When planets collide. Nasa find evidence of planetary collision.

news.bbc.co.uk...

A Nasa space telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets orbiting a young star. Astronomers say the cosmic smash-up is similar to the one that formed our Moon some four billion years ago, when a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth. In this case, two rocky bodies are thought to have slammed into one another in the last few thousand years. Details are to be published in the Astrophysical Journal. The collision involved one object that was at least as big as our Moon and another that was at least as big as Mercury. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporising huge amounts of rock and flinging plumes of hot lava into space. Infrared detectors on Nasa's Spitzer Space Telescope were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporised rock, along with fragments of hardened lava, known as tektites. Melted glass "This collision had to be huge and incredibly high-speed for rock to have been vaporised and melted," said lead author Carey M Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, US. "This is a really rare and short-lived event, critical in the formation of Earth-like planets and moons. We're lucky to have witnessed one not long after it happened."

Sweet. Wonder if we'll get any half decent pictures from this. Would be great to see it.

reply to post by Acidtastic
There but for the grace of go we. These events are understood to be part of the infancy of solar systems. Accretion disks, planetary formation etc. In my mind's eye it's a terrible place of chaos and beauty. Objects of all sizes, eccentric orbits, collisions, destruction and slowly but surely...creation and order. It always catches my imagination and hits me deep. The odds of us being on the right rock in the right place to read and think about these events is both unavoidable and unlikely.

There's a great sequence of images that illustrate the accepted theory of the Earth and Moon's creation:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/f7154e631511.jpg[/atsimg]

Provokes a fair old 'chicken swallow'

Well, at least we patched our wounds up!! Imagine if we still had a moon sized hole on earth. We'd look like the deathstar. I wonder if any of these planets had any life on them.

reply to post by Kandinsky


Thanks, Kandinsky...

I think one of the most interesting aspects of the "impact" theory for the creation of our Moon is the idea that the Moon re-coalesced into the lump we call "The Moon" in less than 100 years after the impact, which is an unbelievably short period of time when talking about geological and cosmological events.

Excerpt from the same "Space.com" article that your graphic came from:

Though the model covers only a day's time, Canup said shortly thereafter the material in outer regions began to cool. Gradually, small clumps would have formed, collided with one another, and grown. Based on other models, she said it would have taken between 1 and 100 years to make a Moon after the impact.

www.space.com...


[edit on 8/12/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]

reply to post by Acidtastic


Just gos to show that there is nothing all that special about our solar system, the "rare life" hypothesis gets weaker every day in my opinion. Great thread, thanks for sharing.


Reply to kardinsky

THANKS for that excellent presentation my friend.