Astronaut Donald Pettit champions a theory he developed while studying under Octave Levenspiel at Oregon State University. In short, it is apparent that large winged dinosaurs could not fly under today's atmospheric conditions. Pettit suggests that the solution to dino-flight is that the Earth's atmosphere was much thicker in the past, lending buoyancy to the giant animals while maintaining today's ratios of elemental composition. If this trend is extended long before the dinosaurs we end up with a hypothetical atmosphere as thick as Venus or even more. The theory then raises the question: what events caused the atmosphere to disappear? Support the podcast by becoming a Patron @DemystifySci ªº¬˚∆≤≥≤≥ https://www.patreon.com/demystifysci ≤≥≤≥∆˚¬ºª #ThickAtmosphereTheory #Pterosaurs #NASA Levenspiel Thick Atmosphere Theory: http://levenspiel.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/DinosaurW.pdf Esker Thick Atmosphere Theory: https://www.dinosaurtheory.com/big_dinosaur.html Check our short-films channel, @DemystifyingScience: https://youtu.be/1OCL5Lq8m6s ªº¬˚∆≤≥≤≥ Join the mailing list https://bit.ly/3v3kz2S​ ≤≥≤≥∆˚¬ºª PODCAST INFO: Anastasia completed her PhD studying microbial communication at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting and exploring the woods. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. Blog: http://demystifyingscience.com/blog Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3uhn7J1 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/39IDJBD RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/2be66934/podcast/rss Donate: https://bit.ly/3wkPqaD Swag: https://bit.ly/2PXdC2y SOCIAL: - Discord: https://discord.gg/HXQNjTvZCb - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/demystifyingscience - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/demystifysci/ - Twitter: https://twitter.com/demystifysci