Are the planets growing?

Beyond the boundaries of established science an avalanche of exotic ideas compete for our attention. Experts tell us that these ideas should not be permitted to take up the time of working scientists, and for the most part they are surely correct. But what about the gems in the rubble pile? By what ground-rules might we bring extraordinary new possibilities to light?

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Aardwolf
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:11 am

sketch1946 wrote:A stronger gravity holding a denser atmosphere could explain giantism in the early animals, birds and insects in the fossil record... ie denser air, more like swimming than flying, larger animals can be 'supported' in a denser atmosphere held down by a stronger gravity.
There are a couple of problems with this scenario.

1) While increased density increases lift, it also increases drag which is why planes fly as high as possible in less dense air to increase efficiency. So while birds of the same weight would experience couteracting effects possibly helping them fly, heavier birds would become progressivley less efficient and nature doesn't do less efficient. Also fish don't really fly in water as their average densities almost equate to their surroundings allowing movement.

2) A denser atmosphere would not help Sauropods lifting their 50ft, 15 ton necks off the ground. Because of the problem associated with thier large necks in current gravity, scientists have long assumed they developed 50ft necks to eat off the ground, which is obviously absurd. Increasing gravity isn't going to do them any favours.

The only way all problems associated with the pre-historic megafauna are solved, is for gravity to have been much weaker than it is now.

allynh
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:24 am

Thanks, sketch1946,

That's an expensive book. HA!

Be sure to read through the thread. You will find similar ideas discussed. The problem with having a denser atmosphere is that unless it approaches density like water, you can't have "ie denser air, more like swimming than flying". And with dense air you have toxicity from oxygen and nitrogen and CO2. Thus if you have high gravity, and no way to float the big animals in the atmosphere, you can't have dinosaurs.

The thread keeps growing, just like the Earth. HA!

Aardwolf
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:52 am

sketch1946 wrote:Many scientists have questioned the so-called constants of physics...
Indeed. One that keeps baffling them is why the standard kilograms keep gaining weight.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 082614.htm
Around the world, the IPK and its 40 replicas are all growing at different rates, diverging from the original.

sketch1946
Posts: 191
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by sketch1946 » Thu Feb 09, 2017 4:34 pm

Thanks for the prompt replies, nice to see some rational minds out there...

I think it's worth thinking about declining gravity in totality as a hypothesis, so many things seem to follow from such a simple premise, the book has lots of beautiful looking equations, pity the math is far out of my league... (I'm an artist, not an academic)

It's probably important not to get stuck on a particular point like dinosaur neck-weights, the overall elegant simplicity of this declining gravity idea is that so many other phenomena follow logically from an expanding universe/earth.

We have the undeniable fact of huge brontosaurus-like dinosaurs, in either less dense or more dense air, but do they have to live on land, or could they be partially living in water up to their necks?

Since the apparent aim of the Thunderbolts Project is to look at ancient literature, including myth and legend with fresh eyes, to glean any historical truth, it's worth pointing out there is a bible quote about an unknown animal
(no modern living animals fit this description, but it is perfect for a dinosaur):

"...a creature called "behemoth" is described in Job 40: 15-24. Behemoth (gigantic, Hebrew) is a massive animal. Some have attempted to say the elephant or hippopotamus is meant. However, the elephant and hippopotamus do not have a tail "like a cedar" (vs. 17). The book of Job is an ancient book, about 4000 years old. Behemoth could have been [similar to] what scientists call Diplodocus, a huge plant-eater. "

“Look at Behemoth,
which I made along with you
and which feeds on grass like an ox.
What strength it has in its loins,
what power in the muscles of its belly!
Its tail sways like a ***cedar;"

the sinews of its thighs are close-knit.
Its bones are tubes of bronze,
its limbs like rods of iron.
It ranks ***first among the works of God,

yet its Maker can approach it with his sword.
The hills bring it their produce,
and all the wild animals play nearby.
Under the lotus plants it lies,
hidden among the reeds in the ***marsh.

The lotuses conceal it in their shadow;
the poplars by the stream surround it.
A raging river does not alarm it;
it is secure, though the Jordan should surge against its mouth."

Can anyone capture it by the eyes,
or trap it and pierce its nose?

BTW 'diplodocus' means 'double beam' in Greek

sketch1946
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by sketch1946 » Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:03 pm

@Aardwolf ... I don't know much at all about the physics of giant animals or insects in the fossil record, but apparently there was an oxygen density the highest in earth's history during the carboniferous...

"But there is another aspect of arthropod design that limits size—respiration. Insects, spiders, and scorpions appear to be size-limited by the degree to which oxygen can diffuse into the innermost regions of their bodies. Today, no insect is bigger than about 6 inches in body length (although arthropods in water can be and are bigger, since their weight is buoyed up by the watery medium they exist in). In the past, however, much larger land arthropods than this did exist—during the interval of the highest oxygen in Earth’s history, the subject of this chapter. Here we will explore how the highest oxygen in Earth’s history allowed some of the strangest—and largest—animals ever on Earth."

"....the land is alive with animals and the arthropods, at least, are giants relative to similar species living today. Enormous insects, including dragonflies with nearly yardwide wings, flit about above swampy forests, and even the drier upland areas show a high diversity of both flying and earth-bound insects, intermingled with spiders, scorpions, and millipedes, and many are also giants. But it is the vertebrate life that interests us most, and here too there are giants, at least compared to the very first terrestrial forms of some 40 million years earlier, in the early part of the Carboniferous (but certainly not giant relative to the dinosaurs of the future). In the swamps, giant amphibians [frogs], some 10 feet long and massive in girth, lie about like modern-day crocodiles.

Pascual Jordan in evaluating the possible ramifications and consequences of Dirac's Gravitational Hypothesis merely says on pages 93 and 94:

"Despite the criticisms of Hilten's method, further studies might show his idea, of an earth radius some 20% less in the Carboniferous era than at present, to be not entirely wrong. In that case, the following thoughts might be worth further investigation. They concern the well-known giant insect fossils found in the Carboniferous layers, which undoubtedly pose a problem for the natural historian. They are the more remarkable as (according to E. Voight, personal communication) they are found to occur in several distinct species. This leads to the thought that some condition or circumstance then favoured the development by natural selection of these extra large forms. (Other species of that era seem also to have been relatively large, but this cannot be taken as firm evidence since smaller forms may well have existed but not been so well preserved.)

If then, there was some circumstance favouring the development of giant insects, could it perhaps have been due to a combination of a stronger gravitational field at the Earth's surface and a higher atmospheric density - factors that might favour the flight of heavier insects?"

Notwithstanding the above, I still think it's important to try to keep the overall picture in mind, the whole theory, and not get bogged down with individual details.. for instance it would be sad to dismiss the whole concept of plasma 'thunderbolts' entirely, just because a plasma strike may or may not be the possible cause of the Richat 'structure' or 'Eye of the Sahara'

Thanks to all for the input, it's a great pleasure to discuss some of these concepts rationally :-)

allynh
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Fri Feb 10, 2017 12:00 pm

sketch1946,

It's not a question of anyone dismissing anything. Most of the stuff you have brought up has been discussed.

Go to google and enter the following search string to get a list of the various discussions about "giant insects" on the Forum, they are scattered among many threads.

giant insects site:thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/

Read through the various post and then decide if there is still a need for more discussion, but remember, we will point out that the real world always trumps a great theory. HA!

sketch1946
Posts: 191
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:56 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by sketch1946 » Sat Feb 11, 2017 1:28 am

allynh wrote:sketch1946,

It's not a question of anyone dismissing anything. Most of the stuff you have brought up has been discussed.

Go to google and enter the following search string to get a list of the various discussions about "giant insects" on the Forum, they are scattered among many threads.

giant insects site:thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/

Read through the various post and then decide if there is still a need for more discussion, but remember, we will point out that the real world always trumps a great theory. HA!
I did a search as you suggested, but no, the major points I would love to talk about have not yet been discussed, at least unless I missed them, in which case I apologise in advance... I saw quite a lot of posts about giant insects and some suggestions that gravity might have been weaker in the past, the complete opposite of this hypothesis

Here is a quick summary
1. P A M Dirac is no slouch of a mathematician
2. Dirac put forward a hypothesis that the coefficient of Gravity (big G) might have decayed with time.
3. Pascual Jordan a professor at Hamburg university published a book discussing some
theoretical ***consequences of this hypothesis
4. The Earth would expand slowly, intermittently, by expansion cracks, mostly subterranean.
5. The process is not a slow steady process, but would be measurable only after each earthquake or expansion event.
6. The earth would adjust in shape to accommodate the expansion after each major or minor expansion or volcanic event, earthquakes....the earth's crust cracking apart like a split in a football where the inner bladder bulges through a split in the covering leather.
7. the initial higher value of big G would mean every molecule in the hot magma of the earth, under the crust, would be at a higher pressure in the past, forced against its neighbours with a stronger force in the past, due to higher gravitational constant at an earlier time.
8. as gravity decayed with time, the internal pressure inside the crust would release with explosive volcanoes, and expansion cracking, the modern familiar precept of plate tectonics, except **without the need for subduction to balance the expansion.
9. This is a simple mechanism for the forces involved in plate tectonics, all due to a one simple principle.
10. The original crust would form at a smaller size than present, approx 50-65% of the present diameter of the earth. all the continents are 'touching' each other.
11. At this size, the existing oceans would cover the earth to approx 1800 meters.
12. as the crust of the continents is formed at this smaller diameter, it's logical that as the bladder of the football starts to show through splits in the outer cover, the bladder's diameter grows and the surface of the covering continental 'plates' buckles and folds to accommodate the smoother and bigger supporting surface.
13. The initial higher gravity causes the atmosphere to be in a more highly compressed state, like a barymetric chamber used to assist divers after a deep dive, this higher atmospheric pressure could account for the oxygen and giant insect phenomena discussed so frequently in previous posts.
14. Pascual Jordan comments that this might account for the gigantism in the fossil record.
15. There is no need in this theory for the problematic matter creation ex nihilo postulated by other expanding earth proponents
16. the issue of juvenile water is discussed
17. the problem of the missing subduction zones is addressed, for instance like around africa, or antarctica where these continents are surround by expansion cracks but not subduction zones
18. The unexpected <200my age of the ocean beds is addressed
19. the fact that major fossil beds of mass fish extinctions are all on the continental land areas not in the sea beds
20. The mathematical basis and Dirac's equations are dealt with very thoroughly, including dealing with all the most common objections to Dirac's theory, including the fact that all the major so-called constants of physics have been questioned by leading scientists.
21. Dirac had a model of the nature of 'empty' space called the 'Dirac Ocean' where he successfully predicted antimatter, and the hypothesis that space is filled with something, not nothing :-)
22. The continents don't drift anywhere, they stay right where they always were, only the seafloor grows
23. It explains pole wandering, the initial position of the poles changes as the overall geometry of the earth gets bigger

I made a simple home model years ago, covered a round balloon with vaseline, (petroleum jelly) then pressed wet paper 'continents' into the vaseline, leaving some gaps just to make the continents start with approx the right shape, then sprayed brittle gouach water paint over the globe, then steadily blew the balloon up... it worked absolutely perfectly..

The surprise was earthquakes! the expansion would cause the 'continents' to suddenly release a bit here and there, as the balloon slowly grew in size...

I have been in contact with James Maxlow, I was thinking of making an animation in blender a bit clearer and higher res than what he has on his website... I should get back on to the job
Folded mountains from the expanding earth Jordan.jpg
Folded mountains from the expanding earth Jordan.jpg (11.33 KiB) Viewed 11016 times

allynh
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Sat Feb 18, 2017 12:58 pm

Oh, this is a fun one. Read the article first, then check the Wiki page. Then go to google maps, type in "New Zealand" and switch to satellite view to see the undersea part.

Zealandia (continent)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealandia_(continent)

Geologists spy an eighth continent: Zealandia
http://www.nature.com/news/geologists-s ... ia-1.21503
This mostly submerged world should be recognized alongside Africa, Australia and others, argue some researchers.

NASA/JSC

New Zealand (south island on the left) is part of what some scientists argue should be a new continent.

Beneath the waves in the southwest Pacific Ocean lies a mostly hidden realm — dubbed Zealandia — that deserves to be called a continent, geologists say.

Geophysical data suggest that a region spanning 5 million square kilometres, which includes New Zealand and New Caledonia, is a single, intact piece of continental crust and is geologically separate from Australia, a team of scientists from New Zealand, Australia and New Caledonia argue in the March/April issue of GSA Today. (see 'Hidden crust')

“If you could pull the plug on the world’s oceans, then Zealandia would probably long ago have been recognized as a continent,” says team leader Nick Mortimer, a geologist at GNS Science in Dunedin, New Zealand.

However, there is no international body in charge of designating official continents, and so the researchers must hope that enough of their colleagues agree to recognize the landmass. Otherwise, their proposal could remain more of a theoretical wish than a radical reshaping of what every child has to learn in geography class.

“The results are pushing us to rethink how broadly we can or should apply the established definition of geological continental landmasses,” says Patricia Durance, a mineral geologist at the GNS Science office in Lower Hutt, New Zealand.

Not a mash-up

Mortimer and his colleagues have been making the case for Zealandia for more than a decade, in talks, popular articles and books; the latest paper is their most technical synthesis yet. In it, they report that Zealandia began to peel away from the supercontinent of Gondwana starting about 100 million years ago.

The rift gave Zealandia its independence, but it also pulled and thinned the crust, causing the area to sink, and dooming most of it to a watery existence. Today, only about 6% of it remains above water, as New Zealand and New Caledonia.

Satellite maps made using Earth’s gravitational field clearly show that Zealandia is a coherent geographical feature stretching from near Australia’s northeastern coast well past the islands of New Zealand, Mortimer says. Sea-floor samples reveal that Zealandia consists of light continental crust and not the dark volcanic rocks that make up nearby underwater plateaus. The area seems to be structurally intact, rather than a mash-up of different continental-crust fragments.

There is no widely accepted definition of a continent, and geographers and geologists differ on the question. (Geographically, Europe and Asia are considered separate continents, whereas geologists consider them the single landmass of Eurasia.) “One of the main benefits of this article is that it draws attention to the arbitrary and inconsistent use of such a fundamental term as continent,” says Brendan Murphy, a geologist at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Canada.

Zealandia will face an uphill battle in garnering the same popular name recognition as Eurasia, Africa, Antarctica, Australia and North and South America. “Claiming that Zealandia is a continent is a bit like stamp collecting,” says Peter Cawood, a geologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. “So what?”

Whatever it is called, Mortimer says, studies of Zealandia should help biogeographers to better understand how New Zealand’s endemic plants and animals arose — and give geologists a boost in learning how continental crust can be reshaped.

sketch1946
Posts: 191
Joined: Wed Feb 08, 2017 7:56 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by sketch1946 » Sat Feb 18, 2017 5:08 pm

G'day allynh
allynh wrote:Oh, this is a fun one. Read the article first, then check the Wiki page. Then go to google maps, type in "New Zealand" and switch to satellite view to see the undersea part.

Zealandia (continent)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zealandia_(continent)

Geologists spy an eighth continent: Zealandia
http://www.nature.com/news/geologists-s ... ia-1.21503

This mostly submerged world should be recognized alongside Africa, Australia and others, argue some researchers.

NASA/JSC

New Zealand (south island on the left) is part of what some scientists argue should be a new continent.
Haha, I'm glad you enjoy all this stuff... I do :-)

I think New Zealand has proven it's a continent by the way they play rugby :-)

",,,The progressive accumulation of bathymetric, geological, and geophysical data since the nineteenth century has led many authors to apply the adjective continental to New Zealand and some of its nearby submarine plateaus and rises. “New Zealand” was listed as a continent by Cogley (1984), but he noted that its continental limits were very sparsely mapped. The name Zealandia was first proposed by Luyendyk (1995) as a collective name for New Zealand, the Chatham Rise, Campbell Plateau, and Lord Howe Rise (Fig. 2). Implicit in Luyendyk’s paper was that this was a large region of continental crust..."

What constitutes a continent? I feel this is not an issue, the science of this is rock-solid
well, almost... :-)

Yeah the issue of where exactly are the edges of the continents is interesting...

"Whereas most of Zealandia’s crust is thinner than the 30–46 km that is typical of most continents, the above studies show that it is everywhere thicker than the ~7-km-thick crust of the ocean basins. This result is visible in the global CRUST1.0 model of Laske et al. (2013) […]. Collectively, the crustal structure results show that the rock samples [across Zealandia] are not from separate continental fragments or blocks now separated by oceanic crust, but are from a single continental mass."

An important part of this is of course the land grab:

"The term [ocean grabbing] has emerged following a growing body of literature on land grabbing, which has been used to reference the purchase or expropriation of land (often in distant countries) by transnational or national corporations, governments, individuals or NGOs. These can include ‘grabs’ of land for fuel, food production, investment, conservation or other purposes <....> In the past few years, the term ‘ocean grabbing’ has come to broadly reference similar concerns as they pertain to the rights and livelihoods of small-scale fishers and vulnerable coastal peoples. Notably, in 2012, Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, warned: “‘Ocean-grabbing’ – in the shape of shady access agreements that harm small-scale fishers, unreported catch, incursions into protected waters, and the diversion of resources away from local populations – can be as serious a threat as ‘land-grabbing’...”

Where has this 'new' 'continent' 'drifted' from... some articles say from Australia, or Antarctica or both:

"...Zealandia’s geology, they argue, indicates it broke off from the east Australian continental basins around 84 million years ago, and is similar in composition in many parts...."
(patriotic kiwis strongly deny the possibility) :-)

Nowadays people talk about all sorts of mythical 'continents' which float around all over the place, in fact defying both logic and physics... crashing into each other, being 'recycled', 'breaking off', and 'suturing' and 'drifting', and 'becoming part of...', 'joined together', 'broke apart' etc,
some people speculate on unknown undersea connections...
"How strongly Bollons Seamount (south of the Chatham Islands) remains connected to Zealandia is unknown."
so 'continents' do and go wherever and whatever the newest theory requires...
more unstable than modern marriages....

The 'Expanding Earth' model means no 'continent' goes anywhere, it's very simple and straightforward, the relative movement is one earthquake or seismic event at a time, mainly by magma welling up at the mid-ocean cracks in the oceanic crusts... one simple theory explains all the observed evidence as pointed out by Pascual Jordan, as part of the consequences of Dirac's gravitational hypothesis...
Who was Pascual Jordan?

I'm glad you asked: :-)

"Together with Max Born and Werner Heisenberg, Jordan was co-author of an important series of papers on quantum mechanics. He went on to pioneer early quantum field theory before largely switching his focus to cosmology before World War II."

"Jordan devised a type of non-associative algebras, now named Jordan algebras in his honor, in an attempt to create an algebra of observables for quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. Today, von Neumann algebras are also employed for this purpose. Jordan algebras have since been applied in projective geometry, number theory, complex analysis, optimization, and many other fields of pure and applied mathematics, and continue to be used in studying the mathematical and conceptual underpinnings of quantum theory."

"In 1966, Jordan published the 182 page work Die Expansion der Erde. Folgerungen aus der Diracschen Gravitationshypothese (The expansion of the Earth. Conclusions from the Dirac gravitation hypothesis) in which he developed his theory that, according to Paul Dirac's hypothesis of a steady weakening of gravitation throughout the history of the universe, the Earth may have swollen to its current size, from an initial ball of a diameter of only about 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi). This theory could explain why the ductile lower sima layer of the Earth's crust is of a comparatively uniform thickness, while the brittle upper sial layer of the Earth's crust had broken apart into the main continental plates. The continents having to adapt to the ever flatter surface of the growing ball, the mountain ranges on the Earth's surface would, in the course of that, have come into being as constricted folds."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascual_Jordan

Nowadays new continents pop up as if they were real, in much the same way as myths are formed:

"Gondwanaland, is the name given to an ancient supercontinent. It is believed to have sutured between about 573 and 510 million years ago (Mya), joining East Gondwana to West Gondwana. Gondwana formed prior to Pangaea, and later became part of it.

Around 335 Mya Gondwana and Laurasia joined together to form the supercontinent Pangaea, which existed until approximately 215-175 Mya. Gondwana then separated from Laurasia (the mid-Mesozoic era) in the breakup of Pangaea, drifting farther south after the split. Gondwana itself then also broke apart.

Gondwana included most of the landmasses in today's Southern Hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar, and the Australian continent, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent, which have now moved entirely into the Northern Hemisphere."

Actually if the truth were known, Gondwana is not a continent and is actually a province of India :-)

"...Scholars believe that Gonds settled in Gondwana, now known as eastern Madhya Pradesh..."

allynh
Posts: 919
Joined: Fri Aug 22, 2008 5:51 pm

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Thu Feb 23, 2017 2:47 pm

Here is more on Arkstorm and Atmospheric rivers.

Every 200 years California suffers a storm of biblical proportions — this year’s rains are just a precursor
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/21/14684 ... n-arkstorm
Photo by Brian Baer/ California Department of Water Resources via Getty Images

A series of storms have inundated California over the past few weeks, and the latest deluge is currently swelling rivers and reservoirs that are already spilling over. Vast swathes of California continue to be at risk for flooding as the storm runoff makes its way through river systems, the National Weather Service warns. Across California, residents were evacuated when local rivers flooded, including a small Northern California town that experienced a levee breach Monday night.

“So it appears that California may be due for another episode soon.”

The severe flooding may feel like a whiplash development in a state that’s been locked in drought for five years — and in an “exceptional drought” for three of them. Still, California has seen worse: massive floods have swept through the state about every 200 years for the past 2,000 years or more, climate scientists Michael Dettinger and Lynn Ingram recount in a 2013 article.

The most recent was a series of storms that lasted for a near-biblical 43 days between 1861 and 1862, creating a vast lake where California’s Central Valley had been. Floodwaters drowned thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of cattle, and forced the state’s government to move from Sacramento to San Francisco.

More than 150 years have passed since California’s last, great flood — and a team of researchers with the US Geological Survey have predicted what kind of damage a similar flood would cause today. Their simulation, called the ARkStorm, anticipates that a stretch of the Central Valley 300 miles long by 20 miles wide would be underwater. Cities up and down the coast of California would flood. Winds would howl 60 to 125 miles per hour, and landslides would make roads impassable.


Although the simulation didn’t include a body count, Dettinger and Ingram predicted that thousands of people would probably die. And it could happen again any time: it’s been 150 years since the 1861–1862 floods, they wrote. “So it appears that California may be due for another episode soon.”

This winter’s heavy precipitation has already caused a slew of problems; California’s governor Jerry Brown called a state of emergency after December and January’s storms to ensure that 50 counties would be able to get funds to repair the damage. Last week, the Oroville Dam’s crumbling emergency spillway triggered the emergency evacuation of more than 180,000 people.

Now, the state’s Department of Water Resources is turning its attention to the Don Pedro Dam in Tuolumne County, California — about two hours due west of Yosemite National Park. The dam operators opened the spillway Monday afternoon, which will mean higher water levels in the river system for a while, says Jon Ericson with the California Department of Water Resources. People who live along the Tuolumne River are being encouraged to move to higher ground, the LA Times reported on Monday.

“We’re really going to be very vigilant,” Ericson told The Verge on Monday. “We always are, but especially the next 24 to 48 hours there’s going to be quite a bit of water that’s going to be coming through the system.”


Though the impact has been extensive, Marty Ralph, the director of the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at the University of California, San Diego, doesn’t think that this latest storm is this century’s equivalent to the 1861–1862 floods. “They are the same type,” Ralph says. “But I don’t think that they’re the magnitude that that ARkStorm predicted.”

“It’s about the equivalent of 20 Mississippi Rivers’ worth of water.”

Both storms, Ralph says, are the result of an atmospheric river, first identified in 1998. An atmospheric river is a massive ribbon of water vapor that flows off the Pacific Ocean and combines with strong, low-altitude winds. They stretch about 250 to 375 miles across, but can reach from 1,000 to more than 2,000 miles in length. “It’s about the equivalent of 20 Mississippi Rivers’ worth of water, but it’s in the form of water vapor rather than liquid,” Ralph says. When it hits the coastal mountains, the stream of warm, wet air is forced upward, where it cools and condenses into massive rain clouds.

“It’s definitely a very unusually very wet year for us,” Ralph says, but he doesn’t think that it’s an ARkStorm type year. “Now that’s not to say that couldn’t happen, which would be highly tragic.”

Atmospheric river infographic by NOAA Infographic by NOAA

In a typical year, around nine atmospheric rivers shower California with precipitation. They’re a critical source of about a third to half of the annual water in a state where the summers are usually bone-dry. But they also frequently go hand in hand with devastating wind storms, which can cause billions of dollars of damage, according to a study published Monday in the journal Nature Geosciences.

“When we get a sequence of them, or we get too many and the soils are real moist and the rivers are high and the reservoirs are full, then they can go from being largely beneficial — because we need water in the West — to hazards,” Ralph says.

That’s the situation we’re in now, Ralph says, with about 30 atmospheric rivers since October 1st — and it’s something we can expect to see more of. As global temperatures continue to climb, the air can hold more water vapor — which means calmer winds, but warmer and wetter atmospheric rivers, more often. And that means more flooding.


“This situation that we’re seeing with the pronounced drought punctuated by wet conditions that are producing a lot of runoff — that is exactly what we are seeing intensify in the historical record,” says Noah Diffenbaugh, a professor of Earth Sciences at Stanford University. “And it’s exactly what climate models project for the future.”

Climate change could exacerbate the dynamic as we struggle with an aging and already failing infrastructure. We can probably expect more, and worse catastrophes than Oroville’s crumbling spillway. That’s why Newsha Ajami, Stanford’s director of Urban Water Policy, says, “Coming up with new more innovative management and operational rules that reflect the 21st century climatic realities — I think that is really an important issue.”

The good news is that the weather seems to be calming down — for now. Over the past 48 hours, two to three inches of rain washed over the Sacramento valley and between five and eight inches fell in the Sierra Nevadas, Eric Kurth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told The Verge. At least a foot of snow fell at higher mountain elevations, and more is expected. The winds have calmed down today, but yesterday they howled at 199mph through California’s mountain peaks. Thursday should bring a brief dry spell, but more typical, cold winter weather will follow.

“The good part, though, is that the more precipitation that we get in the form of snow, the less is running off into streams and rivers and creeks, so it’s definitely much less of a flood issue,” Kurth says. Still, he adds, there could be some ongoing flooding in California’s Central Valley. “The ground is saturated, and creeks and rivers are high, so adding anything additional could always cause some problems.”
The Team really needs to spend resources on understanding this.

Atmospheric River Information Page
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/atmrivers/

Aardwolf
Posts: 1330
Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2009 7:56 am

Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Wed Mar 01, 2017 9:59 am

sketch1946 wrote:It's probably important not to get stuck on a particular point like dinosaur neck-weights, the overall elegant simplicity of this declining gravity idea is that so many other phenomena follow logically from an expanding universe/earth.
On the contrary. Any theory must be able to explain any phenomena/experiment. If it can't the theory is busted. Current and increased gravity in the past is busted if it cant explain long heavy necks.
sketch1946 wrote:We have the undeniable fact of huge brontosaurus-like dinosaurs, in either less dense or more dense air, but do they have to live on land, or could they be partially living in water up to their necks?
No they can't. These were animals that evolved over tens of millions of years. If they were confined to water because of their size they would not have evolved legs which would be pointless, or an appetite for foilage which the only way they could eat was to find very deep water adjacent to overhanging trees.

Aardwolf
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Wed Mar 01, 2017 10:39 am

sketch1946 wrote:If then, there was some circumstance favouring the development of giant insects, could it perhaps have been due to a combination of a stronger gravitational field at the Earth's surface and a higher atmospheric density - factors that might favour the flight of heavier insects?"
No I'm afraid that these factors do not favour heavier insects. I don't dispute that oxygen may have been a limiting factor, after all no oxygen = no animals at all. However, increased gravity does not favour heavier flying insects.

Consider this: If gravity were 20%-30% lower now many flightless birds would be able to fly. Increasing gravity 20%-30% would render many large birds that have difficulty flying now (they spend most of their time on the ground) unable to fly.

allynh
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by allynh » Thu Mar 02, 2017 2:39 pm

The important point with this article is, that by showing that dinosaurs had similar tissue structure to today's birds, then the only way a large dinosaur could exist is under a low gravity condition.

'Best ever' view of what a dinosaur really looked like
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39126987
By Helen Briggs BBC News
AnchiornisJulius T. Csotony

Anchiornis: A feathered dinosaur from China

A dinosaur that lived 160 million years ago had drumstick-shaped legs much like living birds, according to palaeontologists.

The feathered dinosaur also had bird-like arms similar to wings.

Scientists used high-powered lasers to reveal invisible details of what the creature looked like.

The research could give insights into the origins of flight, which is thought to have evolved more than 150 million years ago.

Michael Pittman of the University of Hong Kong said the study was a landmark in our understanding of the origins of birds.

"In this study, what we've done is we've used high-powered lasers to reveal unseen soft tissues preserved alongside the bones of a feathered dinosaur called Anchiornis," he said.

AnchiornisWang XL, Pittman M et al. 2017

Studies of nine Anchiornis specimens reveal the accurate body outline of the bird-like dinosaur

The research team used laser-stimulated fluorescence imaging, a technique that reveals soft tissue details that are unseen under visible light.

The method involves sweeping laser light across a specimen while taking long-exposure photos with a camera.
wing.jpg
The wing of the dinosaur Wang XL, Pittman M et al. 2017

The wing of the dinosaur

Dr Stephen Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, who was not connected with the research, said the study produced striking evidence of just how bird-like these dinosaurs were.

"This study uses high-powered lasers to generate the single best look at the wings and body outline of a dinosaur ever," he told the BBC News website.

"The laser images show that this non-bird dinosaur had wings that were remarkably similar to those of living birds, down to the soft tissues."

Anchiornis is Greek for "almost bird".

The dinosaur lived in China during the late Jurassic Period, around the time when the first true birds are thought to have appeared.

The creature had feathers and seems to have been black with white stripes and displayed a distinctive orange feather crest on the crown of its head.

It is not clear whether Anchiornis could fly or glide.

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Follow Helen on Twitter.

sketch1946
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by sketch1946 » Fri Mar 03, 2017 2:25 am

This is a hypothesis, it's just a way of speculating what ***might have happened in the past to allow giant creatures like brontosaurus etc to flourish.... the actual causes of denser atmosphere, or different scenarios that might cause changes to the composition and ***volume of earth's atmosphere are just speculations, trying to explain the observed evidence in the world today....

Increased gravity could have allowed giant animals to exist, making it ***easier for them not harder:
This doesn't seem reasonable, but think of how whales are quite happy in the increased pressure of the sea, they appear to have evolved legs then taken to the water, the increased density, higher than atmospheric pressure of the water allows them to 'fly' in the water.... water is much more dense than the atmosphere... "...water at sea level is 784 times more dense than the air at sea level..." Penguins fly in the water... heavy cumbersome animals like sealions and walruses are graceful and fluid in the water, whales die on land. but are equally graceful and fluid in the sea....

Atmospheric pressure is a direct function of at least three things, the volume of the atmosphere, the composition of the atmosphere, and the mass of the earth. Increased gravity with the existing mass of our atmosphere would influence atmospheric pressure in direct proportion to gravity,
consider a "unit area" of 1 square inch. At sea level, the weight of the air above this unit area would (on average) weigh 14.7 pounds! If the atmosphere was increased to 5 atmospheres of pressure, the weight of air would be five times heavier....

"....the giant flying creatures of the dinosaur age could only fly if the atmospheric pressure was much higher than it is now: at least 3.7–5.0 bar."

"....how did the atmosphere get to that pressure 100–65 million years ago (Mya)? What was the pressure before that? And how did it drop down to today’s 1 bar? Although we have no definite answers to these questions, let us put forth reasonable possible explanations."

"....The atmosphere could have started at higher pressure and then decreased continuously through Earth’s life to ~4–5 bar ~100 Mya and down to 1 bar today (curve C)."

"Geologists believe that most of the carbon on the young, hot Earth, >4000 Mya, was in the form of gaseous carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane. With time, the CO and CH4 reacted with oxide minerals and were transformed into CO2. These reactions did not change the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere."

"Our sister planet and nearest neighbor, Venus, has an atmosphere of 90 bar pressure, consisting of 96% CO2 (5). Why should Earth be so different? Ronov measured the equivalent of at least 55 bar of CO2 tied up as carbonates around the world (6), whereas Holland estimates that at least 70 bar of CO2 is bound as carbonate materials (7). These carbonates had to come from the atmosphere, by way of the oceans, so we propose that, after the original oxidation of CH4 and CO, Earth’s early atmosphere was at very high pressure, up to ***90 bar, and that it consisted primarily of CO2."

"Today, vast deposits of sedimentary carbonate rocks are found on land and on ocean bottoms, >1,000,000 km3 throughout Earth’s crust. Above the continents, the CO2 was taken up by rainwater and by groundwater. This CO2-rich water reacted with rocks to form bicarbonates, followed by transport to the ocean and precipitation as calcium and magnesium carbonates. In the ocean, dissolved CO2 combined with the calcium hydroxide to form deposits of chalk, or it was taken up by coral, mollusks, and other living creatures to form giant reefs. A study of the distribution through time of these deposits gives us clues to the history of CO2 in the atmosphere."

"....The geological evidence is consistent with and lends support to the physiological and aerodynamic arguments (1) that the atmospheric pressure was definitely higher in the age of dinosaurs than it is today. If you reject this argument and if you prefer to believe that the atmosphere was at 1 bar throughout Earth’s history, how do you explain where the measured 55–70 bar of CO2 in limestone and other carbonates came from?"

"...During the Carboniferous period, 350–280 Mya, these plants proliferated widely, covering the land surfaces with lush forests of giant ferns, trees, and plants of all types. Because the atmosphere was rich in CO2, but very poor in oxygen, dead plant material did not decompose rapidly, so layer upon layer of it was laid down in thick blankets that would transform over time to coal."

"...At the same time, the concentration of oxygen slowly rose. These two changes, the decrease in CO2 and the rise in oxygen, thinned the forests and the dead material began to be oxidized more rapidly, so that dense layers of dead organics were no longer deposited. Evidence of this change in atmospheric conditions is that we cannot find any massive coal deposits younger than 65 million years."

"...Animal life found this changed atmosphere to its liking, so mammals and dinosaurs flourished, first as very small creatures but then increasing in size as a result of evolutionary competition. This led to the giant flying creatures close to the end of the dinosaur age. It could be that these creatures died out as the total pressure of the atmosphere ***dropped below their sustainable level..."

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/c ... learn.html

Aardwolf
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Re: Are the planets growing?

Unread post by Aardwolf » Fri Mar 03, 2017 8:20 am

sketch1946 wrote:This is a hypothesis,..
And a useless one at that.

1) Sauropods did not dwell in water. If they dwelled in water they would never have evolved legs. They had legs for walking on land. They ate land based food. You hypothesis needs to explain that rather than just hand wave it away. They didn't suddenly weigh 80 tons one day and all take to the water. They evolved over time and if they were in water they wouldn't have legs, or eat foilage.

2) Comparing flight to swimming is absurd. All animals have a body density very similar to water because they are all basically made of water so have a natural buoancy. Animals float in water, they don't fly in it. Virtually any animal can take to the water, even pigs who are not renowned for their swimming abilities. You say penguins "fly" in the sea. What about 450kg polar bears are they flying in the sea?

3) Increasing the atmosphere density even 4 or 5 times does not have any significant impact of the ability to fly as the increased drag reduces any gains as expained previously. Increasing gravity at the same time (as you proposed earlier) just makes flying harder if not impossible.

Only one hypothesis can fit all the known phenomena from pre-history. A smaller, lower gravity Earth.

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