Posted on 02/20/2014 3:47:32 PM PST by Kevmo
Einstein came up with relativity around 1902. It took a solar eclipse, and the lack of world war, to confirm that light would bend as a result of gravity. That was 1917.
15 years.
Tesla came up with stuff that they STILL can’t figure out to this day. He was a contemporary to Einstein.
Wave/Particle theory? Nobody has a clue - to this day. We know that photons behave like waves, unless of course you observe them, and then they behave like particles.
Quantum entanglement - fact. Why it happens? Nobody knows.
And then, the granddaddy of them all - lighting. Why does it happen? Nobody can say. It produces anti-matter (discovered by accident). Why does lightning produce antimatter? Nobody knows.
And the great granddaddy - the earth’s magnetic field. What causes it? No clue at all. The guess is lame too (movement of the magma at the earth’s core causes it, we think, but don’t quote us).
There was a prize offered for the first accurate timepiece that would operated at sea. That prize went unclaimed for many, many decades. The person that invented the chronometer never even got to collect the prize.
What, exactly, do you think science is?
This is the thing my wife loves about her calc students: as long as stuff works, why do I have to know WHY it works?
You can ask anybody with a 401K that got cut in half by the market. Most of the financial instruments, derivatives, MBS products, etc - all products of calculus.
Why do are power series important? Because the radius and interval of convergence AREN’T what matter - it’s whether the series converges AT THE BOUNDARIES!
The boundary conditions are why even government majors relying on computer models (hockey stick anyone?) needs to know the HOW and the LIMITS of computer models built with calculus.
So, either pick up a slide rule and engage in the scientific method yourself, or wait patiently until somebody chews your food for you.
No, the moment arms and leverage is better in the great apes and chimpanzees, but the muscles, the chemical engine, is basically equally efficient. There is only so much energy that can be provided by that chemical engine. . . and the theoretical maximum land animal size that could live under one standard gravity—that is move, eat, mate—is approximately 14,000 kilos or about 31,000 pounds. But that is under ideal conditions. Practical is probably more like 20,000 lbs.
Paraceratherium was apparently 18 tons. Related to rhinos. But dead now, kind of like the RINOs.
BroJoeK, it isn’t locomotion that is the problem, it is the cube square law and the increase in mass. The literal energy required to MOVE and support the MASS increases as the size increases but the efficiency of the muscle doesn’t. We know the efficiency of the chemical engine that drives muscles and if gravity is a constant one G, then because of the cube/square law, there is a point at which a living organism cannot support its own weight against gravity, much less move, eat, procreate, or support its internal organs with those muscles. This is easily calculated given the known limits of the theoretical strengths of tissues. 100 ton animals are simply not possible under one G.
>> “Rest assured you relativity denier that the general theory is settled science” <<
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Nobody of any significance in physics holds that position today.
Were the balls of exactly the same density?
Otherwise, this would have to be demonstrated in a total vacuum.
>> “So, either pick up a slide rule...” <<
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Where, outside of a museum, or the attic of an elderly engineer, might one do that these days?
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Fred, there is ZERO evidence that sauropods spent any time in water at all. . . zip, none, nada. . . except their large size. That is a logical fallacy called begging the question. They show no adaptation to water, their fossils are not found in watery climate zones, and the design of the sauropod feet is in no way adapted to walking on mud. The thought they wallowed in swamps was abandoned in the 1920s.
In this thread, the bigger mystery is why you, FRiend Kevmo, cannot participate in a collegial discussion of technical substance (as in my #75) without resorting to sphincter-based vituperation —
***I wasn’t talking about you, I was talking about FraudZagonner.
or invoking references to sea-fowl.
***You claim that this happened IN THIS THREAD. Feel free to point it out. I searched for the word “sea” and it came to your own sentence.
I would think that discussion of the complexities of exploring the difficulty of obtaining valid measurements using hypersensitive instruments within an environment with the possibilities of creating out-of-scale electromagnetic (and possibly mechanical) interfering signals is sufficiently challenging. IOW, the subject is sufficiently complex and challenging in itself — without introducing intellectual noise by resorting to the non sequitur of citing things such as “anti-gravity” patents.
***Your OWN post #70 says: “Of course, these findings might cause folks to look at weird concepts such as anti-gravity and FTL travel with renewed interest.”
So if you bring up anti-gravity it’s intellectual stimulation but if I bring it up, it’s intellectual noise. Just who do you think you are? Get over yourself.
OTOH, simply providing a link to actual publications of the research in question, for example, would have had the opposite, and beneficial, effect on this discussion.
***Again: Get over yourself.
FYI, I spent the latter portion of my career researching, designing, fabricating, developing, packaging and testing micromechanical sensors of the type pictured. My choice of the specific microsensor illustration I used was quite deliberate.
In fact, I intend to use that illustration (with suitable, illustrative enhancments) here to enhance further discusions of possible sources of error in the cited measurements — and to review some steps that I, as a researcher ,would take to identify, characterize, and eliminate or minimize those potential sources of measurement error.
***And while you’re at it, please show all of us how such a measurement can generate an error 20 ORDERS of MAGNITUDE off. Not 20X, 20 OOMs. And the experiment was repeated 250 times, so that makes these guys particularly stupid, doesn’t it? They can’t think of the sources of error that you come up with, after 250 tries? What is the largest source of error you’ve seen propogate after so many tries and how large was it? If it was 3 orders of magnitude, someone got fired. Now show us how it can be 20 OOMs.
Since I intend to include reasoning individuals in my further discussion, some of whom you obviously view with scatological disdain, I will not add to your discomfort by pinging you to my forthcoming discussions.
***I say it again: Get over yourself.
Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!
Actually, yes. Eleven thousand years ago Teratorns flew in the Andes. Their fossils exist. These were birds indistinguishable from modern eagles except for one major and decided difference.. . . teratorns had wingspans up to 45 feet and weighed an estimated 450 pounds! The largest modern birds capable of flight are the Albatross with an up to 11 foot wingspan and weigh only 30 lbs. or some reports offer the Andean Condor with a reported 10.5 feet and 25 pounds. Both birds have trouble getting off the ground under one G, which is why the Albatross is called the Goony Bird and the Condor is prey to land animal while feeding and needs a downhill, running start of at least forty feet to get off the ground.
Biologists and Aeronautics engineers tell us that a scaled-up eagle with muscular engines simply could not fly under its own power without a complete redesign of its "airframe and power plant" . . . Just to flap the wings the muscles would have to be far larger and the bones would have to be greater in cross-sectional strength, if not made of carbon fiber, and the wishbone—the anchoring keel that those flight muscles attach to—would be so large, thick, and deep to handle the stress, that the bird’s shape, it's form factor, would be unrecognizable as an eagle.
Speaking of flying animals, the Cretaceous had flying dragonflies, completely indistinguishable from modern dragonflies, except the Cretaceous model had FOUR FOOT WINGSPANS. Such an insect could not fly under modern gravity. . . cube/square law, again. . . and its form factor would be far different at four feet than at four inches.
And the facts are that Teratorn and four foot dragonflies flew at their sizes and form factors 12,000 years ago and in the Cretaceous. These are facts. Sticky things facts. They didn't fly underwater, Fred. Either these animals magically defied all laws of aerodynamics or somehow magically broke the cube/square law, or something was drastically different about the environment in which flew undoubtedly flew a mere 12,000 years ago and back in the Cretaceous. . . and Fred, there are one Hell of a lot more anomalies from those eras, such as your 40,000 pound pachyderms that NO LONGER, and can no longer exist today.
Megafauna exists nowhere on land today yet millions of years of evolution seems to show that mega size is a survival factor. Why not today? What has changed? The best answer seems to be gravity increased
The fact is that above a certain size, if a modern elephant stumbles, it cannot get up. . . and unless an outside force provides assistance, it is effectively dead. Gravity prevents it from lying down and then getting above a certain size. . . . and most adult elephants spend their lives standing up.
Under modern gravity, the blood pressure to get the blood the mere SEVEN FEET from a Giraffe's 24lb heart to its brain is so high—300 over 200—that it would most likely cause any other animals' arteries to blow out before long! Even then, the arteries in the Giraffe's neck have evolved special one-way valves to prevent gravity from pulling the blood back down. Yet what was the size and weight of the blood pump possessed by Argentinosaurus—which weighed an astounding 400,000 pounds, was 125 feet in length, and had a 65 foot long neck—to have blood reach what ever sized brain it used? The mind boggles thinking about it.
NOW, do you begin to grasp the problem? This is an issue that simply cannot be swept under the proverbial rug by assuming facts not in evidence such as claiming a non-existent semi-aquatic lifestyle for these animals. (Incidentally, they unearthed a vertebra of another sauropod (dubbed Amphicoelias) that is TWICE the size of the corresponding vertebra in the Argentinosaurus, which implies its from a dinosaur that is twice Argentinosaurus' size!)
By the way, working the math backwards to find what level of gravity acceleration WOULD allow such megafauna to safely exist, we find that approximately 30% of today's gravity would permit such huge animals to live and survive. . .
Uh, in my dresser drawer, next to my bed. Post Versalog Hemmi Bamboo in a leather case. Now about fifty years old.
Yes, I have a Log/Log Duplex Deci-trig, right next to my Rapidograph pens, in a drawer in my old oak drafting table in the back bedroom that haven’t seen the light of day in close to 30 years.
So? It was a land Animal that lived during the Oligocene, a period in which megafauna thrived. I have no problem with that. Teratorns lived and flew then as well. It is extinct because it cannot live under current conditions. Why?
Ah, pangs of nostalgia and joy at not having to keep track of the decimal place. . . grin. I did love those Rapidograph pens. To show how dated they are, my iPad says “Rapidograph” is misspelled. The brand has been obsoleted. Sad.
Way back nothing said tech student more than the swinging leather case of a slide rule hanging from a students’ belt. You could spot them from a lap mile away. . . For us, they were a badge of honor.
>> “Rapidograph” is misspelled. <<
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I can hardly complete a sentence these days without having to correct the lexicon in either the word processor, or the browser.
They are trying to change the language and dumb everything way down.
They call albatrosses "gooney birds" because of the extreme difficulty they have just taking off. They have to be faced straight into the wind to take off but, seemingly, many of them don't know that and many of their takeoff attempts end in failure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVmoYVTZTXU
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