So Im sitting listening to Mahlers 7th, reading an interview with one of todays preeminent New Testament scholars, and thinking about Adam, Eve, the fall and all that. Then I started thinking about elephants and microbes and gravitational pull, and I had an epiphany. The reason we dont have animals bigger than elephants (even historically, they werent *that* much bigger) is gravity. Gravity sets a maximum size for earth dwelling animals. We have whales in the sea and we could, conceivably, have other unknown sea giants down there, but their size would still be limited. If Earth was the size of Mercury, for example, the gravitational force is less so animals could grow bigger, but the planet is smaller so there would be space issues, and maybe the big animals would eat all the important small ones, thereby destroying the ecosystem that brought them into being... kind of like we are in danger of doing here. If, however, Earth was the size of Jupiter, the gravitational pull would be much greater so the maximum animal size would be smaller than it is here. This could be a good thing, as theres more space for diversity, or a bad thing because too small means slower movement, slower migration, slower evolution... So maybe Earth is just right for us, or should I say, we are just right for Earth? Either way, its pretty cool. PS I have no science to back any of this up, it just came into my head. Sorry.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 19:55:01 +0000
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