A New Spin

A New Spin (cont'd)

3. Not convinced yet? What does rate have to do with it?

Let's make the following analogy to clarify the situation:
Assume you moved cottage

into a big cottage which takes a truckload of firewood a day to keep warm. You hire a truck which delivers the needed firewood every day. Your place is nice and cozy.

You then build some extravagant additions to the cottage and as a result it now takes eight-loads of firewood a day. You go ahead and hire a bigger rig that can deliver eight-loads in one trip. However, it does that only once a week instead of every day. Pretty soon your place is going cold.

When it comes to animals, Mother-Nature with help from Physics, her daughter, together with granddaughter Engineering, seem to suggest that there is definitely a limit to growth.

4. Why aren't any such big animals alive today?

There doesn't seem to be any direct evidence to suggest that the limit to growth has been reached with the African-Elephant (at least no evidence that is likely to stand in a court of law) but there is plenty of circumstantial evidence. Perhaps the jury, employing just their common sense, can yet be convinced.

It can be argued that it's just an accident of nature that no animal bigger than an elephant evolved since the age of the giant dinosaurs. The fact is that such animals actually have evolved although not on land. There are big whales alive today (provided the last one hasn't been hunted down, that is) which are nearly double the size of the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived! It appears that some animals will always grow to the maximum size possible in their given environment. It suggests that the African-Elephant, small as it may be in comparison to the giants of the past, is just the maximum an animal can grow on land today and still remain viable. (Okay, somewhat of a leap of faith if not of logic here, perhaps a better case can yet be made with the following arguments.)

A case can be made by looking at the constrains that a horse faces. As the saying goes: 'They shoot horses, don't they?' (At least they used to, let's hope they don't need to do that anymore.) This saying refers to a situation where a horse, which had the misfortune to injure a leg to the point where it couldn't bear weight, had to be euthanized to prevent it from dying in agony. It's not so much that the leg wouldn't heal, rather, the horse was not expected to live long enough for the leg to heal. The rationale was that since the leg can't bear weight, the horse will have to lie down and that will cause its lungs to collapse under its own weight. But, don't horses lie down from time to time? Yes, they do, but they must be doing it for 'recreational purposes' only and for short periods. The fact remains that a horse has to spend its days (and nights!) standing up or it will be crushed under its own weight.

If such a 'tiny' animal, by comparison, is facing such severe restriction to its 'lifestyle' due to weight; how can an enormous beast (whose weight is equivalent to the combined weight of an entire herd of some 200 horses) is expected to have any kind of lifestyle to speak of?

A whale, comparable in size to a big dinosaur, which is pulled out from the sea and left on the beach is known to get crushed under its own weight. This should not come as a surprise on the face of it since the whale, literally, does not have any legs to stand on. However, it mustn't come as a surprise should a Structural Engineering analysis of a 100 ton

dinosaur suggest that it had to be in the form of a giant centipede (if not a millipede) in order to adequately support such a structure. Similarly, it shouldn't come as a shock if a Material Strength study concludes that the legs had to be made-up from stone to begin with (on the live animal, that is!) in order to withstand the compression imposed on them by the overlying structure.

Unable to substantiate these last statements, the jury will have to be instructed to ignore them. But even without these statements, the jury may already have serious doubts about the possibility that such animals could survive under the earth's present physical parameters, let alone function and thrive the way they did for millions of years.

Next: What, then, made it possible for them to take their place in earth's history?

i. 'What is this?'

ii. --The short answer:

iii. --The long answer:

iv. For the impatient:

v. 'What is next then?'

1. The bigger they are ...

2. Is there a limit to growth?

3. Not convinced yet? What does rate have to do with it?

4. Why aren't any such big animals alive today?

5. What, then, made it possible for them to take their place in the earth's history?

6. But aren't weight and size one and the same?

7. Are we talking change in gravity, then?