What is Gravity?

If NASA faked the moon landings, does the agency have any credibility at all? Was the Space Shuttle program also a hoax? Is the International Space Station another one? Do not dismiss these hypotheses offhand. Check out our wider NASA research and make up your own mind about it all.
Pilgrim
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by Pilgrim »

hoi.polloi wrote: I agree, however, that Flat Earth Society forum could easily be run by controlled opposition in order to trash or dumb down all sound arguments as quickly as possible.
As the vast majority don't give a fig about rational argument and sound logic and that it's not even necessary for them to do so to go ahead with their agenda, it seems a moot point. If we agree that 90% plus of the population are brainwashed anyway and they are only muddying the waters for the 10% minus, it makes little difference to capturing and "honey potting" those against it and keeping this minority into infighting and misinformation. We can shoot all the sound arguments we like at these people from a position of a perceived no affiliation be we an atheist scientist ( though everyone of us has an affiliation to their own worldview) or a so called rational free thinker in our minds. They don't seem to care and go ahead anyway no matter how irrational and inductive and fallacious the reasoning they rely upon.
They control the media and thus most peoples minds. Seems to me they don't even need to rubbish opposition by association with groups like the Flat Earthers as they control the media anyway and the vast majority don't need the false association to not take sound logical and evidence against the MSM and pseudo science seriously anyway, it's already too late for them unless they wake up.

Seems they focus on us few non believers for other reasons by muddying the waters.
hoi.polloi
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Pilgrim wrote:Seems they focus on us few non believers for other reasons by muddying the waters.
Are you sure you meant this, or did you mean "other reasons than muddying the waters?" I'm having a hard time reading your point.

Simon, if your theory is true, then acceleration downward at 9.8 meters/second per second would be reversible for objects lighter than the atmosphere, no? So for lighter-than-air objects (provided they are light enough) seeking their balance upwards can we observe something accelerating even close to 9 m/s/s? Half of that? Seems unlikely, so I have some doubt about this so far ... but still interesting.
arc300
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by arc300 »

hoi.polloi wrote:Gravity as NASA explains it doesn't make sense. They would say there are no significant fluctuations at orbit distances, but 90% of the force still present in deep space. Whaaa!?

So the necessarily wavy behavior of gravity "smooths" to a perfect oval as the Earth hurtles through the solar system, colliding with Musk-knows-what space debris and radiation, and these miraculously sturdy satellites and ships are not affected by any of it — not the fluctuations in gravity, not debris, not radiation, not the Moon (which is said to be moving entire tides by the way) and not each other?

And they "mostly" require no course corrections? And when course corrections are admitted to be necessary, a little air spritzer jet of gas, escaping the satellite with no work being done on the object releasing the gas into the massive void of space, is supposed to be all that's needed to move the object more effectively than physical meteorites, collisions, waves of radiation, fluctuations in gravity above the massive object of the planet, the Moon, the Sun, etc.

No.

It's nonsense. Malarkey. Horse palaver. I don't care who you work for, how much money you oversee or how hard you've thought about paychecks for your tin-foil, plastic wheel bedecked, circuit board of gyros, micro-engines, chips and solar panels; we are not capable of sending physical contraptions like this to a magic realm where physics suddenly stop applying.

I think Simon is closer to the truth; some rotation of something (Earth? Star field? Light from the stars, twisting into our dimension?) occurs. But not the way they claim. And homemade model kit sa-TallTale-lites do not enter the equation of what "Gravity" is. We'd be better off studying actual objects here on Earth, or barring that the behaviors of heavenly objects: Moon, Sun, stars, planets, NEOs.
You mention various forces that might interfere with the trajectory of a spacecraft - physical meteoroids (a meteorite is a meteoroid that hits the earth and a meteor is a meteoroid burning as it passes through the earth's atmosphere) radiation, gravity, etc.

They are all external forces.

But what about the internal forces that a spacecraft is allegedly subject to? Surely, ass-tro-naughts themselves must affect the trajectory of the craft every time they move because, weightless or not, they are applying force to the craft. We have all seen videos of intrepid space explorers clowning and goofing for the camera that never lies; we have seen them using exercise machines, pulling themselves along on hand-rails and bouncing off the walls. How can this NOT play havoc with the craft's trajectory? Those little course correcting air spritzers must be CONSTANTLY jetting gas into the infinite vacuum of space.

On this page (http://space.stackexchange.com/question ... spacecraft), these internal forces are all neatly explained away as being insignificant, or as cancelling each other out: the force applied to a wall by pushing off from it is cancelled out by the force applied to the opposite wall when you hit it, etc, etc.

The page contains a link to this video:


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW

At 4.06, Space Station Commander, Sunita Williams explains why the exercise machines are not bolted firmly to the walls of the craft:

"You'll probably see that the bike bounces around a little bit. As I move it, it's not steady and held to the wall firmly. The reason for that is the space station is pretty big; you saw that there's also solar arrays on the space station. If we start putting any forces into the space station, it's going to make those solar arrays bounce around a little bit. So to prevent that, the machines bounce around a little bit and move around a little bit. That way, we don't put any forces on to the structure of the space craft out to the solar arrays."

So, the only reason that you want to avoid 'putting forces into the space station' is because you don't want the solar arrays to 'bounce around a little bit'? And wouldn't every movement of every object within the craft be constantly causing the solar arrays to wobble and bounce. Wouldn't large solar arrays be the last things you'd want dangling off your spacecraft, what with all the wobbling and the bouncing? Oh, that's right, the air spritzers make up for it.

At around the 7.00 mark, we are shown the hatch where the space men and women "actually go outside, into the vacuum of space". Now I'm thinking, leaving the space craft necessarily means reducing its mass. And clambering (or, perhaps more accurately, scuba diving) around the outside of the craft and hammering away at all its various appendages must necessarily mean applying external forces to the craft, not to mention causing the solar arrays to bounce and wobble. But, you know, those trusty old air spritzers again, right?

That's enough. Sorry for going a bit off topic, and sorry for posting a video that has probably already been posted in another thread, but I just couldn't help myself. When 'space' is the topic, the concepts of gravity and mass and weight all seem to lose their meaning and blend into one rather gluggy soup. I get the impression that they are trying to tell us that weight is more important than mass and, as long as everything is weightless, you can just spritz a bit of air into space and everything will be OK.
simonshack
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by simonshack »

*
Hoi,

regarding this earlier question of yours :

"If we are talking "gravity is air pressure", are we suggesting that climbing a tall mountain should make us feel lighter or heavier?"

Here's what scientific officialdom explains why we will be (mostly) lighter at altitude (yet also a tiny bit heavier - due to reduced buoyancy):
"Gravity decreases with altitude as one rises above the Earth's surface because greater altitude means greater distance from the Earth's centre. All other things being equal, an increase in altitude from sea level to 9,000 metres (30,000 ft) causes a weight decrease of about 0.29%. (An additional factor affecting apparent weight is the decrease in air density at altitude, which lessens an object's buoyancy. This would increase a person's apparent weight at an altitude of 9,000 metres by about 0.08%)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_of_Earth
Then again, scientific officialdom tells us that, if we could dig a hole all the way to the center of Earth, we'd weigh zero down there...
At the centre of the Earth
"So, what would happen to gravitational pull if you travelled below that the Earth's surface towards the centre? Would your weight in Newtons increase, along with the sensation of getting heavier?

No, quite the opposite, says Bell. As you go down below the Earth's surface, in a mine shaft for example, the force of gravity lessens. Weight and gravitational pull continue to decrease as you get closer to the centre of the Earth.

"Imagine you're standing on a series of balls getting smaller and smaller and smaller. With each one less gravitational force applies," she says.

"If you're right in the centre, if that were possible, and you've got the Earth surrounding you, then you're being pulled equally in all directions and the net effect is that they cancel out. There's no gravitational pull and you'd be weightless".

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/ ... 636714.htm
You may also wish to read this short clarifying post by "ZapperZ", regarding "Speed Of Gravity Is 9.8 m/s^2":
http://physicsandphysicists.blogspot.it ... 8-ms2.html

As for your question "can we observe something accelerating even close to 9 m/s/s upwards?" Well, do we know how fast helium / hydrogen / hot air (unattached to a balloon) - or even an escaping volume of vacuum will ascend through the atmosphere ? I have found no information about that so far, but I'd think that they'd all rise pretty speedily indeed. What we DO know, is that air (our atmosphere) 'repels' a vacuum (and vice versa) - and this, with quite tremendous forces :

"HORROR VACUI - Nature abhors a vacuum" (Aristotle): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_%28physics%29


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N17tEW_WEU

Note the brief upwards-jolt of that tank - as air and vacuum "equalize" each other :
Image


**********
By the way - ever heard of monsieur Arthur De Bausset and his wondrous VACUUM AIRSHIP project ?

Image

I think you'd enjoy this fascinating read: :)
https://archive.org/details/aerialnavigatio00chicgoog
hoi.polloi
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Your response is detailed and deserves a counter-response.

However, I think it is too simplistic to say the tank bounces "up". It's certainly not going to bounce "down" through the ground. I feel happy to dismiss the idea that the structure of the tank determines the direction of this bounce less than you imply. The rest of your points require more thinking and patient reading, though, and I promise I will do just that when I can.
Pilgrim
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by Pilgrim »

hoi.polloi wrote:
Pilgrim wrote:Seems they focus on us few non believers for other reasons by muddying the waters.
Are you sure you meant this, or did you mean "other reasons than muddying the waters?" I'm having a hard time reading your point.

Yes, you can add "than" to my statement as they do indeed muddy the waters. The question is as to why? My reply was based upon your response that the opposition or perhaps any opposition (in this case the flat earth society) could be used to trash and dumb down any opposition by association with so called nutters or conspiracy theorists. I agree it could but it does not seem necessary to capture the hearts and minds of the already brainwashed masses that already believe in this BS and is no hinder to their agenda anyway. In which case they are spending a lot of time, money and effort into trying to muddy the waters for a small minority of non believers in main stream science. Which they do.
As i said, they don't seem to care about rational argument or logic anyway as they have already won the war for most people's worldview in line with their agenda so they are muddying the waters for reasons other than that.
My own view is these satanic rascals have as little knowledge to ultimate reality as your average Joe but are very clever at deception and have all the power and they keep the minority who don't accept their BS infighting as a distraction.
Undoctored
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by Undoctored »

I think NASA could easily, with its billions of dollars, perform an experiment that would decide between the Newtonian and Simonian theories of gravity.

Something along the lines of:
  1. Drop a coin into an empty glass jar
  2. Put a lid on the jar and seal it tight so no air can exit or enter
  3. Slowly turn the jar upside-down

The Newtonian theory predicts that the coin will fall down because “gravity” would “pull” the coin towards the “center” of “planet” Earth.

The Simonian theory predicts that the coin will remain in place at the base of the jar because the pressure of the air pushing on the coin within the jar has remained unchanged since the jar was sealed.

What would happen in reality? We may never find out. If NASA, the ESA, or any other entity with the means to do this ever performed such an experiment, the true results would never be published if they cast doubt on the Newtownian theory, such is the atmosphere of scientific obstructionism we now face. :P
hoi.polloi
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Bravo, Undoctored. I think that argument soundly argues against the idea of gravity being solely the work of pressure.

We are back to the "simple" but complex notion that gravity is more akin to an energetic force regardless of pressure, unless we want to explain how pressure always transfers itself to the top of an enclosed system. :P

I still think the Tamarack Mine experiment, if legit, and repeated, would tell us a great deal about gravity's true direction.
Flabbergasted
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by Flabbergasted »

This post is perhaps a digression rather than a contribution to the thread, but I hope it is not of the boring type.

I have been reading the posts about gravity and air pressure with interest, but I don´t think the idea has any explanatory potential. Like everything else in the physical continuum, pressurized air is not an absolute and independent agent. Pressure (and all the other behaviors attributed to air) is the result of a force or principle, whether we have a name for it or not. If air pressure causes something, it is in an entirely secondary mode. The ultimate cause of a physical phenomenon (in this case, objects being necessarily pulled downwards) cannot be of the same nature as, i.e. coextensive with, the phenomenon it is responsible for.

Despite its partially Aristotelian foundation, modern science is not rooted in metaphysical principles. As such, it is applicable to certain local scenarios of a pragmatic nature but it sheds no light on the fundamental questions regarding the nature of matter, space, time, consciousness, gravity, energy, life and so forth.

In contrast, traditional sciences, which are now all but extinct, were in fact generally rooted in such principles, despite their cultural, artisanal or mythological forms of expression. By providing legitimate analogies and correspondences between the sensible world and the immaterial world, they allowed man to transcend the realm of physical nature and, very importantly, that of his craft.

Modern science cannot explain gravity because it is helplessly imprisoned in the relative, so all attempts to "find the truth that NASA is hiding from us" by using the tools of modern science are ultimately bound to fail.

Perhaps gravity and weight are better understood by reference to what the Vedas call the three gunas (sattva, rajas and tamas).
The three gunas are essential, constitutive and primordial qualities or attributes of beings envisaged in their different states of manifestation. They are not states, but general conditions to which beings are subject, by which they are bound, as it were, and in which they participate in indefinitely varying proportions, with the result that they are distributed hierarchically throughout the entire range of the "three worlds" (Tribhuvana), that is, throughout all the degrees of universal Existence.
Source: R. Guénon, Symbolism of the Cross, p. 23.

In its ordinary, literal sense, the word guna means "cord"; similarly, the terms bandha and pasha, which properly mean "bond", are applied to all the particular and limiting conditions of existence (upadhis) that more specially define this or that state or mode of manifestation. It should however be stated that the term guna is applied more particularly to a bowstring; it would thus express, at least in a certain respect, the idea of "tension" at different degrees and, hence, by analogy, that of "qualification"; but perhaps it is not so much the idea of "tension" that is appropriate here as that of "tendency", which indeed is akin to it as the words themselves show, and which is the idea that most closely answers to the definition of the three gunas.
Source: footnote from the same page.
The three gunas may be pictured as the two poles of a sphere, with a lateral expansion resulting from their tension:

Image
Caveat 1: The scheme is not an illustration of the physical universe or a planet, although one can certainly draw many exciting analogies from it.
Caveat 2: There are many arbitrary illustrations of the three gunas on the internet. Please do not bring them to bear against this exposition.
Caveat 3: In this post, matter is used in the scholastic* sense, not as "understood" by modern science.

The poles sattva and tamas correspond to Purusha (quality, spirit, light, liberation) and Prakriti (quantity, matter, obscurity, compression). The three gunas are most often applied to the understanding of human nature, but they are clearly also reflected in the order of the physical world, including all natural cycles and pulsations. In addition, from the anthropological standpoint, one could make the correspondence: sattva=heaven, rajas=earth, tamas=hell.

When seen in this light, "the earth" may indeed be said to be flat and horizontal.

edit: I changed "Aristotelian" to "scholastic" for the sake of clarity, keeping in mind the formula materia signata quantitate.
Thinktwice
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by Thinktwice »

Thanks Flabbergasted, I did enjoy your thoughtful post. Those three principles certainly align with other similar principles, i.e. Yin/yang, fire/water in alchemical language, etc, as these similar creation principles operate on all levels, creating and feeding in this growing fractal-like universe--as above, so below.

A few thoughts about airplane lift in light of this gravity discussion.

Air is a fluid. There are clear similarities between the oceans of water and the mass of air in the atmosphere. And I do think it is an interesting question: why do airplanes stay afloat? If you watch a commercial jet take off, it almost looks effortless. Once afloat, the plane almost seems to hover magically. Clearly there is a lot of air mass keeping the airplane floating. It reminds one quite a lot of a boat or submarine floating through water. And of course, since this is a fluid, that makes sense. Air is just a lot less dense than water.

Ok, so let's take the simplest plane, the propeller biplane of WWI fame. It's basically like a fan that pulls the wooden carriage through the air, with the wings slicing through the air. The wings have air pushing on them from both the bottom, and the top, as the wings slice the air. I would honestly expect the forces due to air from above and below to be equal, at least at the local level.

What holds a boat up in water? It is said in basic discussions of buoyancy / Archimedes principle that the boat is lighter than the water that it displaces. Could we bring that concept over to the airplane?

Once the aircraft is moving fast enough, it is displacing quite a lot of air. Its wings are carving a horizontal slice through the air, making contact with a large number of air molecules, both on the bottom and top. Once the light (mostly hollow) plane is moving fast enough, could it be that the weight of the air displaced by the plane every moment is greater than the weight of the plane itself? And therefore, could the plane experience a buoyancy effect, just like a boat in water?

Hoi asked earlier about a helicopter, which can hover without moving horizontally. The helicopter blades themselves are acting like a huge fan, displacing a large amount of air. Even if the helicopter is not moving relative to the earth, it is still displacing air and therefore is lighter than the air displaced--i.e. it floats. (Here is a question--would a helicopter work upside-down? Would it work the same if you reverse the spin of the rotors? Does it have to be pushing air down, pushing air up, or neither one?)

Could this be a simple mechanical explanation for airplane lift? Simon even mentioned that race cars create lift when driving quickly enough, and that with no wings. So when the car displaces a huge amount of air (since it is going so fast), it starts to float a bit, due to buoyancy. I hope this basic concept was clear--I had a bit of a eureka moment after playing a flight simulator. The plane simply goes where the nose is pointing--so if the nose is pointing up, it goes up, etc.

For problems with the official lift theory, Miles Mathis points out plenty in his paper on lift. Basically, they pretend that the wing is always angled up, when that is clearly not the case. I don't favor his explanation for lift, though--mine is much different.
Nink
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by Nink »

My understanding is Gravity is the collection of mIcro and macroscopic forces that occur in the combined mass of objects. The greater the combined mass the greater the gravitational force , the closer the combined mass is to another combined mass the greater the attraction between the masses will be ( inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them) . This starts all the way down below the atomic level and is based on the force generated from the number of electrons in each atom. This is why the formulae for Gravity is similar to columns law as both are measuring the force between electron charges. The combination of all of the forces from ionic, covalent, van dar waals subsequently creates a combined force we simply refer to as gravity.

I am a supporter of the expanding earth theory. That earth has been taking on mass in the form of charged particles that have been coming from the sun and you can visually see this in the aurora borealis. So over 100s of millions of years the earths gravity has actually increased as the earth expands, this explains why massive creatures such as 80 tonne dinosaurs wandered around the planet when based on their skeletal structures under today's gravitational conditions theoretically would be crushed under their own weight.
Selene
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by Selene »

Hi Nink,

curious to see your explanation/calculation (a rough one would be fine of course) for that idea.

The Earth is thought to have the current mass roughly for 4.5 billion years now (since the Theia-proto-Earth collision), with some minor additional mass from meteorites.

- how much mass do you guesstimate the Earth gained in the last let's say 100 Ma?
- how much does that change the gravity between then and now?

- do you think gravity is the only factor in explaining the giant size of the dinos (mind you, many CF-members do not believe in their existence; I don't see why they would be all fake(d)), or do changing atmospheric pressures and composition play a role too?
- Titanoboa existed some 6-8 Ma after the dinosaurs were wiped out and the mass of that monster is estimated over 1100 kilos (!!), how does that fit in your calculation?
- same for the 'recent' (up to human times) Pleistocene megafauna?

Welcome, by the way. :)

Selene
ProperGander
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by ProperGander »

Newton's-Le Sage's Gravitation.
Gravity as a push .


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BC4fO5dYIc

Le Sage's theory of gravitation is a kinetic theory of gravity originally proposed by Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in 1690 and later by Georges-Louis Le Sage in 1748. The theory proposed a mechanical explanation for Newton's gravitational force in terms of streams of tiny unseen particles (which Le Sage called ultra-mundane corpuscles) impacting all material objects from all directions. According to this model, any two material bodies partially shield each other from the impinging corpuscles, resulting in a net imbalance in the pressure exerted by the impact of corpuscles on the bodies, tending to drive the bodies together.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Sage%2 ... ravitation

The Evolution of Matter by Dr. Gustave LeBon
https://archive.org/stream/evolutionmat ... 7/mode/2up
https://archive.org/stream/evolutionoff ... 5/mode/2up
The inventions : researches and writing of Nikola Tesla
https://archive.org/details/inventionsresear00martuoft
hoi.polloi
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

Nink, you would benefit more from the way you word your hypothesis if you could prove that a dinosaur dig site shows that a dinosaur existed: http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1594

My question is: If gravity is due to sheer mass, why don't cliff faces demonstrate the ability to have even the slightest pull on objects from the middle of the mountain mass?
Nink
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Re: What is Gravity?

Unread post by Nink »

Selene wrote:Hi Nink,

curious to see your explanation/calculation (a rough one would be fine of course) for that idea.

The Earth is thought to have the current mass roughly for 4.5 billion years now (since the Theia-proto-Earth collision), with some minor additional mass from meteorites.

- how much mass do you guesstimate the Earth gained in the last let's say 100 Ma?
- how much does that change the gravity between then and now?

- do you think gravity is the only factor in explaining the giant size of the dinos (mind you, many CF-members do not believe in their existence; I don't see why they would be all fake(d)), or do changing atmospheric pressures and composition play a role too?
- Titanoboa existed some 6-8 Ma after the dinosaurs were wiped out and the mass of that monster is estimated over 1100 kilos (!!), how does that fit in your calculation?
- same for the 'recent' (up to human times) Pleistocene megafauna?

Welcome, by the way. :)

Selene
Great questions.
I would estimate the earth mass has increased by about 5.97E23Kg over the past 200 Ma and the radius of the earth about 320 meters so 200Ma gravity on earth back then was about 8.89 I agree this is a significant amount but if you look at history from about 200Ma to 100Ma the water levels rose dramatically about 250 meters (this is the new mass entering our atmosphere. Then from 100Ma to 10Ma they fell to the levels we have today. This is a result of the oceans lowering as the lithosphere crust expanded with all this additional mass. Now the water levels are rising again at a rate of about 3mm a year and this is a result of the continuous shower we receive from the Sun.

Giant Dino's I don't think are as heavy as estimated, and arguments range + or - sometimes as much as 50% depending on the method used to calculate. There would have been a range of contributing factors such as increased oxygen with 200M years of vegetation growth, if we go with my 90% guestimate of gravity you 80 tonne Dino would weigh 72 tonne 200Ma

The weight distribution on the Titanboa is completely different then on a Dino as it evenly distributed on a snake instead of 4 small points or 2-3 points when in motion depending on the gate.
We still had large land based mamals 60 M years ago but they are getting smaller I think the Paratherium weighed in at about 60 tonne or around 55 tonne if you adjust for gravity at approx 9.3 around 60Ma
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