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To: Swordmaker

Enough to know that bumblebees can’t fly.

When theory conflicts with observation, look for a modification of the theory; apply Occam’s Razor; and rule out hypotheses that cause more problems than they solve.

Little Green Men; impossibly wild planetary movements; neutronium bones; waxing or waning gravity; internal phlogistan sacs: all fun, but they don’t describe reality.


20 posted on 12/04/2008 9:18:57 PM PST by ApplegateRanch (The mob got President Barabbas; America got shafted)
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To: ApplegateRanch; Coyoteman; SunkenCiv
Enough to know that bumblebees can’t fly.

When that canard (pun intended) was first claimed, we really did not understand aerodynamics, especially the micro-aerodynamics of insects.

Bumblebees can obviously fly.

We now know how bumblebees can fly... and why a mega-fauna bumblebee COULD NOT fly if it were even just three or four times its current size because it would also be nine or sixteen times its current mass... in current conditions

The real question that needs to be answered is "how could dragonflies with four foot wingspans—with essentially no bodily conformity or wing proportion differences with todays maximum 6" wingspans dragonflies—fly?"

Why were their muscles not larger according to the Square Cube law to provide the strength necessary support the mass that was the cube of their volume? Why were their muscles only scaled up and normally proportioned compared to modern Dragonflies?

We KNOW the theoretical maximum strength of the chemical engines that make up muscles—and to move that much mass would require much larger muscles than muscles just scaled up from a smaller Dragonfly. In addition, the proportionally larger wings of the ancient dragonflies, are far too small to support the mass, according to the laws of aerodynamics... yet no one claims these were not flying insects.

When theory conflicts with observation, look for a modification of the theory;

Or, you re-examine your assumptions and check your facts to see if you have mis-interpreted something. In this instance, it is important to know what conditions might effect the ability of these animals to survive in their environment.

. . . apply Occam’s Razor; and rule out hypotheses that cause more problems than they solve.

This IS Occam's razor... because there is no other credible explanation of how megafauna, such as Argentinosaurus—a sauropod that is conservatively estimated to have weighed in at over 220,000 pounds—could even move.

That weight, which is found in paleontology textbooks, is extremely conservative because it erroneously assumes that despite the doubling and tripling of length and width of Argentinosaurus from smaller known species of similar sauropods, the muscles would not have had to have been far larger in cross section to move the exponentially larger mass of the much heavier animal—but increasing cross-sectional area is the way muscles gain strength. If the muscles and bone were as dense and properly proportioned to provide the required force on the skeletal remains of Argentinosaurus as those of the smaller sauropods would be if it were blown up to equal sizes, the weights may be more properly calculated to be almost 500,000 lbs! If you look at the size and weight charts of the Sauropods in the textbooks, you find that the paleontologists. when doubling the size of a sauropod, merely doubled the mass as well and published that number! That's is not the way it works in nature.

A mouse, suddenly increased to the size of an elephant would not work; its bones and muscles would be far too small to lift its body off the ground. The mouse's legs would have to be moved directly under the supporting bones, thickened, and larger, more massive tendon attachments would have to be added. This mega-mouse could no longer scurry to get from place to place... it would have to plod. It would have to be a re-designed mouse that would have bones and muscles much more like those of an elephant.

This mere doubling of the mass and weight in these charts, when the sauropod's other dimensions are all doubled, is a complete violation of the Square Cube Law! It is dishonest.

The Square Cube Law is a law of three dimensional geometry that essentially states that the volume of a solid increases by the cube of the multiplier of the size. For example if you double (2X) the dimensions of something and maintain its composition and density, the volume and mass are not merely doubled, they are quadrupled (4X)!. If you triple (3X) the dimensions, keeping everything else essentially the same, the mass and volume are increased by NINE TIMES. In biology, this is complicated by the fact that muscle strength is a function of the SQUARING of the cross section... not the CUBING. Strength essentially increases with the multiplier of the size... but the mass the muscle needs to move is increasing by the CUBE of the multiplier.

So why are the paleontologists fudging the calculations to make the sauropods lighter than they probably were—even though this "light weight" is still 10 to 11 times greater than the largest modern land animal—and far greater than the theoretical maximum strength that can be generated by chemical means to lift this mass. It's because if they used the actual calculated figures obtained by using the proper three-dimensional geometry laws, the number rapidly increase to the absurd!

They are desperately trying to keep the weights down because they have a real problem with what they originally calculated how much these animals had to weigh. If they followed the math, the animals would weigh in at 20 to 30 times the weight of the largest modern animal. You can find articles in scientific journals where the weights were calculated properly and debates were hot and heavy about how did the animals move. How could they ingest enough calories in vegetable matter to supply the required energy to move? For many years, sauropods were assumed to have been semi-aquatic animals so they could support their mass and weight in swamps and shallow lakes. Then paleo-physiologists demonstrated that the feet of sauropods were not at all adapted for walking in mud (and/or swimming), but were rather much more similar to the feet of animals who walked on solid ground. Oops. There went that theory, shot down by inconvenient facts.

Other complications of biology were postulated to get these massive animals to live under an assumed One Gravity environment. To get adequate blood circulation, the invented secondary and tertiary hears... and then added booster blood pumps in the necks to boost the flow of blood to the head and brain centers without require a completely absurd blood pressure that would easily pop any even theoretical artery walls. The animals would have to continue to eat while sleeping so as to maximize the amount of carbohydrates they could take in. Oxygen levels in the atmosphere had to be twice to three times what modern conditions are to provide enough for the animals to intake enough to metabolize what they were eating to provide the needed energy to move their massive sizes. Oxygen levels that high would make spontaneous wildfires a consistent danger as any dry woods or grasses would easily kindle into fire with just static electric sparks. You want to talk hypotheses that cause more problems than they solve, accepting that the dinosaurs lived in a gravity similar to modern levels is about complicating as you can get! Now, they merely fudge the calculations... in hopes no one will notice the really severe problems associated with trying to squeeze such large animals into a 1G environment.

I am open to other explanations. Were ancient Dinosaurian muscles exponentially stronger per cross sectional area than modern muscles? We have some fossil muscle tissue... it appears to be very similar to modern muscle composition. Were chemical reactions somehow more energetic in the Jurrasic Era? Were Dinosaurian bones much lighter than modern bones? Again, the structure isn't that much different from modern animals. Was the atmosphere dense enough to emulate water and give dinosaurs and other megafauna enough buoyancy to displace their mass—say like that of modern Venus' 90 Bars? Occam's Razor cuts deep both ways... it is much simpler to hypothesize that these animals lived in an approximate 1/3 G environment (I don't know where that 6% figure came from, I haven't seen it)—almost all of these problems then disappear.

...all fun, but they don’t describe reality.

And THAT is exactly the problem. In today's reality, today's conditions, today's GRAVITY, such mega-fauna do not, and apparently, can not exist. The question then is "What was different, in the time of the dinosaurs, that DID allow such mega-fauna to move, to thrive?"

Attenuated gravity is one hypothesis that seems to meet most of the observed facts. How it was attenuated is another question.

21 posted on 12/05/2008 12:25:33 AM PST by Swordmaker (Remember, the proper pronunciation of IE is "AAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE!)
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