Does the force of Earth's gravity change over time

a reply to: eManym

Over enough time definitely, but couldn’t say if it was significantly different during in the time of the dinosaurs. Something must have been different for creatures to get so big though, wasn’t there mega flora as well as mega fauna back then?
Plants breathe oxygen but require a fair amount if not more carbon dioxide too, so the explanation about there being more oxygen in the atmosphere falls short for me. while less gravity would make perfect sense, the Earth would have to have been significantly smaller which is very unlikely.

The Albatross has a special kind of soaring technique to stay up in and while it’s possible to scale up wing span and such it’s also very impractical to do so. I know full well as a paraglide pilot that you can use thermals and ridge lift to stay up for hours at a time and go long distances. But the weather doesn’t always play ball and you can be grounded for days...

So if anyone has a good explanation for why we had such mega fauna and flora I’m all ears

a reply to: surfer_soul
First reply in the thread.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: randomthoughts12
This is why it's a good idea to run your own searches for sources to support your claims. You shouldn't be sending people to go search for your wrong claims.

I'm glad you figured out the source of the confusion.

originally posted by: eManym
a reply to: Arbitrageur

Wouldn't an expanding Earth be the cause of plate tectonics?

There used to be debates about whether the Earth might be expanding, or contracting, but those have largely been settled my measurements showing there's not any statistically significant change in the size of the Earth.

Now there's just a lone geologist Maxlow who thinks the earth is expanding but has no idea where the extra mass is coming from. The first rule of science is that when observations prove your theory wrong, you discard that theory. Other scientists have accepted measurements showing the Earth isn't expanding, but I don't know why Maxlow hasn't. There's not really any debate any more, Maxlow is just considered an outlier, but before we had such measurements there was some debate about these things.

a reply to: eManym

Here's a banned TED talk by crazy Sheldrake about how physical laws are changing:

Originally scientists had thought the early Earth was smaller with higher gravity than today. But from what I have read, current models contradict that.

a reply to: eManym

Originally scientists had thought the early Earth was smaller with higher gravity than today.

Some did.

And if Earth was significantly smaller, surface gravity would have to be higher. Unless it also had significantly less mass.
planetcalc.com...

No evidence of that being the case.

a reply to: eManym

The earth HAS grown since the time of the dinosaur's but likely not enough for the gravitational increase to be notable.
It is estimated (Guesstimated and of course in the earlier solar system it would have been far more but diminishing over time as our planet and the others sucked this debris in) that roughly 40.000 ton's of space matter in the form of particles and small meteor's strike's the earth every year.

Now even given that it was probably far higher in the past working back 65.000.000 years time's 40.000 gives you 2600.000.000.000 ton's of mass added to the earth since the end of the age of the dinosaur's, now how large a body would that be if we put it all into orbit and what gravity would that have, only the gravity of a small to medium asteroid if that.

Of course the amount that fall's from space may have been far higher in the past - indeed it would have been but likely not that much more if at all during the time of the dinosaurs.

a reply to: dfnj2015

Brilliant video, of course there is brane theory which not only speculates but indeed may be regarded as predicting that the fundamental constant's may be variable due to brane interactions in superspace and a spin off theory that gravity itself may originate not within our own brane (membrane universe) but from another brane in peripheral or direct contact with our's.
(not to be confused with the BRAIN's in our head's)
Of course brane theory itself is probably just a plug stop gap solution to some otherwise unsolvable problem's, a model built to fix a hole in a pre-existing model if you like.

originally posted by: eManym
Originally scientists had thought the early Earth was smaller with higher gravity than today. But from what I have read, current models contradict that.

Not just "models", observations contradict that also. I know there have been other expanding earth threads which discussed that paleomagnetic data was analyzed to show the Earth didn't expand significantly. I found a reference to such a paper by Phage in another thread and it may not be the only one:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

a reply to: eManym

The dinosaurs were massive beast that could only have survived under weaker gravity conditions, IMO

Thats the problem with opinions..
As the Earth's climate contained more CO2 and the plants were larger, there was more oxygen in the atmosphere.
More food and more O2 enabled larger creatures.
So , no. That would require a massive change in the Earth's mass. There would have been no life. Large or otherwise.
Corrected
Done
Next.

a reply to: eManym

Yeah , it gets Really OLD...........

originally posted by: eManym
I have thought about this for some time and don't really have an explanation.

The dinosaurs were massive beast that could only have survived under weaker gravity conditions, IMO. With today's gravity, an elephant represents the maximum size of a land animal. Anything larger couldn't support its own weight unless supported by water.

How did long necked dinosaurs survive, did they have multiple hearts to pump blood to the brain at the end of that long neck? Seems to me the brain would have needed to be closer to the heart, if the heart was located in the body cavity.

One possible explanation is that the Earth was smaller than it is today and has been expanding like a balloon over the 100s of millions years since the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The continents fit together perfectly when the Earth is shrunk to a smaller size. If this is a correct assumption then my question is, whats causing the expansion, energy from the Sun, unknown energy from inside the Earth?

There are petroglyphs of dinosaurs that were depicted indicating they were no larger than a big dog, so they may have been around up until recently or may still exist on a smaller scale but haven't been discovered. Perhaps dinosaurs have shrunk in correlation to Earths expanding mass.

Look at the anatomy of giraffes. Their arteries and veins in the neck have large number of valves and chambers to handle sudden changes in blood pressure. Their blood pressure is actually double that of ours.

Wouldn't natural radioactive decay double the volume of matter? Even more if the entire fission change were followed. If one atom of uranium undergoes fission, two new atoms are formed:

physicsworld.com...

a reply to: stormcell

Wouldn't natural radioactive decay double the volume of matter?

No.

Nor does it increase the mass. Which is what governs gravitation.

Solar wind also blows some of Earth's atmosphere into space

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: stormcell

Wouldn't natural radioactive decay double the volume of matter?

No.

Nor does it increase the mass. Which is what governs gravitation.

I should have checked this page - there isn't any correlation between mass and atomic radius.
en.wikipedia.org...(data_page)

So, does anyone have any idea about how such a massive animal such as the dinosaur could have supported its own weight? As I implied earlier, the elephant is the most massive an animal can be with the current gravitational influence. This is proven by the square-cube law.

Link - Scroll down to the Biomechanics section

I found an interesting article by David Esker at DinosaurTheory.com. By putting aside the impracticality of changing any of the variables in Newton's gravity force equation, he hypothesized that the only variable remaining to account for the mass of the dinosaurs 150 million years ago is buoyancy.

The atmosphere was many times more dense 150 million years ago than it is today. The atmospheric density to support the mass of the dinosaurs 150 million years ago was about 2/3 that of water. That is to support an animal that is a little over 3 times the scaling factor of animals today with a scaling factor of 1.

This is a fluctuating value. The last time animals had a scaling factor of 1 was about 275 million years ago during the Permian period. 150 million years ago during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods the scaling factor for animal size rose to over 3. The scaling factor gradually decreased to 1 were it is today.

Two atmospheric density changes in the last 500 million years. One in the Devonian period and another in the Jurassic/Cretaceous period. What could have caused it? Earth's internal forces, maybe. Periodic changes in the density of the atmosphere over time to as dense as 2/3 that of water.

Could be a subject for future doom porn enthusiasts.

Link to interesting article

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: surfer_soul
First reply in the thread.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Oh I thought that was a link about the different sizes of Dinosaurs as opposed to explaining how they got so big. So they think it was to do with the way they reproduced and even compare it with how turtles reproduce by laying tons of eggs and then the hatchlings are left to get on with it.

But that doesn’t really explain anything in relation to their size and if it did why don’t we get giant Dinosaur like turtles in this day an age?

It seems to me size is mostly related to diet, so if there was huge fast growing vegetation at the time then herbivores could also get bigger to get to it, like the Giraffe. Carnivores would in turn get bigger to successfully hunt their prey.

But what were the conditions that allowed for such huge vegetation? If Oxygen levels were more a less the same as today, were the carbon dioxide levels far greater? Was the soil far more rich in nutrients? Something must have been different.

What I said was the atmospheric density was different. This was a source of buoyancy for the large mass of the dinosaurs. They floated in the atmosphere because it was 2/3 the density of water. The atmosphere provided an upward force to counteract the force of gravity.

CO2 levels were much higher and water vapor was much higher. Also, it was hotter and clear days did not exist. Plants got bigger because of the abundance of C02 and needed larger foliage to collect limited sunlight.

Dinosaurs probably had very large eyes, as well.

Dinosaur tails acted more as a rudder than for balance or maybe both. The tails were also more than likely flattened and not pointed.