Reduced Gravity
Some weeks ago, early in a Melvin Bragg radio discussion about how dinosaurs evolved into birds, Bragg mentioned that the largest dinosaurs weighed in at some 50 tons, or around 10 times the weight of the largest African elephant now alive. This weight problem was not discussed by the panel although Bragg did say that the Earth must have been very different when the largest dinosaurs were alive.
People have been aware of the fact that gravity must have been very much less than is currently experienced for dinosaurs to grow to the size they did, but to date nobody has offered a realistic explanation for gravity at one time being perhaps no more than a third of its current strength. Wal Thornhill is well aware of this problem and has proposed that gravity is a function of the charge carried by the cosmic body that experiences it and that the Earth long ago carried a much reduced charge.
However, while I am not qualified to argue against his analysis of gravity, I can’t believe that it can explain the massive change in the Earth’s gravity that must have occurred between the era of the dinosaurs and the present. Note that we also have to explain the much more recent, that is within the lifetime of mankind, period of reduced gravity that allowed the mammoths and mastodons to grow to double the size of modern elephants. Their extinction and the extinction of other giant mammals at much the same time must, I believe, be attributed to an increase in the Earth’s gravity only a few thousand years ago.
There are two major problems to address, firstly how could the Earth have experienced reduced gravity and secondly why did its gravity increase only a few thousand years ago. I shall address the second problem before seeking an answer to the first.
Dwardu Cardona’s Saturn Configuration
Dwardu Cardona in his 1999 SIS Easthampstead Park conference presentation, see SIS Review 2000 and his book God Star, explained how his analysis of mankind’s earliest records suggested that the Earth had been in a relationship that saw its northern hemisphere permanently facing Saturn or as Cardona called it, Proto-Saturn. He thought that with the massive Proto-Saturn permanently close overhead the Earth would have developed a northern lithic bulge as well as a northern tidal bulge. Cardona thought the Earth was thrown out of its close association with Proto-Saturn when the Axis Mundi collapsed; he said Thornhill had suggested that the Axis Mundi was a sustained plasma discharge between Proto-Saturn and the Earth and that it was the approach of the Sun that caused it to collapse. It seems clear to me that when the Earth thrown out of its close relationship with proto-Saturn it must have affected its gravity.
Is it possible that that a close by Proto-Saturn could not only have gravitationally caused the development of a northern lithic bulge on the Earth, but could also have reduced the Earth’s gravity? There may well be a possible way if the Lagrange point 1 between Proto-Saturn and the Earth was close enough to the Earth’s surface.
Lagrange points
Wikipedia defines Lagrange points as positions in an orbital configuration of two large bodies where a small object affected only by gravity can maintain a stable position relative to the two large bodies.
Lagrange point 1 is the location between the Sun and the Earth, about 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth, where the gravity of the Earth counteracts the pull of the gravity of the Sun. In Cardona’s “Saturn Configuration” there would have been a Lagrange point 1 between Proto-Saturn and the Earth where the gravity of the Earth would have exactly counteracted the pull of the gravity of Proto-Saturn.
Some years ago when discussing LaGrange points at an SIS Study Group meeting, I asked Laurence Dixon what the mathematical formula was for calculating, for a 2 body system, the separation of the cosmic bodies for any given percentage reduction in gravity experienced at the surface of the smaller body.
When Dixon sent me the formula I inputted the current mass and radius data for Saturn and the Earth and it would appear that at a separation of 21 times the radius of Saturn, gravity at the surface of the Earth would be 20% less than it is at present. Assuming that a 20% reduction in gravity was enough to allow mammoths and mastodons to grow to twice the size of the largest modern elephant, as their carcasses show they did, this would appear to be the order of separation between the Earth and Saturn when the Earth was in a locked association with Proto-Saturn as suggested by Cardona.
For the largest dinosaurs to grow to the massive size that we know they did, gravity must have been much less. Using the same mass and radius data, Dixon’s formula shows that at a separation of 7 times the radius of Saturn, gravity at the surface of the Earth would have been one third of its current level. As I don’t think that the dinosaurs could have achieved their extraordinary size at any higher gravity, I have to conclude that the Earth was once in a very close orbit of a much larger neighbour and, given the depth of sediment deposits laid down during the time the large dinosaurs first evolved and then lived on the Earth, that it remained in such an orbit for a very long time.
I believe that if the Earth was in such a relationship with a much larger cosmic body its whole land mass would, in time, have formed a single continent facing the much larger body and that relatively shallow seas would have covered much of the single continent. The single land mass that had shallow seas over much of its surface is now known to us as Pangaea.