What folks used to think.

[TheHeretic]

It always fascinated me what people used to think, and why they thunked it. So, going through my Zite feed a moment ago, I found this. Absolutely fantastic story ran in newsprint about the giant eyeball of Mars, (based on the canal system).

Anyway, thought it made interesting reading,

http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/...

Any more strange stories to add?

[Mr2Mike]

How long until the folk that pushed Anthropomorphic Global Warming end up in such a document?

[Shaolin]

One of my favourites is that it was "common knowledge" in the mid 1800's that there were dinosaurs on venus.

It is closer to the sun than earth and covered in cloud so is therefore very hot and steamy. It is more primitive than earth and probably covered with dense thick tropical forests as a result of the heat and steaminess. So like the tropical earth in the distant past when there were dinosaurs.

Observation - we can't see anything, conclusion - dinosaurs live there!

[RealSquirrels]

even a good way into the 50s and 60s people speculated that there could vegetation on mars...

[Halb]

I recall when my dino books used to say the dinos got too big and fat and lazy, or were too stupid, or the meat eaters ate all the veggies, and the asteroid theory was the one sentence wacko theory at the back of the book. Now it's the accepted ending.

[Eric Mc]

Shaolin said:

One of my favourites is that it was "common knowledge" in the mid 1800's that there were dinosaurs on venus.

It is closer to the sun than earth and covered in cloud so is therefore very hot and steamy. It is more primitive than earth and probably covered with dense thick tropical forests as a result of the heat and steaminess. So like the tropical earth in the distant past when there were dinosaurs.

Observation - we can't see anything, conclusion - dinosaurs live there!

Mid 1800s?

A bit early for such a theory I would suggest - as the idea of dinosaurs on earth had hardly entered the public domain and we didn't know much about them at that point.
Certainly by the mid 1900s, the idea that Venus was hot and wet had taken hold in many science fiction stories - and the notion of swamps tied in with the then perceived views of giant sauropds wallowing in swamps (which we now know was a false vision anyway).

By the end of the 1950s radar returns off the planet Venus were indicating that the surface conditions were too hot for liquid water. The first space probe to Venus - Mariner 2 in 1962 - confirmed this.

[Eric Mc]

Halb said:

I recall when my dino books used to say the dinos got too big and fat and lazy, or were too stupid, or the meat eaters ate all the veggies, and the asteroid theory was the one sentence wacko theory at the back of the book. Now it's the accepted ending.

The asteroid theory emerged in 1979/80. The US TV science programme Nova ran a documentary in 1981 called "The Dinosaur and the Asteroid" which was my first encounter with the theory but at no point was the idea treated as "wacky". All they indicated was that there was a lot more work required to be done to back up the theory - such as locating an impact point. In 1981 no one knew where this asteroid might have struck. Now we know.

[RealSquirrels]

since they found the 'boundary layer' thing from the meteorite it's pretty much been proven as far as was concerned.

[Eric Mc]

RealSquirrels said:

since they found the 'boundary layer' thing from the meteorite it's pretty much been proven as far as was concerned.

What was proven?

[Mr2Mike]

Eric Mc said:

What was proven?

That an asteroid/comet impact was the cause of the mass extinction event that took out the dinosaurs.

[Halb]

Eric Mc said:

The asteroid theory emerged in 1979/80. The US TV science programme Nova ran a documentary in 1981 called "The Dinosaur and the Asteroid" which was my first encounter with the theory but at no point was the idea treated as "wacky". All they indicated was that there was a lot more work required to be done to back up the theory - such as locating an impact point. In 1981 no one knew where this asteroid might have struck. Now we know.

Not sure when my books date from, but it was the wacky last sentence theory which was not as strong as the others.

[Eric Mc]

Mr2Mike said:

Eric Mc said:

What was proven?

That an asteroid/comet impact was the cause of the mass extinction event that took out the dinosaurs.

Except that hasn't been proven - and probably never will.

We know that a large object hit earth around 65 million years ago. We even now know the likely impact point.
We also know that a large amount of dust blanketed the planet for a while after the impact - although no one truly know how long the period of dust cover lasted.

We also know that dinosaurs and some other life forms died out in and around a similar time point - but we cannot be sure that there is a direct cause and effect between the two events. It is a strong possibility, but it can't really be proven.
What we also know is that a large number of species survived, including some species which have close links to dinosaurs - particularly birds.
And what is very, very hard to work out is why certain life forms survived and why others did not.

[Eric Mc]

Halb said:

Eric Mc said:

The asteroid theory emerged in 1979/80. The US TV science programme Nova ran a documentary in 1981 called "The Dinosaur and the Asteroid" which was my first encounter with the theory but at no point was the idea treated as "wacky". All they indicated was that there was a lot more work required to be done to back up the theory - such as locating an impact point. In 1981 no one knew where this asteroid might have struck. Now we know.

Not sure when my books date from, but it was the wacky last sentence theory which was not as strong as the others.

The date of the book would be a clue as to how serious they took the theory. I would suggest that by 1990 the link between the asteroid and the dinosaur demise was being accepted as a serious theory - although not proven (as is the case even now).

[RealSquirrels]

conditions changed the more adaptable species survived, doesn't sound hard to me.

[Derek Smith]

Implicit in this guffaw at how stupid our ancestors were is that in 200 years time our descendents will be doing the same thing about what we believe today.

Newton, the great genius, described gravity to the extent that only an idiot would refuse to believe it. Principia was a work of genius. Then along came some clerk.

There is little doubt that we are wrong at the moment on just about everything. Our observations are correct, our interpretations are wrong.

The only saving grace is what will happen in 400 years regarding those who postured and preened themselves in 200 years time.

[RealSquirrels]

i don't agree at all Derek. We have lots of observations and a lot of 'laws'. Scientific laws are theories that prove extremely accurate. Theories are just models of reality. They are a description, nothing more, that is useful to us because we can use it to ask questions. In several areas our models, or laws, are very good and mirror reality. Think about thermodynamics, Newtonian mechanics, even quantum mechanics. All are very successful and very accurate, and very explanatory. They are definitely 'right'

whether, of course, they accurately describe reality or are just a good model is hard to say, depending on the theory. thermodynamics - yes, accurate. newtonian mechanics - yes, accurate, because on our (human) scale quantum effects are irrelevant. quantum mechanics - well, hard to say. is an electron real? Or is our idea of an electron just a good model. Who knows. Having said that, 5 to 10 years ago I would have come down on the side of "no" but we can now image atoms in molecules directly (not through diffraction, which I do most weeks actually and is now getting on for 100 years olds), and I believe people have observed electrons.

Newton was right 400 years ago and he is still right today - as long as you apply his theories to the scale/situation in which they are relevant.

here you go, a picture (top row is experimental, bottom row is theory) of a molecule. The molecule is top right and the other two images show the electron density (i.e. how likely they are to be somewhere) of electrons in that molecule.



http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/v3/n4/full/nch...

[Eric Mc]

RealSquirrels said:

conditions changed the more adaptable species survived, doesn't sound hard to me.

Not an explanation at all. Dinosaurs as a group had proven to be extremely adaptable. They had been on earth for around 200 million years and had adapted and evolved into hundreds of thousands of separate species - exploiting virtually every ecological niche available.
Over that 200 million year period they had survived all sorts of great changes that had occurred to the earth - including a drastic re-allignment of the continents over that long period of time.

No one can genuinely explain why an asteroid impact could have had such an effect on dinosaurs (and some other species that weren't dinosaurs) and yet spared others - even species that were very close to dinosaurs..

[Daxed]

I find this hard to believe, but apparently before the publication of On the Origin of Species, large groups of people actually believed that the founder members of our species were fashioned from dirt and divine breath, in a garden (with a talking snake) by the creator of the universe.

[Eric Mc]

Daxed said:

I find this hard to believe, but apparently before the publication of On the Origin of Species, large groups of people actually believed that the founder members of our species were fashioned from dirt and divine breath, in a garden (with a talking snake) by the creator of the universe.

What do you mean "before"?

And, of course, we are made from dirt - dirt fashioned from molecules fused in supernovae explosions.

[Derek Smith]

RealSquirrels said:

i don't agree at all Derek. We have lots of observations and a lot of 'laws'. Scientific laws are theories that prove extremely accurate. Theories are just models of reality. They are a description, nothing more, that is useful to us because we can use it to ask questions. In several areas our models, or laws, are very good and mirror reality. Think about thermodynamics, Newtonian mechanics, even quantum mechanics. All are very successful and very accurate, and very explanatory. They are definitely 'right'

whether, of course, they accurately describe reality or are just a good model is hard to say, depending on the theory. thermodynamics - yes, accurate. newtonian mechanics - yes, accurate, because on our (human) scale quantum effects are irrelevant. quantum mechanics - well, hard to say. is an electron real? Or is our idea of an electron just a good model. Who knows. Having said that, 5 to 10 years ago I would have come down on the side of "no" but we can now image atoms in molecules directly (not through diffraction, which I do most weeks actually and is now getting on for 100 years olds), and I believe people have observed electrons.

Newton was right 400 years ago and he is still right today - as long as you apply his theories to the scale/situation in which they are relevant.

here you go, a picture (top row is experimental, bottom row is theory) of a molecule. The molecule is top right and the other two images show the electron density (i.e. how likely they are to be somewhere) of electrons in that molecule.

Prediction is, of course, the big test of any theory.

You say Newton was right, and then go on to qualify his rightness. We flew to the Moon using Newtonian physics but satnav would have been impossible.

There is a big difference between observations and a prediction based on these observations that tomorrow they will be the same. This is science all right but not predictive in the real sense: the orbit of Mercury for instance.

Darwin was right of course, although only in the broad sense. Since his wonderful book others have gone on, with knowledge gained of DNA, to make other predictions, those which Darwin could only dream of. But DNA, despite the belief at the time of discovery, does not of itself provide all the answers.

I see no reason why, in the 200 years that I mentioned, people will not look back at us and laugh at our beliefs with a smug tone. The belief by scientists that they have cracked it has happened time after time. Observations change but theories are evanescent.

We have scientists telling us that 80% of the universe is hidden from us. I feel fairly certain that sooner or later its form will be discovered and when it is a number of theories will take a knock.