Okay, I think I see the problem: you're thinking of a single, instantaneous reaction.

Just the origin of people, no one has any idea which part of the Earth life originated on.

Just the origin of people, no one has any idea what part of the Earth the first life arose.

Again, I don't see how this stored potential energy could be suddenly released with a small trigger unless the potential energy profile was similar to that for certain molecules and atomic nuclei, where the system was in a local minimum of potential but a small amount of "activation energy" can push it into a much…

The clips don't work for me, possibly because I'm using an older operating system that isn't compatible with the latest version of flash...but sometimes going to the site that hosts the clips works even when embedded clips don't, can someone give me a direct link?

Remember in 1996, when scientists thought they'd found traces of life in a Martian meteorite that was found buried in Antarctica in 1984? Later investigations concluded there was not enough evidence to support the claim. If similar evidence is found in the 15 pounds of meteorite discovered last month, we could be…

What do you mean by "latent energy already present" though? I assume you're talking about some form of potential energy, but what specific form of potential energy do you think is already present in the Earth in vast quantities greater than or equal to 2.4 * 10^32 joules, which has some kind of double-well potential…

The problem is that any process that converts matter to antimatter must require just as much energy as the energy released when that antimatter collides with matter. If it didn't, you could violate conservation of energy; imagine a closed box containing two equal-sized bits of matter and a machine that could convert…

I see your efforts, but I'm afraid I still don't buy it: "energy" doesn't equate to "gravitational binding energy". Granted there's the photoelectric effect, BUT, given that it's a laser (with a substantial amount of energy in the visible light spectrum) there's also a huge amount of reflections/ refractions going on.…

"with the exception that it is a solid planet." - So it's nothing like Earth.

You bring up good examples, so I think you're right that people would have a better chance than dinosaurs of surviving even if the disasters were basically identical in scope (and assuming that was really what killed the dinosaurs). But my feeling is that while the odds would be better, it wouldn't be a sure thing,…

Good point. It's also interesting to think about which characters from now will be starring in original stories a century or two from now...you don't see new Chaplin stories, and new Hercules stories only appear in schlocky TV shows and B-movies for the most part, but Sherlock Holmes remains pretty big. I'd like to…

Actually it applies to any spherically symmetric mass, see the shell theorem. So as long as it's approximately correct to say that any two parts of the Earth at the same radius from the center will have the same density (density only varies as a function of radius), then the Earth can be treated as a point mass…

Well, I did say "theorem in Newtonian gravity", and Newtonian gravity differs only negligibly from general relativity when dealing with a situation of mild spacetime curvature (also if "space-depression" means you're thinking in terms of one of those "rubber sheet diagrams" like the one at left, those can be a bit…

It's also true in general relativity that outside of a uniform sphere the spacetime curvature (which determines the gravity) depends solely on the mass, so for example if the Sun collapsed into a black hole the orbits of the planets wouldn't be affected in the slightest (see Birkhoff's theorem)

I was only objecting to the idea that "Some of the Earth is pulling evenly to all sides" and that weakens the pull you feel, I wasn't objecting to the idea that you'd feel stronger gravity if standing on the surface of a higher-density version of Earth. The difference would solely be due to your different distance…

Okay WAY to much effort for me, did not plan on writing a dissertation on i09.

"Some of the Earth is pulling evenly to all sides, so we're not being pulled only toward the center."

I saw a 3D trailer for it in front of Hugo, and I will say that the 3D looked way better to me than other post-converted 3D movies I've seen (of course with all the CG stuff they probably still had the models on a computer so maybe it was just as easy to make it look good as any other CGI graphics, but the people…

"First we are not even sure what killed off the dinosaurs. Current theory states it was a combination of an impact and volcanism, because no one thing could have wiped them out completely."