Thinning Atmosphere Explains Flying Dinos - Dr. Donald Pettit, NASA Astronaut

Astronaut Donald Pettit champions a theory he developed while studying under Octave Levenspiel at Oregon State University. In short, it is apparent that large winged dinosaurs could not fly under today's atmospheric conditions. Pettit suggests that the solution to dino-flight is that the Earth's atmosphere was much thicker in the past, lending buoyancy to the giant animals while maintaining today's ratios of elemental composition. If this trend is extended long before the dinosaurs we end up with a hypothetical atmosphere as thick as Venus or even more. The theory then raises the question: what events caused the atmosphere to disappear?

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#ThickAtmosphereTheory #Pterosaurs #NASA

Levenspiel Thick Atmosphere Theory:

Esker Thick Atmosphere Theory:

PODCAST INFO:

Anastasia completed her PhD studying microbial communication at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting and exploring the woods. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities.

SOCIAL:

[MarioBuildreps]

Wow, what an amazing and interesting interview. Also, the smell of space and how Donald parallels this with how reptiles smell is so interesting. The smell might be ionisation of some sort. The whole interview was so fascinating! Thank you.

[eliotness]

Your talk brought the Younger Dryas to mind, an event some 12, 000 years ago that brought an end to many megafauna in North America and Siberia. One of the competing theories to explain the rapid melting of the ice sheets is a massive solar outburst that removed some of the atmosphere over Siberia which lead to the rapid freezing of the mammoths.

[DemystifySci_Podcast]

🧐Remember folks you can listen on the go anywhere you find podcasts! Simply search "DemystifySci."

[Greg-McIver]

I've heard that the ancient atmosphere as measured in air pockets trapped in amber was double the current atmospheric pressure. The oxygen level was much higher also.

[dotanwolf]

Great talk. He should have talked more about the herd ofelephants in the room...i mean the terestrial dinos. There is the muscle to mass ratio problem when dealing with an animal that weigh more than 10 elephants. Rupert sheldrik has this banned ted talk about how unconstant are the constants of nature...also there is the long path to understanding gravity by wal thornhill.

[KittyBoom]

I felt really privileged to listen to this interview. Thank you so much. And it wasn't just Donald, but you both were awesome here too, Michael and Anastasia.
Couple of notes, I still wouldn't rule out a change in gravity and/or electromagnetism on Earth. Personally, I view gravity as an effect of a singular force. So an increase in the EM force would mean an increase in gravity but magnitudes smaller, given how much stronger EM is compared to gravity. And since EM is what makes object "solid" and is actually the force that allows for mobility and flight, this change in the force could explain ancient megafuana. Though, in a complicated way, it could also explain a denser atmosphere. Perhaps the two are linked?
And, yeah, Velikovsky was more of a historian than a scientist, but let's not rule out historians as able to predict future discoveries. He did say that we would discover Venus was really hot, and that's what we later discovered, right? So I wouldn't rule out his view about why. Perhaps Venus is actually a new planet and "mythology" is not actually just mythology. Maybe we should give more respect to the historical accounts of our ancestors.

[jamesconway]

Interesting talk. Atmosphere or gravity value change did not get mentioned.

[jonathansanantonio]

Thinning atmosphere AND increasing gravity would both explain it. Combined it explains land dinosaurs unable to exist in today's environment.

[jackc]

I can close my eyes and imagine an astronaut on the space station setting himself up to enjoy his downtime by going to the cupola to look back at earth and contemplate. The view of the 'diaphanous' atmosphere itself is enough to spark an amount of thoughts equal in number to the stars of the universe. The earth turns, and your orbit moves, and the flow of thoughts take you to time and wonderment of ages past, like the era of dinosaurs. You ask yourself, did the earth and the atmosphere look the same back then? You scan your memories of the various dinosaurs, perhaps even ponder whether the largest of them could be visible from space. Then one of those sparks of thought arcs between your knowledge of aerodynamics and the debate about pterosaur flight, making a connection. While you stare at that thin veil of atmosphere it occurs to you that a change in its density could allow for flight of these gigantic beasts. The imagination of a giraffe size animal flying through a transparent heavy fog leaves you in a contemplative stupor while you relax floating in your the normal earth air pressure of 14.7 psi.
*Insert sound of scratching record
Hang on a second, you are floating buoyant within similar atmospheric density as on earth? Is it possible to decrease the density far enough so that you cannot fly through the space station? Is it possible to increase the density of the air within the space station to change your buoyancy?
*The record music continues
Floating carefree within the atmosphere of the space station you continue to gaze at the earth, and also marvel how easily the dinosaurs could have launched vehicles into space.

[chrisphillips]

Did you ever consider that gravity was 1/3 its current value, back in those Dino days? It takes a slight leap of faith as we also had a different star then! In a dwarf star system E is much smaller so m is proportionally smaller. Simples! Check out Dave Talbott, Dwardu Cardona and Ev Cochrane.

[dotanwolf]

Does gravity holds atoms in earth exosphere? Past the moon? I dont think so...

[alphafox]

There is no basis for the assumption that Earth or it’s atmosphere tens let alone hundreds of millions of years ago was the same as it is today other than what can be gleaned from indirect evidence and highly suspect dating methods. It is more reasonable to assume that conditions were significantly different and the remains of vastly different living things supports this notion as probable. Likewise, there is no reason to assume that major changes occurred gradually over geologic time frames. Nature tends to operate in accordance with thresholds that when met lead to sudden, large and often cascading effects. If we consider the atmosphere we must assume it came from somewhere and that there is a mechanism that contains it. I can think of four sources for atmospheric gas: the Sun, comets, the Earth itself and biological organisms. The only likely containment vessel is the Earth’s magnetic field. Regardless of how often magnetic reversals occurred and to what extent the field was attenuated pursuant to each reversal, atmospheric loss would have occurred. This may have been gradual if containment was only reduced, rapid if containment failed, or catastrophically sudden and extreme if the reversal coincided with a major mass ejection from the Sun or a solar nova event.

[kutfingertv]

At about 51 minutes you get something a bit off about David Eskers thick atmosphere theory. David highlights that Dinosaurs would require a buoyancy force equivalent to around 600 atmospheres, not 1000, to support them. This is easily achievable when you look into Super-critical fluids, and their non linear relationship between atmospheric pressure and density.


Super dooper to hear that someone else is interested in his work. Can't wait till he puts up the final chapters on dinosaurtheory.com.