The Silly Buoyant Atmosphere Theory

In an effort to explain the size of the dinosaurs, David Esker came up with the idea that the atmosphere of our planet was so buoyant in the time of the dinosaurs that they were practically swimming in it.

The problem with this theory is that our atmosphere has at present a density of a little over 1 gram per liter, and no gas exists that would significantly alter this. To get from 1 gram per liter to the 500 gram per liter required for David Esker's theory to work, atmospheric pressure would have had to be 500 times what we have today. This follows directly from Boyle's Law.

Even if our atmosphere had reached all the way to the moon, we would not have had 500 times higher pressure in our atmosphere. The idea of a buoyant atmosphere is simply bunk. It violates Boyle's Law.

The only possible way that the giant animals of the past could have existed is that gravity was significantly less than it is today.

Note: after writing this, I came across Halton Arp's mass condensation theory in which buoyancy would in fact decrease over time. David Esker is in other words not completely off with his theory. The first major mass extinction on our planet appears to have been related to a change in buoyancy.

However, a more buoyant atmosphere is not in itself enough to explain how dinosaurs as large as giraffes could fly. Both gravity and buoyancy were greater in the past due to atoms having smaller nuclei. This can all be explained with Halton Arp's theory.

Halton Arp

By The original uploader was Reuben at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Sreejithk2000 using CommonsHelper., CC BY 2.5, Link