As of today, there are currently 1453 known potentially hazardous asteroids that could impact Earth and cause a real planetary catastrophe. Given the new diverse “snow globe” model of our solar system in relation to asteroids, how may more don’t we know about? It only takes one. Of more pragmatic interest, this new paper suggests a diverse asteroid population stirred up in the ‘snow globe’ model was essential to bringing water to Earth.
From the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Cambridge, MA –
Our solar system seems like a neat and orderly place, with small, rocky worlds near the Sun and big, gaseous worlds farther out, all eight planets following orbital paths unchanged since they formed.
However, the true history of the solar system is more riotous. Giant planets migrated in and out, tossing interplanetary flotsam and jetsam far and wide. New clues to this tumultuous past come from the asteroid belt.
“We found that the giant planets shook up the asteroids like flakes in a snow globe,” says lead author Francesca DeMeo, a Hubble postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Millions of asteroids circle the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, in a region known as the main asteroid belt. Traditionally, they were viewed as the pieces of a failed planet that was prevented from forming by the influence of Jupiter’s powerful gravity. Their compositions seemed to vary methodically from drier to wetter, due to the drop in temperature as you move away from the Sun.
That traditional view changed as astronomers recognized that the current residents of the main asteroid belt weren’t all there from the start. In the early history of our solar system the giant planets ran amok, migrating inward and outward substantially. Jupiter may have moved as close to the Sun as Mars is now. In the process, it swept the asteroid belt nearly clean, leaving only a tenth of one percent of its original population.
As the planets migrated, they stirred the contents of the solar system. Objects from as close to the Sun as Mercury, and as far out as Neptune, all collected in the main asteroid belt.
“The asteroid belt is a melting pot of objects arriving from diverse locations and backgrounds,” explains DeMeo.
Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, DeMeo and co-author Benoit Carry (Paris Observatory) examined the compositions of thousands of asteroids within the main belt. They found that the asteroid belt is more diverse than previously realized, especially when you look at the smaller asteroids.
This finding has interesting implications for the history of Earth. Astronomers have theorized that long-ago asteroid impacts delivered much of the water now filling Earth’s oceans. If true, the stirring provided by migrating planets may have been essential to bringing those asteroids.
This raises the question of whether an Earth-like exoplanet would also require a rain of asteroids to bring water and make it habitable. If so, then Earth-like worlds might be rarer than we thought.
The paper describing these findings appears in the January 30, 2014 issue of Nature.
Headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists, organized into six research divisions, study the origin, evolution and ultimate fate of the universe.
Speculation about our planet’s and solar system’s history has no political agenda and while we have some small amount of knowledge now and are steadily gaining more, we shall never know the whole truth.
Very much like our understanding of our planet’s climate, with the obvious exception of the political agenda bit.
Bill Illis says:
“I think the evidence shows that we have not been hit by anything larger that up to 15 kms in the last 4 billion years. That means, we are one lucky planet.
The largest impact crater is Vredefort South Africa from 2.0 billion years ago and it was only a little larger than the Chicxulub asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs.”
Remember that three quarters of the Earth is ocean, that no ocean bottom is older than 200 million years, and that much of the continents are also relatively young, and that there is actually fairly strong evidence for an impact crater considerably larger than Vredevort in Wilkes land in Antarctica.
I should think that at the very most there is any evidence remaining for 10% of the large impacts during the last 3.8 billion years.
@Hoser
“Don’t we have a duty to use the energy stored on Earth for millions of years for the ultimate valuable purpose?”
Probably not. From what basic moral principles do you derive the duty of spreading life?
“In the same way, trees and other plants devote large amounts of energy to reproduction. It is only natural we carry out the natural process of seeding life on other worlds.”
Trees spread seeds to other parts of the Earth. They do so without (apparently) thinking about it. We are not trees. You are suggesting that we spread the seeds of life beyond earth. And we would do it by conscious decision. Your analogy with the natural processes of trees fails.
And if it natural, how is it a duty?
@tty
I am getting a bit late into this.
I have a book from the research festival in Oslo 2000, telling what the geologists are doing.
In an article about the Mjølnir crater in the Barents sea, there is a world map of known craters.
A look at that map clearly gives the frequency of eager allmost fanatic crater- seekers in the world! and not really so convincing about all more or less large craters.
My idea is that the largest known crater in the world measures 300 Km diam and lies in Canada, and a next really big one exactly where Ural goes into the sea.
The swedes have the siljan- crater quite very big and another at Dellen.
We have Gardnos 5 Km diam and really very fine because you do not have to dig. The ice and the Community has dug for you allready.
I red of the possible craters under ice in Antarktis.
On discussing it…… think of the very ugly light first,…… then the earthquake…….and of the Tsunami…..and that extreemly acid rain and the shadows for the sun following…. worldwide….
At Gardnos I could pick samples and estimate the temperatures. Bitumenous rock is baked high enough to give good electric conductivity. Shall we say orange hot? and fused greywach granite rock, that is glasswork at yellow hot….
Most interesting is that over large areas, it looks like if a quite proper dynamite has gone off just 2 handwidths away. Then you can tell the pressure shockwave gradient.
No dynamite, no chemical ecxplosion, is even near to being sharp or fast enough to smash as hard as an asteroide.
All is open and you can exel in interesting details. and really very well preserved, nothing has happened on Gardnos for the last 250 million years. I can see by the size of the crystals of what is melted, how soon it has re- cristallized again.
Gardnos can be highly recommended. In many respects it is a finest and best crater. Elsewhere you have to dig and to drill.
“I think what they mean with opaque is that you couldn’t see earths surface from space. Just like Venus today. That doesn’t mean that sunlight didn’t reach earths surface?
Another thing, didn’t it start with plankton in water?”
“Cyanobacteria – also known as “blue-green algae” – are the most ancient life form known to inhabit earth, with a fossil record of over 3.5 billion years. ”
http://www.mbari.org/staff/conn/botany/phytoplankton/phytoplankton_cyanobacteria.htm
And Cyanobacteria does fits in the general category of a plankton.
Venus has huge atmosphere [with a lot thick clouds of sulfuric acid].
Venus about same size as Earth but it has an atmosphere equal to about 94 times
more atmosphere mass than Earth. If Earth atmosphere was as massive as one on Venus
from earth surface so much atmosphere would block out the sunlight, nor could see Earth’s
surface from space.
— Venus Atmosphere:
Total mass of atmosphere: ~4.8 x 10^20 kg
Earth atmosphere:
Total mass of atmosphere: 5.1 x 10^18 kg —
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/
Btw, Earth’s ocean is 1.4 x 10^21 kg.
Earth’s ocean is about 4 times more massive and has higher
pressure. But Venus is sort like our ocean in terms of pressure.
At Venus surface it has a pressure of 92 atm.
That is same pressure as 3000 feet under water on Earth.
Earth oceans it’s less transparent than Venus atmosphere.
At 3000 feet under water you would be in darkness, whereas there
more light at surface of Venus at this same pressure.
Re catastrophism, see google mars.
One hemisphere is an undisturbed plain, the other hemisphere pockmarked with craters.
This can only be explained by one single catastrophic event.
The further we look the bigger the universe becomes, such that it is looking like it may be to our perspective infinite. Bazillions of galaxies and gazillions of suns, for us on the third rock from a very ordinary star to even consider we are the only life, or life would be rare in the rest of the universe.
Would make us very narrow thinkers, chaos rules the material universe, always tending to natural attractors and beauty like snow flakes. It would be improbable for there not to be untold billions of planets teeming with life.
The scientists doing this study may be right or wrong or in between but at least they are thinking, inquiring, questioning, and that is what science is.
“Hoser says:
January 30, 2014 at 10:22 pm
…What might be unusual about Earth is our Moon. It seems to me the stability our companion gives us has helped make the biosphere more stable. In particular, it has given us a chance to develop intelligence and a civilization. That part might be very unusual.
It’s why I find it terribly dangerous to denigrate the important role of humans on Earth. We represent perhaps the only chance for Earth to spread the seeds of life far from this planet. If we fail, will there ever be another chance for a second intelligent species to rise up and do the job?
Don’t we have a duty to use the energy stored on Earth for millions of years for the ultimate valuable purpose?… Seeds and animals travel across oceans to start a new life on islands. Space is the next ocean we (more than just humans) need to cross…”
==================================================
I totally agree…we are so lucky to live in a unique moment for life on earth…our children or grandchildren will soon be able to establish a breeding colony of humans on Mars that will hopefully ensure the survival of our species…free from the threat of asteroids, pandemics or nuclear war. Future Earthlings and these new Martians will be able to spread our species around the universe. Surely we should spend less time worrying about “saving the planet” and more about using its’ resource to help “save the humans”!
More on migrating planets:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1401.7738.pdf
The simple fact that the asteroid belt exists where it is, seems to be evidence that Jupiters orbit hasn’t changed much since its formation, It would take billions of years for a giant planet to ‘corral’ and trap random left over material from the solar system’s formation. The reason why there is a concentration of asteroids on the elliptic plane between mars and Jupiter is simply because it’s just a physically natural place where the slower outer planets motion and suns magnetic field and its motion dictates.
TRG says: January 30, 2014 at 4:54 pm “Need to underline real in the first sentence.”
Agreed! I recall news many years back that the total budget for a NASA program to catalog asteroid orbits with the potential for earth impact had been cut from something like $800 million down to $300 million. My fuzzy recollection was that, in order to accommodate the reduced funding, they increased the minimum size of asteroids that would qualify for orbit analysis to thus only identify the ones that would wipe out all life on earth and ignore smaller ones that would wipe out only, say, ~half of it…
That reduction was likely done in favor of wasting a relatively tiny bit more money, (on top of the billions spent every year), on the thoroughly imagined threat of CAGW rather than studying a remote but real threat; the only kinds of threats that NASA should be studying anyway IMO.
RoHa says: January 31, 2014 at 1:21 am “And if it natural, how is it a duty?”
The #1 natural “duty” of life itself is to reproduce. Why denigrate one over another because of a difference in the means of achieving that aim? There is a collective intelligence stored in DNA to guide the means by which trees propagate; human consciousness for the same purpose is no less natural than a tree’s.
In an infinite universe, everything will happen. In an infinite and eternal universe, everything will happen again and again. Probabilities are possibly slim for each event, but certain. Significant evidence now points to an infinite universe. Eternal, no one has much of an idea as far as I have read. Leif, I am sure, will correct me if I am wrong regarding recent evidence of the eternal universe.
@jim G
Theese speculations are not new, and research hardly has found out quite recently on theese things. Such doctrines and formulas are mostly nothing but traditional quackery and propaganda.
The infinite and steady state universe or cycling universe of that kind cycling infinitely from eternity to eternity is,….hinduistic? Psevdo- hinduistic? Mad? Hardly very empirical? only just dreamt of…? ? ? ?
Seek Giordano Bruno.
Bruno was a monk of the Dominican order. He was obviously very clever and intelligent. And able to speculate in terms of the copernican system, but further of “billions” of such systems out there in the universe… Just look at all the stars.
God told Abraham to go out and count the stars, and Abraham, allways obedient went out and did his very best bud had to give in. The stars of the real world …. are countless! SCRIPTVM EST.
G. Bruno was quite obviously a quite “restive” character, quite unwilling to take any kind of orders and correctures, which is,….. dangerous if you have first submitted yourself to the Dominican order. Rules and regulations of that order is that you can be commanded by humans above you in the grades in the same order. He even went up to Calvin in Schweiz to meditate for a while, a fact that rather tells us that the conflict was very serious, Calvin being a declared anti-papist.
well, he was tied up and burnt!
Unluckily, because that was quite a loss to Humanity and to philosophy.
Gallileo shortly after came to the conclusion that the burning of Giordano Bruno was…. erroreous and quite sinful. Because Bruno was quite obviously right on the Copernican system at least, See for yourself in the telescope……those 4 Medicinean stars going around Jupiter, apparenty even another Copernican system. But the holy inqvisition found that now there must be limits to Revoluytionibus in the universe,…and put Gallilei on trial and on INDEX LIBRORVM PROHIBITORVM and into house- arrest as usual for disobedient … orderly people.
SIR Fred Hoyle also propagated the infinite steady state universe. And stands there with one leg only on the pedestal. He was beaten by George Gamovs big bang theory. But the true designer and creator of that theory is a recent belgian Jesuit Monk, a certain Lefevre, who will show up on Wikipedia. Wherefore the Pope has adapted and officially believs both in…. a lot of revolutionibus in the universe and in the Big Bang theory.
Pastor Vojtyla from Krakov…. now to be spoken as a saint, … remembered as an irreclaimable Polak and Copernican….. stood up on the day (evening) of Lutheri reformation and spoke EX CATEDRA ( sitting in a sofa) that the case against Gallilei was erroreous, quite sinful, and deeply regrettable. On behalf of the Church and of all saints, and in all languages.
All the satelites jumped twoo fingerwidths out of orbit just by the shock, and did rattle until midnight from it.
Believe it or not.
Sparks says:
January 31, 2014 at 4:43 am
The simple fact that the asteroid belt exists where it is, seems to be evidence that Jupiters orbit hasn’t changed much since its formation, It would take billions of years for a giant planet to ‘corral’ and trap random left over material from the solar system’s formation. The reason why there is a concentration of asteroids on the elliptic plane between mars and Jupiter is simply because it’s just a physically natural place where the slower outer planets motion and suns magnetic field and its motion dictates.
On what data and calculations do you base the “billions of years” number?
@Geoff Withnell
Very fine thank you.
I have Bakers Astronomy from 1959 on it, and inside there Kuypers Protoplanet theory. Kuyper, the man with the belt. Kuyper in original according to Robert H.Baker, Ph.D.
Kuyper, the man with the belt, builds on the Kant-Laplace theory of the origin of the system and updates that in an obviously scillful and conscistent way that brings it in order according to physical law and updated recent observation.
Quite necessary for aspects and real properties such as Bodes law and other obvious and irreduceable pythagorean whole numeral properties and relations in the solar system is tidal forces of decisive kind between the planets, on which a Nicola Scafetta is frappingly uncritical and unqualified.
. Whereas the very large and voluminous protoplanets of Kuyper can care for it.
It is beyond the nature and property of newtonian gravitation to organize matter into coherent and whole mumeral form and bound orbit like the moon to the earth, and Charon to Pluto and Pluto to Charon and further Nix & Hydra in exact harmonical steps outward. The same with Jupiters moons. It obviously has organized the Harmonices Mundi- way as a resonant , disperged and coherent sound figure, and that takes more than newtonian gravitation, it takes microscopic molecular binding forces in addition. there must be friction and “drag” in the system, and what we see today is rather a fossile of such a system after it has settled and remaining dust & gases blown out and clean by the solar wind.
It further takes Microscopic forces different from newtonian gravity, namely van der Waals forces that are of electromagnetic different from gravitational nature. It takes material molecular glue- or syrup forces in molecular matter. It takes friction! Even viscous friction. Able to damp mechanical moovement energy and convert it into heat, that can be radiated out and got rid of as electro- magnetic waves (Light and heat) it has to be able to “Run hot!” even red hot and higher, in order for it to “Fall into shape”
That is also what we see in the meteorites. It obviously has ran quite hot!
Large planets having mooved in and out is speculations very inferiour to Kant Laplace Kuypers levels of enlightment.
That can be said for sure and for definite.
A very important rule of science is that it somehow has to be “Naturally plausible” if you are out for giving a scientific explaination for it. God is no well formed formula in science. Neither is your political opinion. You better try and give it a natural explaination first, a proper research hypo- thesis that can be examined, falsified or verified empirically.
On verification:
Verification is also quite important in science. Be sure that you are awake first, for instance and not just dreaming. Check up if it is true.
On discussing hockeysticks and eventual results and statements from the IPCC, care to show for yourself and for others and on objects and elements, away from the tense debate, that you are not a scientific illiterate. Else your eventual critical and “sceptic” opinions cannot be relied on. And quite especially not your eventual opinion about hockeystics and of the IPCC and of eventual ships with fools.
= my very good advice to everyone including Anthony Watts.
Look up Kuyper for instance, the man with the belt. That belt could later be found.
Geoff Withnell says:
January 31, 2014 at 8:50 am
“On what data and calculations do you base the “billions of years” number? “
How old are the asteroids in the asteroid belt?
The Allende meteorite is measured to be 4.563 billion years old and other meteorites give similar ages. The oldest moon rocks are 4.45 billion years, and of the oldest Earth rocks, about 4 billion years.
Sparks says:
January 31, 2014 at 9:25 am
Geoff Withnell says:
January 31, 2014 at 8:50 am
“On what data and calculations do you base the “billions of years” number? “
How old are the asteroids in the asteroid belt?
The Allende meteorite is measured to be 4.563 billion years old and other meteorites give similar ages. The oldest moon rocks are 4.45 billion years, and of the oldest Earth rocks, about 4 billion years.
What does the age of the rocks have to do with how long it would take to “corral” them?
What evidence do you have that they were not gathered in the last 500 million years?
“Earth’s oceans is about 1.3 trillion cubic km” That’s a lot of 1 to 4 cubic kilometre asteroids of water. The idea that the oceans were brought to Earth after it formed by some sort of bombardment seems hardly credible.
That the water comes from the rocks that formed planet Earth seems more likely, and perhaps this suggests how some of that water came to be in the first place.
http://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/water-is-a-by-product-of-particle-space-weathering-by-the-solar-wind/
@all ladies and gentlemen here
On Phobos being “captured” from the asteroide belt, that is a very important example.
If nothing is damping and running hot, that stone would have traveled back and forth to where it came from. there is nothing in the law of newtonian gravity that can cause anything else. But running a bit hot will take from its E = 1/2 m V^2 energy and reduce that, and radiate that out and away electromagnetically. Thus if m remains stable, V will change.
And in a systematic way such as to “round off” the orbit by things running hot.
If a meteorite runs into the earth atmosphere, it runs very hot, it shines very bright, it even booms…and that stone is “Captured” and settled.
Look at the Saturn rings, it is really very round and revolutionibus. It must have ran hot by material frictional forces to be grinded smooth and round that way. Elliptical moovement by Kepplers 1st law is “grinded” round by frictional action, scratching into material chemical bond forces. A silly fool from the ship here educates us that they can be ignored and neglected
The particles in he Kuyper belt do not run in that very frappingly circular way, because it does not grind things round and hot so much out there. But there are clear tendencies of Harmonices mundi also out there. Many objects out there walk in step with Neptun on near musical accords.
There is Beat and tone also in Neptuns Harem, you see.(“groove” you call it?)
On water in the inner solar system:
A Waste lot of CaSO4 . 2H2O is found on Mars. That substance “Gyps” or “Stucca” begin to decay and damping at about 100 Celsius, and gives off H2O in a very efficient exoterm reaction that cools….. at the temperatures when wood begin to decay and gas and burn.
Thus Gyps and Stucca is a most efficient protection against fire in the houses., much better than metal, tiles rockwool, and asbestos, that does not cool by endotherm reaction when heated.
At 200 C, Gyps it is “Burnt” to “Hemihydrate” (CaSO4)2 . H2O, and that is what you mix “Gyps” or Stucca from. It dissolves slightly in water and recristallises in an exoterm reaction, it runs warm during hardening, and solidifies as “gyps” CaSO4 . 2H2O
heated further to abour 300 celsius or a bit higher , all H2O evacuates leaving sheere CaSO4. “Overburnt” and that again starts decaying at red hot. The sulphate is “fracking” further and at yellow hot you get CaO.
H2SO4 SO2 + H2O +1/2O2 is going on, on Venus Sulphuric acid begins to “Crack” and evaporate at 380 celsius and at 460 it is fully cracked. The air is clear on the ground and the condensation level back to H2SO4 clouds is at 50 Km (?)
Ca++ present stabilizes the sulphate ion a bit. But on mixing Silica with Gyps, SO3 goes off at 400 celsius.
This is important in order to discuss also the sunscraper comets. What possibly gases and cools them?
A waste lot of Gyps, CaSO4 .2H2O has also been found on the Moon. Under Vacuum at 1AU from the sun. Right under the grey dusty ground that protects it from the sunstitch.
Thus, also discuss Sulphur in the inner solar system, not just more or less fossile carbon, and H2O more or less,….
The thickness of the atmospere in Peking, whether it can be cut by knife or not,…. is straight proportional to the Mahuna Loa curve and to the Church and White curve.
Thus, the thickness of situation in Peking is due to the burning of fossile sulphur also, and not only fossile carbon..
thus we can discuss revolutionibus in the inner solar system.
Gallilei being no more on INDEX LIBRORVM PROHIBITORVM. (proper Polish Copernicanism in St.Peters See could restore his reputation) and neither should Robert Boyle, the sceptical chemist, founder of The Royal Society with SIR Isaac Newton as the 1st precident.
Both of them then took proper action against ADVLTERARE (= virtual reality and money) on behalf of the Royal treasury.
I believe that you have a severe problem of ADVLTERARE in the USA in our days.
“Nature and natures law lay hidden in darkness and night
God said Let Newton be, and all was bright.” (William Blake)
But Newton had to take som learnings also from the sceptical chemist for being efficient enough in court to get the experts to Tower and show them to their rights and to their duties there..
Carbomontanus says:
January 31, 2014 at 9:46 am
@jim G
“Theese speculations are not new, and research hardly has found out quite recently on theese things. Such doctrines and formulas are mostly nothing but traditional quackery and propaganda”
I am aware of that of which you speak, however there is, indeed, new information on the subject. Significantly more recent and more technologically sound than that which you cite.
Please see:
“Astrophysicists create the first accurate map of the universe: It’s very flat, and probably infinite”
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174427-astrophysicists-create-the-first-accurate-map-of-the-universe-its-very-flat-and-probably-infinite
@Alan Roberttson
There are some thumb- rules on how to make choises between theories and even paradigms also.
V. van Orman Quine on Harward wrote “On simple theories in a complex world” and his argument was that we seem to preferre simplicity.
“Simplicity works” is the fameous Dobson- doctrine, John Dobson, =the man with the foot or with the mount….. for home made Newtonian telescopes.
That goes along with Occhams razor: ENTIA NON SUNT MULTIPLICANDEM PRÆTER NECESSITATEM!
But people hardly do agree on what is simple, not even on what is reasonable.
The Quine school of logics at Harward has also preached against paradoxes. There I have an article from Quine in Scientific American “On paradoxes” on PENSVM.
I learnt quite recently from a native american student from Rhode Island that verbum “To Quine..” means to stand up at the congresses and talk a lot of things that people and young students quite especially….. are not interested in anymore.
But I personally have a set of systematic learnings in order to orientate and be able to disqualify propaganda and expertise and sensational news from the research front as quicly as possible and rather pick up essencial news in a systematic and comprehensible way.
Gen. Schwarzkoppfs Theorem at the war in the Gulf one was: “Yes, weve heard that, but we cannot build on it before we have it sustained by an independent source…next question pleace…?”
Thus I say: In war and in love all is permitted. There you must doubble check. (like Schwarzkoppf did and won that war) But in civil life we must tripple- ceck. Check… doubble check…. check again..
But then you rather should draw a conclusion and adjust.
That is my very healthy thumb rule.
One must check whether it is real and conscistent before one can set on it.
And another very important rule: The rumors of thousands of peer rewiewed papers, or 100 doctors saying the same,… cannot be relied on because it does not rule out systematic errors.
good statistics does not keep.
Because all those 100 Doctors stand up in white coats and they are members of the Norwegian doctors labour union, who talks with one voice holding hands shoulder by shoulder.
You should have a veterinarian on it also . Then you need only one doctor. Then if you are able to see and grasp it also for yourself, then you have 3 good reasons and ought to draw a conclusion and adjust.
That is how to protect yourself or your procedure against systematic errors. =Quite basically important in life and in science.
And my learnings to you all including Anthony Watts on criticism, scepticism, and realism.
philjourdan says:
January 31, 2014 at 10:18 am
@MattS – Kind of like a lottery winner saying the odds are not too bad, as he only bought 10 tickets and one of them won the jackpot
==========================================================================
If the only evidence he had was the 10 tickets he personally bought, that conclusion would be the only rational one. Of course it wouldn’t be true that the only evidence available to the lottery winner was his own tickets. However, it is true that our own solar system is the only evidence we have on planetary formation.
My point was not that the odds are objectively good, but that they are unknown. Any statement that earth like planets are massively unlikely is not supportable by any available evidence.
@MattS – If you over analyze the analogy, it does fall apart (as do almost all analogies). I agree given WE reside in a habitable world, our perspective is 1 in 10. But the unknown is the stickler. Scientists are looking for planets in the “Goldilocks” zone, and extrapolating about the number of planets that could contain life. Yet there are aspects of our binary planet system that is unique in this solar system, and may be uncommon elsewhere that appear necessary for life to have evolved.
Geoff Withnell says:
January 31, 2014 at 8:50 am
“What does the age of the rocks have to do with how long it would take to “corral” them?
What evidence do you have that they were not gathered in the last 500 million years?”
The logic behind knowing the age of the asteroids is that it proves the asteroids are as old as the solar system itself, asteroids are the leftover material from the formation of the solar system and have been orbiting the sun since then, the planets are slightly younger, as they were formed some of these asteroids became moons and over billions of years the influence of the longer orbits of the outer planets and the sun gently nudged them into the stable orbit they’re in today, any asteroid that didn’t end up in the void between Mars and Jupiter has either collided with the sun, another planet or have been thrown out of the solar system etc…
Take Phobos for example, the larger of Mars’ two moons, we can measure its orbit very precisely and we know that it’s getting closer to Mars at a rate of 1.8 m every hundred years; at that rate, it will either crash into Mars in 50 million years or break up into a ring.
Phobos is an asteroid captured from the asteroid belt, and the distance which Phobos was captured by mars’ can be calculated by working out how long it has taken Phobos to move to its current position from the time it was captured, this gives us an estimated time period when the asteroid belt existed which is billions of years ago, after the planets were formed.
You can do the calculations for your self…
Phobos’ current mean distance is 5826 miles (9380 km) from Mars.
Phobos’ is moving toward Mars at a rate of 1.8 m every hundred years.
Mods is there a glitch with the comments tonight?
Cheers Mods!
First, we have yet to even solve the moon thing (how we got a moon apparently composed of earth materials), see here http://www.nature.com/news/planetary-science-lunar-conspiracies-1.14270 . This being the case, it is not surprising that we discover that what we thought we knew about our solar systems formation needs revision.
Second, they bring up the old late bombardment theory again. Data, the oldest rocks we can be certain formed on early earth on it’s surface show that they were formed in the presence of liquid water, not just some of them, all of them. Conclusion, if that late heavy bombardment was too late, then it never happened, it would have to have happened before the earth cooled down enough for liquid water to form on it’s surface. The whole moon collision thing throws a monkey wrench into this, of course, since we do not know yet how that happened, and it would have had a great effect on the composition of the earths crust.
My guess:
Earth forms from various smaller bodies. Some, most, or even all of the water arrives at this time, in whatever form, with the original material.
During this early formation, whatever odd thing caused the moon to spin off the earth happens.
If there was any water bearing bombardment, it would have had to happen while the earth was still molten, possibly just after the whole moon thing.
Earth and moon are now separate.
Earth being red hot, water under it’s surface escapes from the interior as steam, and forms a thick blanket of clouds (plus volcanic ash etc it would be dark at the surface).
Earth cools, rocks form, as does liquid water covering the entire surface, the clouds are a lot thinner so light is seen at the surface (no blue sky though).
The crust cools more and eventually wrinkles, dry land appears, but that takes a while, as the rocks show.
Life arrives and slowly changes the atmosphere to the blue sky we all know and love (except in California where we wish it would turn all dark and gray and drippy).
The above seems the most likely considering the proof of liquid water in the formation of the earliest rocks at the surface. The only other possibility is the earth formed, was around for a little while, some collision occurred that formed the moon, and while the earth was molten from all that colliding, there was a late heavy bombardment. If that happened, it is little different than above, likely the earth would have still given off steam, both from it’s interior water and from interior water from asteroids plunging into it’s molten crust. I suppose the water bearing bombardment and whatever collision formed the moon could have happened in this disturbed, “snowglobe” period.
The idea of a late heavy bombardment seems impossible given that earths oldest rocks show that they were formed in the presence of water. If there was a solid rock bearing earth with a bombardment afterward, some rock would be formed in that earlier, water free period, and we would have found them, and we have not.
There is also the slight problem that if 99% of the earth material arrived first, what exactly kept the water away during that period? Were there water cops out there saying “no water allowed!”? And then, if something kept water away, why did it not still do so later? The chances are, if 99% of the earths material arrives, the chance of the earths water arriving with it appear to be, well, 99%. A late heavy bombardment simply brings unneeded complexity to the ideas of earths formation.
Jim G says:
January 31, 2014 at 12:52 pm
Carbomontanus says:
January 31, 2014 at 9:46 am
@jim G
“Theese speculations are not new, and research hardly has found out quite recently on theese things. Such doctrines and formulas are mostly nothing but traditional quackery and propaganda”
I am aware of that of which you speak, however there is, indeed, new information on the subject. Significantly more recent and more technologically sound than that which you cite.
Please see:
“Astrophysicists create the first accurate map of the universe: It’s very flat, and probably infinite”
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/174427-astrophysicists-create-the-first-accurate-map-of-the-universe-its-very-flat-and-probably-infinite
______________________
As for the map, thanks for the link, but all prior iterations are vastly different and a sample of only 1.2 million galaxies is small. We may have entered a golden age of techno- maturity and such claims of certainty might be correct, but we’re so new at this that we can almost still smell the witches burning.
I’m glad that you took it easy on Carbomontanus. At first, I thought he was noisy for being all over the place and now, I think he may only be a Jesuit.
“The #1 natural “duty” of life itself is to reproduce.’
It may be a “duty”, but is it a duty? And if so, why?
“Why denigrate one over another because of a difference in the means of achieving that aim?’
I’m not denigrating anything. I am saying that the unconscious, automatic, reproduction of trees on earth has no moral implications for human beings. It certainly does not imply that human beings have a duty to transplant human or any other sort of life outside the earth.
“There is a collective intelligence stored in DNA”
What do you mean by “intelligence”? I fear you are sliding from bad analogy to mere metaphor.