Kronos > Journal believe that, less than 10,000 years ago, there existed > on this planet an age of wonder, a true golden age when, as > Hesiod and Ovid claimed, Cronos (Saturn) was the king of heaven. Hesiod and Ovid? This is like quoting "Paradise Lost" as evidence that the Garden of Eden existed. Ovid's sources were 100% literary, including Hesiod's poems. Hesiod's sources were oral tradition, Homer, and his imagination. What is the evidence that the ancient myths about the reign of Kronos are referring to the *planet* Saturn? Richard Carnes