Neal Adams responds:

Logic…….evidence …….and methodology…….Logic ….rifts and spreads LOOK LIKE pulled apart land under the ocean (flat plate ….precipitus drop….flat wide bottom to the other side ….Precipitus rise to a flat plane.) There were shallow seas on the land, and no EVIDENCE of the existence of deep oceans anywhere on Earth. Then ancient rifting and spreading happened in the shallow seas. When the shallow seas drained into the new deep oceans it left the “skeleton” of the ancient shallow seas,…..the shallow rifts and spreads,….and this is exactly what you see.

That’s what these landforms are, by simple process of elimination. You don’t observe spreading that stopped 100 million years ago, Steven. How else does one explain these landforms. There is no other explanation. “The evidence” is EVERYWHERE.

Steven. In every monkey, chimp or ape EVERY SINGLE BONE AND MUSCLE AND LIGAMENT matches human anatomy 100%. Nobody noticed this before Darwin???? Sure they noticed!………did they make the connection?

You would have said, “But, scientists would have noticed.” Then you would say “Scientists are smarter now.”

If nobody SAYS it, the random “Oh, isn’t that interesting” doesn’t become, “MY God, that must mean…” Don’t ask me why this is.

When you have an earthquake, the land in a few areas cracks open and spreads. YOU SEE PHOTOS ALL THE TIME. ALL THE TIME! Do you ever wonder….”WHERE THE HELL DOES THAT LAND GO? It must go somewhere. It can split, but it can’t compress. It’s granite. If a hundred years later another earthquake happens and that particular crack spreads more, who’s gonna know? If it’s in a populated area, it was filled in. If a new quake opens it again we don’t know there was a crack there 100 years ago. If it happens away from civilization a crack simply gets wider. If you were well along this theory, as man will one day soon be, I would be able to show you how the pivoting eastward of the Mexico/Central American complex created the Grand Canyon area and the Colorado River area, because of this pivot that happened because North America sits on the rift line and South America doesn’t.

But NOW you will insist that the whole of the canyon system from the ZION to the GRAND canyon system was cut and gouged by wind and water, even though there is no delta system that could EVER support such an outragious supposition and the fact that non-rushing water, and most of the Colorado is non-rushing water, RATHER THAN CARRYING LAND AWAY WILL TEND TO LAY DOWN NEW RIVER BED!

Imagine being me and seeing these unexplained ridge complexes EVERYWHERE and being the (almost) only person on Earth who knows what they all are, pull-aparts. The ONLY THING they can be.

and

Steve wrote: “Movement of adjacent plates at fault lines, however, has been observed ……two reasons. The first is that geology and physics both support the standard model that the earth is denser as we go deeper.”

You can’t just ‘say’ this stuff. “Standard Model ” refers to the Physics construct of the universe and does not include Geology theory though SOME would like to make such an extension.

There is no standard model. It is, in fact all a little math game of where the densities are and it’s all theorising. This is a very big topic and without exposing you to several papers and long involved discussion – let me simply say, at the end of the day ,……densities evolve to when and where iron is. Current geological theory says iron differentiated to the center, or core of the Earth. My theory says ,…….SINCE the Earth GREW…..there was never a time that it was molten and SO…. there was never PROFOUND DIFFERENTIATION.

That the iron is within and part of the dense mantle.

Unfortunately for the current geology side, the evidence, so far, favors my theory. We find abundant iron in the basalts that make the new exposed cooling oceanic plates. Don Anderson at Harvard attempts to explain this “oddity” with the premise that, perhaps some differentiation discontinued by the time Earth was accreted to Mars’s size and much iron stayed at the surface.

Arguing against that is the idea that the greatest heat would have been created at the later stages of this process rather than the earlier part. Of course this is sound fact because the process is exacerbated by pressure……which becomes greater in a semi-liquid.

Steve wrote: “It is not logical to argue that the model is internally inconsistent by introducing an external factor.”

AND SO……..??????

Steve wrote: “Regarding ‘moons is moons’: There is no logical reason to demand that all moons have the same origin.”

Oh , then shall we say “There is no logical reason to demand that all planets have the same origin.”? Then I suggest we remove the word “logical” from both sentences.

 

Steve wrote: “If an asteroid is captured by the gravity of a planet, it becomes a moon of that planet. This is inferred primarily from the fact that some moons have eccentric orbits, out of the plane of their …snip…planet in the plane of their orbit and the direction of their rotation, and therefore likely formed in place through accretion.”

AND, YET, PERHAPS INCREDIBLY, THESE ORIGINS ARE EXACTLY THE SAME! SMALL ACCRETED BODIES FROM WITHIN OUR SOLAR “SYSTEM” ! NOT, AS YOU AND OUR WHACKY FRIENDS SAY…..ROGUE PLANETS THAT PLOW THROUGH INTERSTEALAR SPACE LIKE A CUEBALL ON THE BIGGEST POOL TABLE IN THE UNIVERSE AND MAKE THAT TRILLION UPON TRILLION TO ONE SHOT TO HIT( IN OUR VAST ORBIT) OUR INCREDIBLY UNIQUE ( NEARLY INVISIBLE ) TINY MUDBALL, AND MISSING ALL OTHERS HITS US. And YOU think I have a whacky theory.

Regarding the earth’s moon

I’ve read it all. The ancients thought the Earth was the center of the universe.

We are far advanced from that. We think we are the most unique target in the universe. There is absolutely nothing to support this far out and whaky theory. I don’t see faces on Mars, nor do I think aliens visited the Incans and gave them gifts, and I don’t believe things that take impossible odds and are not in some way based on scientific facts or minimum, observation. There’s NOTHING here.

Regarding volcanoes:

(sigh) Now, darn-it Steven, You’ve gotta be reading and verifying SOME of this stuff, that I’m saying here.

THE ONLY METEORITES THAT SCIENCE HAS FOUND AND IDENTIFIED THAT ARE NEAR 4.5 BILLION YEARS OLD ARE SMALL CHOLONDRITE METEORITES. How else do I say this?

Moreover, the biggest meteorites are around NOW, despite what you are fed in our slow-to-integrate-new-knowledge-system. SHOEMAKER-LEVY had 21 chunks in its group. EACH CHUNK WAS CAPABLE OF WIPING OUT ALL LIFE ON EARTH……..AND THERE WERE 21 OF THEM!!!! AND THEY WERE “SEEN” IN YOUR LIFETIME AT THE 10 YEAR WINDOW OF TIME THAT WE COULD ACTUALLY “SEE”.

Do a little math on that Steven. …….How often does something like this happen on Jupiter? Why not Earth? Jupiter is our meteorite umbrella. And those weren’t little cholondrite meteorites. They were, what we have now. …..PLANET-BUSTERS!

Steve wrote: “Other than your personal incredulity, can you give me a single reason why volcanoes would not form continents over time?”

Yes, I certainly can! Two reasons:

1. Proportion,……Get a globe or a map. Look at the Hawaiian Islands. Then look at the whole of the Pacific. Examine the effect of any new and ancient volcanoes as to affected areas – seriously and carefully. Compare this to simply the Medeteranian. You could fit all the known and unknown volcanic effect into the Mediteranian, and have half left over. Compare this to the oceans of the world.

2. Volcanoes BUILD upper tectonic material, NOT take it away. The success of any speculative volcanic activity would be to make more, not less, continental plate!

Regarding flight:

I think there is no ambiguity. Widest wing-span cannot be confused with “biggest”. A correct response would have been . “I was too anxious to find unimportant factual errors in your statements, that I corrected you wrongly and I’m sorry.” Then you and I are past it.

Steve wrote: “The largest pterosaur (quetzalcoatlus) had a wingspan of about 40 ft. and its estimated weight is about 220 pounds.”

Which would be impossible! today.

Good, you’ve Googled and found the family of pterosaurs were at their smallest size, ABOUT THE SIZE OF OUR BIGGEST BIRDS TODAY! And the biggest of them were monstrous in size. I find 220 pounds a bit hard to believe but we agree biggest was certainly very big , In fact “small”was “big” and there wasn’t small. Why do we have to go through such hoops to come back to my point, I don’t know.

Steve wrote: “This is an active area of ongoing research, and as will all such research there are unanswered questions, but recent progress shows how such animals could fly.”

This is just plain nonsense. To carry a body that size in this gravity would take titanium wings and still they couldn’t flap! It makes no engineering sense.

What happens, Steven, is that researchers are given the premise: “The thing EXISTED so we must prove how this is possible,” and that’s what they proceed to do. The current gravity is automatically a given, so this is what they must prove, this is the problem to solve, “cause these things did exist.”

How much easier would their job be if they were told the gravity was 1/3 and the air was twice as thin???? (Half as thick.?)

Yes, …..the air was thinner. If you went back in time to then you would not likely survive but for a few moments because the air pressure was so much less. Look it up, Steven. Please.

Steve wrote: “Also, any such speculation is trumped by aerodynamic and physical analysis of pterosaurs, which is being done (see the links above) and which does not confirm your assumptions but shows they could have flown in 1g”

No, because only in less gravity and by extension less air pressure Giant Pterodons could fly, but today they could not.

Let’s make another point here. If, as I say, the air pressure was so much less, and the air so much thinner, you’d think Geologists and researchers would put this in the category of supporting Earth Growth, but they DON’T because there IS no such category.

Steve wrote: “Yet, there is a trend for increasing pterosaur size during this 150 million years, and all the largest pterosaurs, like quetzalcoatlus who lived from 67-65 million years ago, were the latest to appear.”

You are mixing up evolution with potential, and making an extendable cartoon.
“if this is true and Pterosaurs were bigger 65 years ago then today there should be flying creatures as big as a military transport.” This is absurd. The evolutionary process, with the additional factors that arrived by evolution, led to bigger and bigger flying things. Increasing gravity, air, and air pressure began a process of limiting this size to what we have today.

Remember also that the Earth growth was EXPONENTIAL……The growth as we go back in time was less and less grand, by far, than it is today. Earth Growth was a quarter of an inch a year rather than 12 inches per year, so evolution was in greater control.

Regarding T-Rex running:

The funny thing about this whole pile of information is that it is belied by the community itself. There are two lines of reasoning that are in conflict in “the community.”One, that T-rex was a predator (and ran 60 miles an hour) and the other, that T-rex was a scavenger (because he was too big to PERSUE fleet prey).

You, Steven, act as if I present this problem. This is heatedly debated in the community, so much so that there is a television documentary that features this debate. WOULD YOU pretend this debate doesn’t exist???

In fact there are few scavengers today, that have proven out to be simply scavengers…..and …..all predators are in fact also scavengers.

The same abilities that make a beast a scavenger are the same abilities that allow a scavenger to protect its meal, like running off with a haunch between it’s jaws when the competition gets too fierce.

If a T-rex could Merely walk, it’s most abundant prey would have such an easy time evading T-rex, unless they too shambled along the way science used to think they did.

Your and science’s refusal to consider a growing Earth dooms the dinosaurs to this gigantic shambling world of walking beasts. Only one factor need be changed to make it all make sense, a growing Earth. THEN, everything falls into place.

Re alligators:

You are correct and incorrect. And thank you for bringing up the subject

The mildly recognized but unrealized difference between reptiles and dinosaurs is not the small anatomical features that we point to. It is really that Reptiles have out-facing legs, ….and dinosaurs have LONG DOWN-FACING LEGS. All else came from this – the ear structure, the becoming a land animal, and such. Reptiles were condemned to the shallow seas, mostly around the equator, while the newer dinosaurs roamed far and wide all over the land, so great was the change

The crocodilians that you speak of evolved as well, and there were many types and sizes of these creatures. The most successful of which was a 26 foot crocodillian capable of taking under almost any dinosaur that came along..

These massive creatures died off at about the same time that the dinosaurs died off. Curious unless you assume they preyed upon migrating dinosaurs and the migrations simply ended. The crocidillians that survived were the smaller sort. Remember also, these reptiles evolved in water as aquatics and remain so today.

Regarding the tendon attachment arguments:

And ….Steven there IS a BIG MYSTERY…..and in spite of all the writing you speak of, there remains a mystery and a debate. And, it’s a debate I merely note.

Artists, animators, engineers and such know that T-rex ran. It’s not even a question. It’s one of those jokes that one day will be laughed about. EVERY SINGLE BIT OF T-REX’S ANATOMY SCREAMS A FAST RUNNING BEAST, Head to Achilles tendon to tail. Will experts in one area seek help from experts in other areas who’s standards they decry,…..? No! Even if right ? No!

This is how it works, Steven. A concept becomes established, taught and circulated in schools and such. To do this others must ….write it ,…another way, illustrate it, do lengthly papers on it, post pages, give speeches, pontificate, lecture. AND if you want to make a point, there’s all this shit out there to point to and say, “If it wasn’t true, why do all these papers and diagrams and studies exist?”

My dear old mom used to say, “Son, in case you don’t know it ,….well over ninety percent of everything is bullshit.” And if you don’t know and realize that, Steven, I suggest you study the history of science, again.

 

Steve wrote: “Tendon attachments – that is the part of the bone that tendons attach to. Bones fossilize.”

Arrrgh, 0kay ,…a tendon attachment area is not always apparent, AND the attachment area belies the strength and type of muscle. The achilles tendon, as a different example ….the attachment area does not indicate the thickness of the tendon. Yet that tendon, among others (to a lesser degree) gives an animal its forward thrust.

Muscles tell nothing of aerodynamics. Paleoentologists don’t even know how dinosaurs hold up their tails yet..

Studies of Teracarnasaurus (I’m sure I spelled it wrong, sorry) say this T-rex type of creature MUST have 90 percent of its body weight in its legs in order to “walk”10 MPH. Obviously he doesn’t have 90 percent of its body weight in its LEGS. This was broadcast on discovery and there were news articles. You’ll agree, won’t you, that discovery has experts at its disposal to write this stuff and the original researchers have something to say in regard to what is said about their discovery?

Re: The point of scientific methodology

Steven,,,,,ahhh…I suggest you read over that which you just wrote here and then stop sending me to your googles and instead go into these things in more depth as I have been forced to do.

 

“The idea that heat rises results from abbreviating the naive identification of hot air as heat, with the misconception that warm air rises. Since heat is the kinetic energy (energy of movement, momentum) of the random (in any direction and changing) motion of molecules, and is transferred from molecule to molecule by direct interaction, heat is conducted equally well in every direction. The net movement of heat will always be from a place of higher temperature (higher concentration) to a place of lower temperature (lower concentration), regardless of direction. In a convection current, it is the matter with the higher temperature (and therefore lower density), that floats (is pushed) upward, carrying its heat with it.”

This is the quote you indicate, and I was wrong to say it the way I said it, moreover I may have the impression that heat radiation rises. I may have scratched my head a moment before answering in the cautious negative. But clearly heat radiates outward. I suppose the idea that the gas and material that carries the heat often rises could throw one off. But that is what I should have said. The carriers of heat rise. Gases clearly rise through the mantle and out through the rifts and natural springs and geysers and smoking volcanoes.

Steve wrote: “The thermodynamics are well worked out. Heat travels from areas of high temperature to areas of low temperature (even if … …snip… cool from the outside in. They do not cool from the inside out. Therefore there is always more heat toward the center.”

I was with you up to that last point. If a steel ball bearing is cooling, the center will remain hot longest.. That is certainly true. The Earth is not a steel ball. It is a growing ball with an empty-of-matter-core. AND it is creating mass at its core and pushing outward with growth! Growth changes the dynamic. This growth puts tremendous pressure on the area just under the outer tectonic plates. The two areas of friction are….1. the very core and moving to the outer core ,where the new matter attaches to the under mantle. And 2. Just under the crust, pushing the outer cold solid crust .heating it with friction and melting some of it. This is the hottest area on Earth. And it doesn’t radiate downward.

Steve Novella responds:

Neal,

Regarding scientific method:

This is where we most significantly depart so I think it is worth exploring. You seem impatient with my “lectures”, but this is also for the readers, so please indulge me.

I have criticized the fact that some of your proposals, like electron-positron pairs forming matter, are without evidence, to which you have responded, in essence, that of course they are without evidence, they are new ideas. But here is the point:

What I am criticizing in your methods is not that you are proposing one new scientific idea, but dozens, and you are doing so in an ad-hoc fashion. For example (forgive the rough overview, but this is to illustrate my point) – you start with the observation that the continents all appear to fit together, and not just along the Atlantic line but all the way around. You then propose the alternative hypothesis that the earth is growing. This requires that matter is being created, so you propose a new physics of spontaneous matter creation to explain how hydrogen can be made. But you still need to create heavier elements, so you propose that our current models of fusion are incorrect and all the heavier elements can be made slowly, without the heat and pressure of the sun or the power of a supernova. But if gravity is increasing this creates a problem for the orbits of the planets and their satellites, so you propose that our models of gravity are all wrong and that in fact the dominant force at this scale is electromagnetism. And so on… To say that this violates the principle of Occam’s razor would be a gross understatement.

Each proposition creates new problems which you then fix with more new propositions, each one highly speculative, without supporting evidence, and in all cases contrary to established theories that have survived for years or decades. This leads you further to the conclusion – not that perhaps there may be something wrong with your knowledge or methods – but that the whole of the scientific community (a discipline that thrives on creativity and insight) is composed of unimaginative cogs who can’t see the forest for the trees.

You seem compelled by the fact that you were able to construct an elaborate explanatory system that all fits together. However this is not compelling because all this requires is a creative mind, which you obviously have. The fact that you were able to construct a complete explanatory system does not increase the probability that it is true – because you were not constrained in any way by previously established theories. In other words your explanatory system did not build upon anything solid.

Looked at yet another way, one of the tests of a new theory is to see how well it fits into well-established theories and observations, including all of the implications of the new theory. Your theory has a ripple effect of astounding new implications, each of which requires a new special explanation to make it work (the ad hoc logical fallacy). So, if your method includes inventing entirely new phenomena, and overturning previously established phenomena, as needed without limit – then you can explain anything.

But science cannot progress in this fashion. A new idea needs to be reasonably established before it can be used as a premise for the next new idea. Problems with new theories need to be worked out before the theory can be considered viable – worked out with evidence, not by inventing still new theories willy nilly as needed – theories that themselves have problems that require still further ad hoc new inventions.

You wrote: “In every monkey,chimp or ape EVERY SINGLE BONE AND MUSCLE AND LIGAMENT matches human anatomy 100% . Nobody noticed this before Darwin???? Sure they noticed!………did they make the connection?”

Darwin was not the first person to make a connection. The notion of the “great chain of being” or the “tree of life” and even the idea of evolution- morphological change over time – is not new or unique to Darwin. This idea is actually ancient – so many people noticed the pattern and drew the obvious conclusion. What Darwin did was propose a mechanism for evolution, and also carefully present evidence to support his theory, and anticipate many of the implications and possible problems with his theory and provide solutions for them as well.

But the bigger point here is your characterization of the scientific community as complacent and unimaginative, and as yourself as possessing the unique vision and insight to see the truth. This is not a fair or accurate portrayal of the scientific community. Individual scientists are quirky and capable of anything – but hundreds of scientists working together, and competing for academic success, is neither complacent nor unimaginative. New generations of scientists looking to carve out a career look for unanswered questions, and look to overturn established theories by probing for weaknesses. They don’t just blindly follow what came before. That’s not why people choose a career in science.

What this line of argument amounts to is an ad hominem logical fallacy – the entire scientific community is wrong because they lack vision. It is combined with an argument from authority – Neal Adams is right because of his unique talents.

Regarding iron in the crust

Your reasons for dismissing the explanation of iron in the crust is not valid. Once the crust partially solidified, then as new iron-rich meteorites landed on earth the iron they contained would not sink to the core. The fact that the earth was bigger, and therefore had higher pressure and temperature at the core, is irrelevant to conditions at or near the surface. Iron from new meteorites (they are still falling today) would still remain near the surface.

More on moons:

Your criticism of the “capture” model of moons is based upon a false premise – that planetary bodies that are captured (or that collided with the earth or other planets) came from outside the solar system. Therefore this argument is a straw man logical fallacy.

Rather, the claim is that planetoids that are either captured by planets or collide with them come from within the solar system. The Kuiper belt just outside Neptune’s orbit is comprised of a vast amount of asteroids, cometary objects, small planetoids, and the new category – dwarf planets. These objects can interact with each other, or can be disturbed when our sun passes close to nearby stars in our orbit around the galaxy, and their orbits can be altered so that they fall into the inner solar system, where they can collide with the inner planets or be captured and become moons, or simply fall into an eccentric orbit in the inner solar system (and many such asteroids have been identified).

The bottom line is that there are no problems or inconsistencies with the current model of solar system formation, including a high rate of collisions in the early solar system, decreasing over time as objects are swept up into the large gravity fields of the planets, but also occasionally being fed by objects falling in from the outer solar system. No “whacky” new assumptions are needed.

You further argued that current observations of large meteors suggest that they cannot have been around since the formation of the solar system or else they would be frequently smashing into the earth (using the recent Shoemaker-Levy 9 as an example). This argument is not valid. Collisions with Jupiter should be much more common than collisions with earth – Jupiter has 318 times the mass of the earth. Also, earth is closer to the sun, so objects from the outer solar system have to get past all those gas giants before they can menace the earth (as you yourself acknowledge). Our own moon further shields the earth by deflecting some incoming meteors. And, there is evidence that the earth is occasionally hit by large meteors, such as the Yucatan strike 65 million years ago. So where is the mystery?

Regarding “Cholondrite” meteors:

(I think it is “chondrite,” I could not find a reference to “cholondrite” anywhere.)

I am not following this line of argument. You are saying that only small meteorites are 4.5 billion years old, and that larger ones are younger, and therefore what?

My research reveals that there are three basic types of meteors: rocky chondrite meteors, iron (actually contain mostly iron and nickel), and rocky iron. About 92% of all meteorites found are chondrite. Iron and rocky iron meteors are less common.

Chondrite meteors do not have any evidence of melting in their past, so it is believed that they formed when the solar system did, 4.5 billion years ago. They never accreted into larger meteors or asteroids so they are relatively small. The iron and rocky iron meteors all show signs that they were subjected to melting temperatures at some point. Therefore it is theorized that they may be remnants of larger asteroids that were broken apart by collisions. These meteorites all date to between 3.6 and 4.5 billion years ago. Also, we have brought back meteorites from the surface of the moon and they also date to this range. (The dating methods used date the meteorite to when it last solidified after melting.)

So it seems to me that all of this evidence is consistent with the standard accretion model of solar system formation. Most of the stuff out there in our solar system dates back to the age of the solar system – 4.5 billion years. Some of the larger meteorites that display mineralogical evidence that they melted and resolidified at some point are slightly younger, but still date back over 3 billion years. This seems inconsistent with the hypothesis that new matter is being created in situ. Wouldn’t your theory predict that we would find small chondrite meteors that are only a few hundred million years old?

Also, the younger age of the larger meteors does not mean they were not around 4.5 billion years ago, just that the process of becoming big involved accretion, resulting in heat and melting that reset their radiometric dating.

Regarding volcanoes:

Point 1: This is not valid because there is evidence of volcanism all over the world, and there is evidence that there was more volcanism in the past than there is today. This is also consistent with the current thermodynamic models of the earth. Read about supervolcanoes – one such eruption would fill the Mediterranean.

Point 2: I did not argue that volcanoes took crust away from the oceans, but rather that they piled material up on the continental plates, raising them above the oceans. They do the same thing on the oceanic plates, making islands, but these do not accumulate because of subduction. So that can explain the different heights of the continents and the oceans – continents accumulated volcanic material, while oceans do not.

Here is another line of evidence from volcanism. The Hawaiian islands lay over a hot spot – a pocket of hot magma beneath the crust. The crust, through the drift of tectonic plates, is moving over the fixed hotspot. As it does it leaves a trail of volcanic islands over time. Look at a map of the Pacific ocean basin – the evidence is pretty clear.

Regarding flying animals:

You have not demonstrated your central premise – that pterosaurs could not fly in 1g. You need to show me a study or studies that demonstrates this, or calculations, or something. You cannot just assume this as a premise.

You argue that the air was thinner in the lighter gravity – which actually does make sense. However, this works against you. If the air was correspondingly thinner, this would have supported lighter flying creatures – not heavier. Flying requires lift, which requires air. This is why there is a ceiling on how high anything that flies can go – because as you get higher the air gets thinner. So this disputes your premise. The thinner air would largely offset the lighter gravity and would not allow for bigger or heavier animals to fly.

I agree with the point that physical limits on size are not the only factor in determining animal size. This, in fact, was my original point about birds today. But you cannot apply it when you want and dismiss it when you want ad hoc. My point is that if the gravity of the earth were indeed increasing over time, that this would create a general trend of decreased maximal body size (a trend, not an absolute), and we should see this trend all over biology. But we see no such trend.

This also suggests a further line of evidence against you – that of insects. Insects are much too small for physical limits on their ability to support their structure, or hold up their weight in flight, to be a factor. And yet, insects (including flying insects) were bigger 100 million years ago too. Since insects get their oxygen by absorbing it directly through their exoskeleton (rather than through an organ like lungs) that creates a limit on their body size (and why insects are generally small). Oxygen can only diffuse so far through tissue. In fact, insects were larger 100 million years ago because the oxygen content of the atmosphere was higher by a couple percentage points – enough to allow greater oxygenation and slightly larger body size. If the gravity were lighter, and the air thinner, insects could not have been as big as they were. They would have had to be much smaller than the largest insects today. This evidence directly disputes a thinner atmosphere (even with the higher O2 content), and therefore lighter gravity, in the past.

Regarding T-Rex

There is a debate about many of the details of how fast T-Rex could run, and to what extent it was a hunter or a scavenger and exactly how it did hunt if it did. Not surprising, since we only have fossils and some foot prints to go on – no live specimens to observe. Current reconstructions estimate that T-Rex could run at 20-25mph (assuming 1g). His bones were not only strong enough to take this, but the insertion patterns on the bones suggest that he in fact was running around in 1g. It is perfectly reasonable that T-Rex could have survived as a hunter/scavenger even if it could only run at 25mph.

Your dismissal of the tendon attachment evidence is unfair. All scientific evidence has uncertainty. You are just referring to the uncertainty selectively, whenever it suits you, to dismiss evidence you don’t like.

Saying that T-Rex looks like it ran fast is not a scientific argument.

Regarding heat rising

There is no way to avoid the fact that you simply got this wrong, and your conclusions were therefore not valid. Your new argument is not an argument at all, just a restatement of your premise (that the earth is growing). The original point you tried to make is that the earth could not be solid with a molten core, because a solid earth would be cool at the center and hotter just below the surface. This is clearly false, as I demonstrated – based upon the fallacy that “heat rises”. The point being that the solid earth model is consistent with a molten core, and therefore consistent with plate tectonics. No inconsistency with this model.