From: prl@csis.dit.csiro.au (Peter Lamb)
Subject: Re: Uneven felt gravity
Organization: CSIRO Division of Information Technology
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 06:23:26 GMT

news@fedfil.UUCP (news) writes:

>In article <1992Oct8.042118.22609@csis.dit.csiro.au>, prl@csis.dit.csiro.au (Peter Lamb) writes:

>*>golden, or antediluvian age, when the earth was VERY egg-shaped, and then
>*>the classical age of Cronos, or golden age, during which time the earth was
>*>still egg-shaped, the felt effect of gravity still attenuated, but not
>*>so greatly...  i.e. he figures the original conformation of the earth
>*>collapsed in at least two discernable stages.

>*Yes, but he also figures that the size of the bulge would have broken
>*the earth into little pieces. In at least this, he is in full agreement
>*with most of the other people who comment on your "theories".


>*	"Danby's formula [for tidal distortion -prl] gives about
>*	61000km for the distance needed for an eccentricity of 0.6 [the
>*	size of the antediluvian hump -prl] and about 73000km for an
>*	eccentricity of 0.36 [the size of the "golden age" hump -prl].
>*	Both of these distances are considerably _less_ than the Roche
>*	limit."[1] p21.

>*The Roche limit is the smallest orbit that a body can have without
>*tidal stresses destroying it. Ted has often been told on t.o that his
>*schemes which gryate the Earth around Saturn producing huge humps
>*would tear the earth apart; here he has it affirmed by his own sources.

>Lamb conveniently omits a little discussion on page 19 of the same article:

>   "But Danby's formula is not really applicable here.  the formula is 
>   intended to apply to situations where the eccentricity is lower, where the
>   distance is greater, where the distorting body is the primary rather than the
>   satellite, where the distorting body is small enough and distant enough
>   that it can be treated as a point, and where earth itself is a complete 
>   fluid mass.  Even then the formula is only an approximation: it is derived 
>   from an infinite series in which all higher order terms have been ignored.
>   As Danby himself points out, "Comparison with actuality is not profitable
>   here."
>   
>Rose also mentions that any and all effects of electro-magnetism are being
>left entirely out of these gravity-only calculations;  a "minor" point
>considering that this entire scenario is based mostly on electromagnetic
>attraction, which is also the assumed basis of discussion.

Fine, but Rose goes ahead and uses Danby's formula anyway. If he really thinks
that it is useless, why does he use it?

His quote from Danby is also taken out of context. Danby is referring
to his use of the tidal bulge formula in calculating the water tides
in the earth-moon system, and the violations of the simplifying assumptions
in this case are completely different to those in Rose's article.

Interestingly enough, when I went and checked Rose's calculations (which
were correct), I also redid Danby's, which were not. He got 54.3 metres
for the tidal difference, which was presumably the source of his comment that
the application of the formula didn't match reality. I got 1.35 metres
which is something much more like reality. So, in fact, despite the
approximations made by Danby for the lunar tides, they work out quite
reasonably as a ballpark value.

Ka Chun Yu (kachun@delphinus.as.arizona.edu) in
<1992Oct9.084714.5079@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu> has already posted a
demonstration that improving Danby's formula to model the supposed
earth-saturn system better will require an even smaller orbit than the
results given in Rose's paper.

>On page 21, immediately after the discussion which Lamb quotes, Rose goes
>on to say:

>     "But Danby's formula, for all of the reasons that were discussed earlier,
>     is unsuitable as a means of calculating the actual values here.  In my
>     conjectures, I have relied upon Danby's formula ONLY to the extent of
>     assuming that it indicates the approximate sort of difference between the
>     Pangaea tide-raising distance and the Aden/Afar tide-raising distance."

I don't see your problem here. Rose derived the orbital distances
(approximate, but conservative, as Ka Chun Yu points out) and doesn't
want to accept the consequences of his calculation, just as you do not.
It is difficult to extract any sort of sense out of what Rose is trying
to say here, especially as the size of the bulge in Danby's formula is
proportional to 1/R^3, so simple proportionality is out of the
question.

Just prior to this quote, Rose says that, the maths having shown his
configuration to be impossible, he'll just make up numbers to suit
himself:

	"What I have done is to pick values for the mass and distance
	 at the time of Pangaea that would just satisfy the Roche limit
	 (of about 80-85000km), and then to assume that those values would
	 produce an eccentricity of 0.6."

So, no matter how you put it, my claim that Rose's own calculations put
the earth inside the Roche limit is quite justifiable. As you point
out, he doesn't like this (and perhaps I should have noted that in my
post), but his response is *not* to point out, for example, which
assumptions might have caused major inaccuracies, and the direction of
the inaccuracies, but simply to throw the results away and pull his
numbers out of a hat.

You are also correct in saying I didn't mention the "electromagnetic forces".
This is so, but then Rose hardly mentions them at all, either. He completely
fails to say how they were generated, and how they might have affected his
result.

> 
>*>  A big part of the problem is
>*>that human memory in any form whatsoever goes no further back than a 
>*>thousand years or so prior to the flood.  Given catastrophist hypotheses,
>*>you assume that it gets harder to know much about earth history beyond
>*>each catastrophe.  Rose's general hypothesis makes sense to me logically,

>*Including the bits where Rose says that the tidal stress produced would
>*tear the earth apart?


>The problem I have here, Lamb, is that I am not easily able to believe that
>you simply missed the discussions which you have so conveniently omitted in
>claiming that my own sources prove me an idiot,

No, I didn't miss them, and I have replied as to why I think they are
irrelevant to my case.

> and I am very rapidly
>losing the reservations which I used to have about calling people liars
>when they habitually attempt to produce effects using this sort of dishonest
>quoting and use of sources.

>In the entire world, if there's any one sort of person which I've no use for
>whatsoever, it's a flagrant or pathalogical liar.  

>I've no intention of wasting any more of my time writing new responses to your
>bullshit.  In the one similar case on t.o, namely that of Meritt, I've simply
>retained one or two standard posts which, to any reasonable observer, CLEARLY
>show the guy for what he is, and that is what I intend to do with YOU.

Gosh. Two people, myself and Mickey Rowe, enter your _persona_non_grata_ list
in one week.

>I shall simply save this post and repost it to anything further which you
>might have to say on the subject of Rose's Pangaea article.  In my judgement,
>it tells any reasonable person anything and everything he might need to know
>regarding how seriously to take anything which you might have to say.

Fine by me. I will retain a copy of this post and Ka Chun Yu's. As far
as the rest of Rose's article goes, you have failed to show any
problems of any kind with my earlier postings.

-- 
Peter Lamb (prl@csis.dit.csiro.au)