Traces of another world found on the Moon (BBC)

a reply to: Denoli

You're proposing: Volcanoes on Earth shot material up that formed the moon.

Okay, fine. To demonstrate this, you need to: (1) Explain how the ejecta from the volcanoes would reach escape velocity. (2) Explain how the composition of the moon is similar to volcanic material from Earth. (3) Explain why we don't see volcanic material reaching escape velocity today. (4) Explain why the forming moon would not be at Earth's equator. (5) Explain why most lunar material is not volcanic.

Among many other things.

This is the point we're trying to make to you: Your idea, to be valid, has to answer all the questions that the existing models do. And the onus is on YOU to do it since YOU are the one making the claim. Just "putting it out there" doesn't cut it.

a reply to: Denoli

wow...I never knew that volcanic ejecta traveled at a speed that would allow it to reach orbit.

lol

Never knew that. I think I just lost a couple of IQ points.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

so do you or don't you think you can figure out aliens' motives you didn't "answer" that one.

and why wouldn't it be part of the accreting debris? Jupiter's gravity? if that's what you were going to say wouldn't we be looking at a ring around Jupiter instead of an asteroid belt? you haven't answered anything just responded no clarity or substance. maybe a computer simulation would help?

a reply to: peter vlar

so are you saying the asteroid belt is made of remnant debris from some impact or what? how old is the AB and where is the debris from? is it from the early solar system or maybe the impact with the Moon? wouldn't Jupiter's gravity create a ring around the planet instead of a belt millions of miles away? are there any other examples of asteroid belts that we know of?

originally posted by: bottleslingguy
a reply to: peter vlar

so are you saying the asteroid belt is made of remnant debris from some impact or what? how old is the AB and where is the debris from? is it from the early solar system or maybe the impact with the Moon? wouldn't Jupiter's gravity create a ring around the planet instead of a belt millions of miles away? are there any other examples of asteroid belts that we know of?

originally posted by: bbracken677
a reply to: Denoli

wow...I never knew that volcanic ejecta traveled at a speed that would allow it to reach orbit.

lol

Never knew that. I think I just lost a couple of IQ points.

Well there's your iq down a few call the fire brigade and by the way that was sarcasm !
Right what was the velocity needed oooh I forgot, the same as today's silly me . But the earth wouldn't have a moon so ,
This is just speculative since I’m just a Noob !No Plate Tectonics
If the moon-creating collision had never occurred the Earth’s outer crust would have been thicker & we wouldn’t have had plate tectonics. This would have led to increased, massive volcanism to shed heat like on Venus or the massive stacked volcanoes of Mars.

a reply to: Denoli

The hypothetical collision that created the moon is not responsible for creating plate tectonics.

Look at boiling water. You have water at the bottom that is heated, rises to the top where it releases some heat and then drops back down to the bottom where the process begins all over again.

In the earth, you have much the same system going except that it is much much slower. The inner core of extremely hot molten iron that is thought to be roughly the same temperature (or close) as the surface of the sun. That is the inner core. The outer core is an iron-nickel alloy, also molten. The mantle, which is between the outer core and the crust of the earth is the mantle (inner and outer mantle) which contains most of the heat (from a volume standpoint) and is composed of extremely hot ferro-magnesium silicates that are constantly being circulated by convection, just as the boiling water.

The crust is constantly being recirculated with edges of the plates diving down into the mantle, and at other locations you see magma coming up forming the newest of the crust as it cools.

Volcanoes exist in weak areas of the crust, mainly at the plate boundaries, where molten crust and mantle push upwards rupturing the thin crust at those points.

It has been roughly 4.5 billion years (according to mainstream theory based on data which indicates this) since the hypothetical collision. If plate tectonics depended on the collision to have started, I do believe that more than likely it would have healed itself by now. The fact that there is so much heat involved inside the earth, I really don't believe the collision is responsible for plate tectonics. Even when all the land mass was in one giant continent... which was during the age of the dinosaurs... plate tectonics would have been doing it's thing.

One thing is a given when you discuss tectonics: one thing doesn't change and that is that the surface of the earth will continue to change as long as the heat in the interior is sufficient to maintain convection flow.

If the moon collision never occurred one might make an argument that life would not have developed (without tidal action) or that life would have developed significantly differently. Life is heavily dependent on the tidal action caused by the moon. Could life have developed without this tidal action? Perhaps, and perhaps not...we do not know enough at this point, but given that life tends to develop and occupies even the most extreme conditions on the planet I tend to believe that life would have developed anyway, although most assuredly there would be significant differences.

a reply to: Denoli

Oh, yeah, and before Pangea (the supercontinent) there were smaller continents... these smaller ones came together (also by plate tectonics). I believe Pangea existed for something like 100 million years. At least that is the current thinking, I believe.

originally posted by: bottleslingguy
a reply to: peter vlar

so are you saying the asteroid belt is made of remnant debris from some impact or what? how old is the AB and where is the debris from? is it from the early solar system or maybe the impact with the Moon? wouldn't Jupiter's gravity create a ring around the planet instead of a belt millions of miles away? are there any other examples of asteroid belts that we know of?

Jupiter does have rings mostly made of moon dust

Kuiper belt

a region of the Solar System beyond the planets, extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun.[1] It is similar to the asteroid belt, but it is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive.[2][3] Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies, or remnants from the Solar System's formation. Although some asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia and water. The classical belt is home to at least three dwarf planets: Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, are also believed to have originated in the region

originally posted by: bottleslingguy
a reply to: peter vlar

so are you saying the asteroid belt is made of remnant debris from some impact or what?

Not sure where you got that from as I didn't address anything aside from your query regarding the MAB and why the accretion disk never formed into a planet. Below I link a pretty interesting article regarding some research done by MIT that might be able to give you some perspective on the prevailing schools of thought.

how old is the AB and where is the debris from?

There are a few hypothesis as to this, all equally tenable in my opinion. The basic version though is that early in the life of the solar system, dust and rock circling the sun were pulled together by gravity into planets. But Jupiter, the largest planet, kept a number of the pieces from coalescing into another planet. Instead, its gravity disrupted the formation process, leaving an array of unattached asteroids. The Main Belt once contained enough material to form a planet nearly four times as large as Earth. Jupiter's gravity not only stopped the creation of such a planet, it also swept most of the material clear, leaving far too little behind for a planet of any size to form. Indeed, if the entire mass of the Main Belt could somehow create a single body, it would weigh in at less than half of the mass of the moon. Other solar systems are thought to contain their own asteroid belts.

is it from the early solar system or maybe the impact with the Moon?

Here's an article regarding some recent research done at MIT that give a rather different spin on the revailing schools of thought. I like where they're going with this so I'm very curious to see if it can be independently corroborated and how it all pans out. www.technologyreview.com...

wouldn't Jupiter's gravity create a ring around the planet instead of a belt millions of miles away?

Why would it? The MAB wasn't That close to jupiter and the distances between and the sizes of the asteroids varies widely. As you yourself mention, the distance is extremely vast. The MAB is approximately 2-4 AU across(1 AU is the distance from Earth to the Sun) so even with the mass and gravity of Jupiter, its not strong enough to pull everything from that far away into the orbit. Some pieces probably made their way into Jovian orbit but they were the exception not the rule. It is however strong enough to affect whether or not what the MAB coalesced from will form into a planet. As I mentioned above, the MAB originally held enough material to create a planet roughly 4x the size of the earth, in addition to Jupiter's gravity playing tug of war and keeping the disc from forming into anything large enough to notice, Jupiter was also pretty deft at sending some of these chunks out of the MAB which is where we get the NEA's(near earth asteroids).

are there any other examples of asteroid belts that we know of?

We haven't detected, seen or imaged anything comparable in other systems as yet but the current models as well as the math predict that they should exist in other systems. Not necessarily every system because we can't always account for unknown variables that could preclude its existence. But the likelihood is very high that they do exist in other systems.

a reply to: bbracken677

so your mechanism for plate tectonics is boiling water? really? where is the crust? are we the only example of a planet with plate tectonics? are we the only example of a planet with a molten core?

a reply to: Pauligirl

"Moon dust" from its own moons not ours. how does that explain the asteroid belt forming a ring in a completely opposite way as a belt around the Sun if the components of the belt were attracted by Jupiter's gravity?

a reply to: peter vlar

I know what an AU is, my god you people are so wrapped up in your egos. you know what's funny? the Sumerians called the planet that Earth was originally, a "watery giant". I could see that huge, rocky, water covered planet being hit by something a little smaller than Mars, stealing its companion ( which was tidally locked in a slow binary orbit) which resulted in the once larger planet now smaller to move closer to the Sun and the collision threw debris all over the place- it made the asteroid belt (maybe even the Oort Cloud) and scattered pieces of the new Earth and the impactor all over the Moon. simple as that, Occam's style. why not? no worse than your examples that leave more questions unanswered than satisfactorily solved.

a reply to: bottleslingguy

*sigh*

The boiling water was a real life, familiar example of convection currents. Convection currents that exist in the mantle and are responsible in part for the dynamics involved in plate tectonics. The crust is, of course, the coolest outer layer of the earth. The mantle is between the coolest part of the earth, and the hottest. Ergo: convection currents.

Sorry you didn't see the obvious.

Oh, and the earth is the only known planet to have plate tectonics. The key there is the word "known"...Venus was thought to have tectonic features, but that turned out to be false. One would surmise that exoplanets in the Goldilocks zone, that have molten cores would also have a system of plate tectonics active, but that has not been proven, merely theorized.

The surface of Mars is thought to have been formed by plate tectonics, and exhibits many characteristics that support that. However it is also thought that the tectonic processes are a thing of the past and that Mars is no longer active. It is thought that at best Mars may have marsquakes every million years or so.

a reply to: peter vlar
The link to the MIT study: outstanding!

Thank you!

a reply to: bbracken677

FYI, there are some discussing plate tectonics on Ganymede, but it's highly speculative.

a reply to: astrostu


whoa!!!

How did they get there????

lol, sorry, I couldnt resist

a reply to: bbracken677
I should be the one sighing. Your reply was the standard "we're not sure but we'll just keep throwing words out there and hope you get disinterested".

I know what convection currents are and you can keep trying to sell that it models the Earth's process but it is inadequate to describe what we see. We know the Earth was impacted that's not in dispute so couldn't you connect the dots and figure out that is why we see what we see on Earth? It is still healing its wound from that impact and the plates are trying to attain a stasis just like all the other planets.

a reply to: bottleslingguy

That is possible, and I never stated it was impossible. The crust has been dated to be roughly 4.5 billion years old, in other words dates back roughly to the same time frame as the formation of the moon. Was there a crust when the hypothesized collision occurred? Possibly, possibly not.

Most of the other planets, who have reached "stasis" as you put it, are either lacking a molten core (such as mars) or are gas giants and we have no idea what is happening at their core. I would hardly classify Jupiter as having reached any form of stasis as it is highly active, but once again, we have no idea what is happening at it's core. The pressures involved at that depth may totally preclude any kind of tectonic activity.

Mercury has a large iron core, it is thought, and a thin mantle and is likely only slightly more active than Mars. Mars is, in effect, dead. The moon is dead. Venus may exhibit a milder form of plate tectonics than the earth, or not at all, depending on who you talk to.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all gas giants, and as previously stated we have no idea what is happening with any core they may have (in other words, the rocky part of the planet may or may not be experiencing some form of plate tectonic action).

As far as moons, there are several moons orbiting Jupiter that could exhibit such activity, no doubt caused by Jupiter's gravity and tidal forces. Ganymede apparently exhibits such behavior. Europa also exhibits such activity with it's icy crust to some degree: Europa also likely has significant liquid water. What Io is experiencing is something different than the traditional plate tectonics (and definition of) since it's surface is affected by Jupiter's gravity much the same way our oceans are affected by the moon.

The sigh was for your remark regarding boiling water. For your apparent disregard or lack of connecting the dots with convection and the connection to earth's mantle activity with is exactly that. Smarter people than you and I have likened the action in the mantle to boiling custard. Would that description have helped?

Oh, and how is convection inadequate to describe what we are seeing? What is it that does not fit the model for you?

a reply to: bbracken677

I love custard

I question the idea that there was an earlier landmass that broke apart due to these convection currents because if that was the case, why did that one "earlier" crust form? wasn't the planet cooling? did this earlier single landmass have fault lines and subduction zones? why did the custard skin form all grouped together unevenly?

I say it is possible the earlier Earth was covered with water and then was impacted and is still healing from that. are you saying the molten Earth formed like a bowl of custard? custard skin forms all across the surface evenly not clumped together in order to break apart and subduct and form mountain ranges and volcanoes when it cools. it may wrinkle some and get harder at the edges of the bowl but unless you turn up the heat or pull it with a spoon it is not going to start moving.

that's one of those "dumbed down" answers we get from a bunch of people who really don't know the answers to begin with but they want to stay superior and collect a paycheck for staying in line and not causing problems.