Long-Lost Fifth Planet?

According to story on Space.com, there may have once been a fifth planet in our solar system, between Mars and the asteroid belt.

Space scientists John Chambers and Jack Lissauer of NASA's Ames Research Center hypothesize that along with Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars -- the terrestrial, rocky planets -- there was a fifth terrestrial world, likely just outside of Mars's orbit and before the inner asteroid belt.

Very, very interesting, considering all the Planet X stuff, and the asteroid talk as of late. The story itself is a few years old, but couldn't find anything on ATS about it, so I decided to post it for everyone's thoughts. My apologies if I overlooked an earlier post.

Hehe..
there are already 9 planets in the solar system =p
But ok fair enough I see what you mean
Care to offer any explanation as to where it went?
other than that, it's kind of generally accepted that the Asteroid belt is the remains of a planet

No, the story claims that the planet existed BETWEEN Mars and the asteroid belt, not that the belt itself is the result of a failed planet. The debris of the planet could be the reason for the multiple crater impacts on the Earth and the Moon.

Yes, I know, but I'm telling you now, the asteroid belt used to be a planet =p
Is there any explanation for where this planet went, then?

The explanation given from the story is this:

"The extra planet formed on a low-eccentricity orbit that was long-lived, but unstable," Chambers reported. About 3.9 billion years ago, Planet V was perturbed by gravitational interactions with the other inner planets. It was tossed onto a highly eccentric orbit that
crossed the inner asteroid belt, a reservoir of material much larger than it is today.

Planet V's close encounters with the inner belt of asteroids stirred up a large fraction of those bodies, scattering them about. The perturbed asteroids evolved into Mars crossing orbits, and temporarily enhanced the population of bodies on Earth-crossing orbits, and also increased the lunar impact rate.

After doing its destabilizing deeds, Planet V was lost too, most likely spinning into the Sun, the NASA team reported.

Sounds far, far too speculative for me...

Yes a speculative theory that doesn't actually have any hard (or even, for that matter, soft) evidence behind it.

But I daresay sooner or later someone will be quoting it in an article, book or website as fact

Well, if they read the story, they will learn that it is all theory, but it was a very interesting theory to me.

Two things I'd like to throw into the conversation.

If the asteroid belt used to be a planet....well, its still there then. Just in pieces. It was probably like all the other inner planets but durring a large impact broke up and spread out over the orbit durring a looong period of time. This probably happened before it had much of a crust, assuming it started as a planet in the first place.

Secondly, orbits must be VERY stable for a planet to hold. It doesn't take much in the way of an unstable orbit for a planet to be flung out into space. There is even a small chance that such a rocky planet could have either fell into the sun long ago once its orbit destablized or got sucked up by one of the gas giants.

i'm surprised no one has asked yet, but can we get a link to this article? thanks.

and yeah, this is all pretty speculative. i don't buy into it, but it could make for a good story.

Here it is, from a simple search on Space.com

www.space.com...

What happened to it?

Ther was a war in Heaven, and Michael fought against the Dragon (Lucifer and his dominion of rebel angels/celestials).

My theory, the Lord God/Most High, destroyed the stone/planet and forced Lucifer and the followers to the Earth.

Clues of this may very well be the pyramids and facial structure on Mars. Not to mention Mars looks like it was near an event of such.

Are these astroids made up of the same material, err rather are they from the same source? If so, then my theory has merit.

ME,

Do you have anything sensible to bring to the disussion??

Its quite sensible!

Think about it. Ancient writtings and glyphs speak of the gods/celstials that visited thru-out time, as does the bible. Did the celestials just appear out of nowhere? Or would it be more concievable that they had a nearby rock?

"Stones of fire." What do you make of that phrase?

I didn't remember this before but I remembered it when I writed to Saturn's rocky signatures thread.

Titius-Bode law which "gives places of planets".
milan.milanovic.org...
www.brainyencyclopedia.com...

maybe it was Mars sized and when the theorized orbital destabilization happened it impacted the Earth? Half of that is the presently accepted explanation of where the moon came from

Originally posted by KKing123
maybe it was Mars sized and when the theorized orbital destabilization happened it impacted the Earth? Half of that is the presently accepted explanation of where the moon came from

Correct. That is what I have read and seen. This is why moon rocks contain absolutly no moisture they belive. Because the impact of a mars size planet collided with earth supposedly and ejected molten earth into orbit that created the moon. Heres the link.

Mars-sized object probably created the Moon
16 August 2001

Our moon almost certainly formed from matter ejected from the Earth after a collision with a large body. Previous studies have failed to determine what kind of object this might be, but a highly accurate model has now found that a collision with a body the size of Mars could account for the features of the Earth and the Moon. According to Robin Canup and Erik Asphaug, the discovery further strengthens the impact theory because objects of this size were reasonably abundant in the early solar system (R Canup and E Asphaug 2001 Nature 412 708). physicsweb.org...

Amazing huh.



[edit on 7-7-2004 by Hoppinmad1]

Actually, current thinking is that the asteroid belt is NOT the remains of a planet. There's not enough material there.

Planet V is an interesting idea. It's not too far beyond the bounds of belief that something like that would have existed early in the formation of the solar system. However, theory requires some hard evidence and maths to get the scientific community to accept it, and it's going to be very difficult to come up with something that proves anything. Right now it's just a Neat Theory.

It was never a planet, it was too close to Mars and Jupiter. Perhaps it started forming slowly but every time it got broken back down because of Mars and Jupiters gravity.

[edit on 7-7-2004 by VirusClock]

Originally posted by Hoppinmad1
Because the impact of a mars size planet collided with earth supposedly and ejected molten earth into orbit that created the moon.

Actually most of moon's mass might be from that planet which collided to earth. Composition on moon differs from earth.

I don't remember now was that article in one of the newer Astronomy magazines
or in T�hdet ja Avaruus (member magazine of Finnish Ursa astronomical association)


Well, here's one link to that simulation model:
www.spacedaily.com...