What is gravity?

[smurfslappa]

Gravity is an electromagnetic force. Exactly how they were able to float a frog in a laboratory with powerful magnetic forces, these same forces are what pull us towards the Earth. There are indications that the gravity of the Earth has not always been as it is now, such as the amazing feats of the Great Pyramid, and the Baalbek stones, some of which weigh upwards to 1200 tons. In addition, massive birds which by all means should not have been able to fly still were.

From the original article on the Argentinian teratorn from Bioscience, December 1980:

Paleontologists Kenneth E. Campbell and Eduardo P. Tonni identified the fossil remains at Argentina’s La Plata Museum. Working with leg, wing, and skull bones, Campbell and Tonni, have tentatively concluded that the enormous bird probably did more soaring than flapping. They admit that it seems initially unlikely that a bird of that size could even get off the ground, but believe that the size of the wing bones and their markings indicate that Argenravis magnificens did fly. “It has the right size wing bones, and it has the markings on the wing bones of secondaries, a type of flight feathers,” Campbell said. “It’s unlikely that a bird would have feathers and wing bones suitable for flight if it didn’t fly.”

Based on his studies of another teratorn fossil, Teratornis merriami, Camp bell believes that the teratorns were predators. “The long, narrow hooked beak and the type of jaw mechanism found in this species are similar to those that would be expected of a bird that grabbed small animals with its beak and swallowed them whole,” he said

The albatross and certain condors are bird can be compared to transport and fighter aircraft, and at 30 - 35 lbs. or so, albatrosses have enough trouble with takeoffs and landings for sailors to call them “gooney birds”. You therefore do not expect to see an eagle or a hawk, or anything like that, basically a bird equivalent of a fighter aircraft made for maneuver and pursuit, five times the size of the largest albatross, for the same reason which you do not see a fighter five times the size of the C5-A. So what was it that allowed these massive birds to fly?

There is much to be found in ancient mythology that indicates our solar system was much more electrically charged than it is now. During those times when the legendary Gods in the sky engaged in battle with each other, it was said that they used the thunderbolt exclusively. At times the thunderbolts flew so furiously, it was as though the sky had become filled with arrows. There are different cultures around the world that had a calendar for venus’ old orbit. What’s interesting is that they match up, even though these people aren’t supposed to have had any contact with each other.

There are a whole lot of other anomalies that can’t really be explained by our current understanding, such as why the ancient worshiped saturn, mars and jupiter over the sun and the moon. Wouldn’t they worship the largest objects in the sky over the tiny specks off in the distance, if the were stupid natives? Why do so many ancient cultures attribute the hero warrior scarred in battle to Mars?

Our ancient history and it’s stories are much more real than some would lead us to believe. I have a ton of information on much of these subjects, just ask.

[Tevildo]

Um - no.

I would refer the Right Honourable Member to the stated purpose of this board.

[smiling_bandit]

The real question I want answered is whether gravitons exist, and if so, can they be contained and manipulated by means other than accumulating mass? Of course, I think we can’t answer this question yet.

By the by, we shoudl probably leave out statements like, 'There is no Hell." I beg to differ.

(And I didn’t even make a New Jersey joke!).

[RaftPeople]

This is a high-jack, but this thread seems to be unfocused enough that it might not be a problem.

My thought relates to why gravity is so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other forces. Is it possible that, due to the expansion of the universe, the gravitational force appears to be much weaker than the others. That is to say, the expansion of the universe has caused a set amount of gravity to be stretched “thinner” thus appearing weaker than the other forces.

I’m quite certain I haven’t figured anything out, but I would be interested if anyone has proposed ideas along these lines and on what grounds it has been ruled out (other than the grounds of pure stupidity!).

[Blake]

@smurfslappa

Gravity is an electromagnetic force.

No, it isn’t.

Exactly how they were able to float a frog in a laboratory with powerful magnetic forces, these same forces are what pull us towards the Earth.

No, they are not.

If they are the same then why are both anions and cations equally influenced by gravity? How can an electromagentic force simulatenously exter an attarctive influence on both anions and cations?

There are indications that the gravity of the Earth has not always been as it is now, such as the amazing feats of the Great Pyramid, and the Baalbek stones, some of which weigh upwards to 1200 tons.

OK, you we are getting into sheer psuedoscientific New Age bullplop.

In addition, massive birds which by all means should not have been able to fly still were.

Please provide a refernce for a bird which “by all means should not have been able to fly”?

The one reference you did provide states explicitely that “It has the right size wing bones” to enable flight by normal means under normal gravity.

So what was it that allowed these massive birds to fly?

Like the man said: It has the right size wing to enable flight by normal means under normal gravity.

There is much to be found in ancient mythology that indicates our solar system was much more electrically charged than it is now.

Cite!

During those times when the legendary Gods in the sky engaged in battle with each other, it was said that they used the thunderbolt exclusively.

Cite please.

Ancient mythology never speaks of Gods battling one another with thunderbolts. Thunderbolts were directed at humans. Ancient Gods invariably battled one another with spears, axes hammers and the normal weapons of the human culture that created them.

There are different cultures around the world that had a calendar for venus’ old orbit. What’s interesting is that they match up, even though these people aren’t supposed to have had any contact with each other.

Could that be because the orbit of Venus was the same no matter where you stood when observing it? Gosh, those ancients were clever. They could see.

There are a whole lot of other anomalies that can’t really be explained by our current understanding, such as why the ancient worshiped saturn, mars and jupiter over the sun and the moon.

The didn’t. Name one ancient culture that worshipped Saturn Mars or Jupiter (the planets, not the Gods they were much later named after) over the Gods of the Sun and Moon.

Why do so many ancient cultures attribute the hero warrior scarred in battle to Mars?

Name 3 soceities that independently attributed the hero warrior scarred in battle to Mars? And I mean independently. I don’t mean that you should name the Romans who borrowed the oncept directly from the Greeks. I mean cultrues who came up with the concept indiependently of colonisation and conquest.

I have a ton of information on much of these subjects, just ask.

How about just providing some factual evidence for the outrageous claims you have made so far? It all sounds like von Daniken style ignorance to me.

[SentientMeat]

My word, electromagnetic gravity! For 4 years I’ve been waiting for a genuine Flat Earther to come along just to show that they’re still around - could smurfslappa be such a rare breed?

What gravity “is” is a force between masses, or a warping of spacetime if you prefer (mass tells space how to warp, space tells mass how to move), which follows an inverse square relationship (double the distance, quarter the force).

One interesting point is that because of the overpowering strength of the electromagnetic force (a baby can pick stuff up, thus overriding the gravity of the entire Earth), we’ve only managed to check that the inverse square law holds down to a tenth of a millimetre. Deviation therefrom at smaller scales would suggest that gravity is “leaking” into the higher dimensions predicted by string theory, which says that gravity “is” gravitons.

[Liberal]

Sentient, a dumb question if I may. Surely, I’m overlooking something obvious. Given that the mass of a large lead ball is more than the mass of a feather, why is it that they fall at the same rate in a vacuum?

[Blake]

@Liberal

Given that the mass of a large lead ball is more than the mass of a feather, why is it that they fall at the same rate in a vacuum?

Because there is no reason they wouldn’t fall at the same speed. Really, that’s about it. Gravitational attraction is proportional to mass, but in this case the attraction is between the ball and the Earth or the feather and the Earth. In theory the ball will fall slightly faster as it pulls the Earth towards just itself as it is being pulled towards the Earth. In practice the mass of the Earth is so much greater than the mass of either the ball or the feather that we can totally ignore the weights of the dropped objects and just calculate from the mass of the Earth.
The only reason the ball could possibly fall faster is because it is attracting the Earth towards itself. For the ball to actually fall faster the mass of the ball would have to overcome not just the inertia of the planet itself but the effect of the change in momentum of the planet’s orbit around the sun. In short, to move the planet towards the ball by any concievably measurable amount would require more energy than the ball contains in toto. If the difference in rate of fall of the two objects can never possibly be measured then we can say that they fall at the same rate. We know in theory that the ball will fall imperciptibly faster but we could never practically demonstrate that to be the case.

[SentientMeat]

@Lib

Given that the mass of a large lead ball is more than the mass of a feather, why is it that they fall at the same rate in a vacuum?

Not a dumb question at all, friend. Blake has answered well in words, so I’ll just answer in maths.

The force on the ball (mass=B) is F1=-GBM/(r*r), where G is constant, M is the mass of the Earth and r is the distance separating the centre of each object.

The force on the feather (mass=f) is F2=-gfM/(r*r), assuming similar separation r.

The ratio of their rates of fall is the ratio of their accelerations. From Newton’s first law (F=ma, *ie.[/] a=F/m), a1/a2 = (F1/B)/(F2/f) = 1.

I might have cocked this up with some stupid assumption somewhere, but the right answer would follow a similar route.

[smurfslappa]

Ugh, gravity is gravitons? String theory? Man, it just seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon! Ooor, if it were an electromagnetic force to begin with, since the electric state of the earth is the same for everyone standing on it and the mass that holds this charge is as well, then that could be why they both fall at the same speed as well.

Deviations on smaller scales can also be attributed to the charge of the object that is falling. Did you see them float the frog in a labratory with powerful magnetic fields? Yeah, same stuff. I didn’t see them utilizing any gravitons there.

Tesla once said, “One day man will connect his apparatus to the very wheelwork of the universe… and the very forces that motivate the planets in their orbits and cause them to rotate will rotate his own machinery” and these forces are electric.

[SentientMeat]

@smurfslappa

if it were an electromagnetic force to begin with

… then it would be zero between neutral objects like the planet Earth or the human body, whose positive and negative electromagnetic charges cancel each other to one part in billions of billions.

You can test this by testing the electrical neurtrality of yourself, and of the ground, and stepping out of a window, and noting that the meter still doesn’t deflect from zero as you plunge towards you Darwin award winning demise.

[smurfslappa]

Oh of course! It so it has to be gravitons! The charges neutralize each other and achieve a balance, but the forces that caused that balancing act are still there, drawing themselves to each other. I don’t know the specifics of it all, but there’s a lot more information and ancient history to back my side of the argument up than there is to back up your graviton theory.

[Tevildo]

Pleasepleaseplease can I take this opportunity to have a go at Tesla?

No?

Aww, OK. At least our new friend isn’t yet claiming to be the Lord of the Second Advent, as yet.

[SentientMeat]

@smurfslappa

The charges neutralize each other and achieve a balance, but the forces that caused that balancing act are still there, drawing themselves to each other.

This is nonsense. The force between two bodies whose charges neutralise each other is zero. Understand?

I don’t know the specifics of it all,

Nor, it seems, the vague generalisations.

but there’s a lot more information and ancient history to back my side of the argument up than there is to back up your graviton theory.

There is indeed no direct evidence of a spin 2 scalar boson or of gravitational waves - hopefully LIGO or the LHC will be helpful over the next three years. But the warping of spacetime in accordance with general relativity was observed as long ago as 1919.

[smurfslappa]

The force between two bodies whose charges neutralise each other is zero. Understand?

Ummm, but we still attract each other, and are attracted to the Earth. There’s got to be something that unifies it all. Would you have everyone believe that they’re two separate forces that have absolutely nothing to do with each other? That’s even more ridiculous. There are so many anomolies out there that have yet to be explained by your simple models.

[SentientMeat]

@smurfslappa

Ummm, but we still attract each other, and are attracted to the Earth.

Yes. That force is called “gravity”.

There’s got to be something that unifies it all.

I agree. The unification of the electroweak and strong forces with gravity is the current goal of physics. String theory is one such Theory of Everything, but there are other candidates. Saying that gravity is electromagnetic is not one such candidate, since it’s so demonstrably false.

Would you have everyone believe that they’re two separate forces that have absolutely nothing to do with each other?

At scales greater than the Planck scale, yes.

There are so many anomolies out there that have yet to be explained by your simple models.

And that’s why we haven’t yet closed down physics departments worldwide for being redundant. But it’s one thing to study anomalies and quite another to spout the outlandish claims you have here.

[smiling_bandit]

@smurfslappa

Ummm, but we still attract each other, and are attracted to the Earth. There’s got to be something that unifies it all. Would you have everyone believe that they’re two separate forces that have absolutely nothing to do with each other? That’s even more ridiculous. There are so many anomolies out there that have yet to be explained by your simple models.

I wouldn’t call those models “simple” if you’ve never tried to comprehend them. Yes, there are anomalies. Which is why people are trying to create more advanced models or new models or whatever. And it may well be that all the fundamental forces are related. But we’re not sure of that, and invoking greek deities does not help. Since we can’t, y’know confirm what they did, if they did.

Gravitons may exist as discreet “particles.” Maybe not. If they did, we might be able to use them in other ways. Maybe not. But then, my understanding of advanced physics is… limited.

[smurfslappa]

As is mine. But that doesn’t mean I’m not capable of intuitive thought, grasping new concepts, or making sense of all the ancient legends.

Please provide a refernce for a bird which “by all means should not have been able to fly”?

The one reference you did provide states explicitely that “It has the right size wing bones” to enable flight by normal means under normal gravity

No no no, you may have misunderstood it, what they said was:

They admit that it seems initially unlikely that a bird of that size could even get off the ground, but believe that the size of the wing bones and their markings indicate that Argenravis magnificens did fly. “It has the right size wing bones, and it has the markings on the wing bones of secondaries, a type of flight feathers,” Campbell said. “It’s unlikely that a bird would have feathers and wing bones suitable for flight if it didn’t fly.”

What that means is the bird looks too damn big to fly, and yet, it has a pointed beak and the structure of a bird of prey. This would mean it would fly very fast, and swoop down on its target. Why would it be shaped like this if it didn’t? So it must have, but in our present state, how? Some big lumbering dinosaurs such as the ultrasaur would have been crushed beneath their own weight, or would have never evolved to such sizes in the first place, if you believe we crawled out of the ocean.

Another thing, how did that big ol’ scar on the face of Mars called the Valles Marineris happen, and why is all that scattered junk up there? Ancient legends speak of a tremendous lightning bolt from a passing comet zapping the hell out of the planet for quite a while, but surely they must be crazy right? A damn fine article on how a plasma discharge happened, and how they might not be so stupid after all.

More articles from the same source

Why are ancient names for Venus “the smoky planet” and “the hairy planet” and “the bearded planet” and the same glyph used to represent a comet used for Venus as well? Surely so many separated peoples couldn’t have possibly thought up the same thing, don’t you agree? Could there be a little truth there?

The way the solar system is now isn’t the way it used to be, is all I’m saying. Do your own searches on all this stuff. It’s a damn shame it’s hard to find any of this stuff on a site that doesn’t look at weird and crazy and easily dismisable, but that’s the way we like to run the world: shrouded in ignorance. A simple search on google will lead you to another more reputable site that backs up the legend, but most people don’t even bother. I got a ton of more anomalies up my sleeve, but I’m sure you’ll shrug 'em off as crackpot anyways, after all you know more about our past than these guys did, right?

[BMalion]

Isn’t Tesla the guy who said he could split the earth in two with a dry cell battery and a piece of wet paper?

Seriously, I know he was quite the electrical engineer genius in his younger days but it seems he rented a suite in fantasyland as he got older.

[Lemur866]

Look, *Argenravis magnificens * wasn’t a giant eagle, it was a giant condor. In other words, a fricken vulture with a laser beam on its head.

This guy wasn’t flapping around and swooping down on rabbits like an eagle. It was soaring around looking for something large and dead. When it saw the large dead thing it would glide down and commence with the eating. Vultures and eagles are both birds of prey with hooked beaks for ripping apart flesh. It’s just that vultures and condors have naked heads so they don’t get rotting flesh all over their head feathers, and also to provide convenient mounting points for the fricken laser beams.

Also, cite on the Ultrasaur being crushed by it’s own weight? I know we used to hypothesize that sauropods were semiaquatic, but now we know that theory is false. Large sauropods could walk around because, get this, they had really big legs. And their maximum speed was probably around 2 miles an hour. And they had a brain the size of a walnut.

It IS true that we now think there was a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere during the mesozoic, maybe 3 times as much, which means warm temperatures across the globe, jungles at the poles, increased plant productivity.

Plus, these giant sauropods lived in what scientists call “really really long ago”. How long? Like, 65 million years, dude. Really really long. So long ago that, get this, NO PEOPLE WERE AROUND THEN!

And even if gravity were much lower, how exactly would that let people lift 1000 ton rocks? I can barely life 100 pounds. Or have you ever heard of levers, pulleys, inclined planes, and wheels? Get me enough bronze-age egyptians with enough levers, pulleys, inclined planes and wheels and I’ll move any number of 1000 ton rocks for you. The limiting factor is organisational and logisitical…getting enough surplus food together to feed your laborers.