User:Lpremo34/sandbox

No Bang; Moon                           Lester Premo   7/27/2021

IntroductionLpremo34 (talk) 19:11, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Everyone admires the Moon. Some wonder how it got there. There are several theories of how it got there. All have the creation placed early in Earth’s development or even before there was an Earth. This article borrows from the fission theory of an Earth that was spinning so fast that it threw material into space and the giant impact theory that caused a “splash” that did the same thing. Both theories resulted in a ring of material being formed above the Earth that eventually gathered to form the Moon. The Moom

Originally, the Earth had no moon, had a circular orbit (like Venus), had no tilt relative to its orbit, and was spinning much faster than it is today. Something occurred that changed some or all of that.

That something was the passage of an exceptionally large space object that barely missed the Earth when Earth was in a preliminary state of cooling, and had a thin, fragile crust (the Earth has three layers: hard crust, molten mantel, and hard core). The object’s path was between Earth’s North Pole and Equator. It was also traveling in the same direction as the Earth almost parallel to the Earth’s orbital path. In addition, it passed on the side of Earth where the Earth’s rapid spin was in the opposite direction to the object’s path.

Since the object was traveling in the same direction as the Earth, there was a small difference between the object’s velocity and the orbital velocity of the Earth (like cars passing on a freeway). This significantly prolonged the object’s time over Earth giving it much more time to extract material. Also, the Earth’s rapid spin in the opposite direction allowed much more of the Earth’s surface to be exposed to the object’s influence than would otherwise have been the case. It is likely the object lingered through more than one rotation of the Earth.

The mutual gravity force between the Earth and the object was enough to pull away huge amounts of the Earth’s fragile crust and molten mantel and impart an exceptionally large vertical velocity component to the extracted material.* Since the Earth was spinning so fast, the extracted material also had a high tangential velocity component (like the velocity imparted to a rock from a sling shot).** Much of the extracted material fell back to Earth, but enough reached a distance where its remaining tangential velocity was sufficient to allow the material to settle into an arc or ring to slowly orbit the Earth.

The arc or ring orbited in the direction of the Earth’s spin due to the tangential velocity component. The orbital inclination of the arc or ring relative to Earth’s orbital path was exceedingly small for the same reason. That it was not exactly parallel was due to a compromise with the object’s slightly different path.

The material in the arc or ring had varying densities. The material gathered from deep in the Earth was much denser than the material from the crust. The denser the material, the greater its gravity force. Therefore, the denser material concentrated on the side of the arc or ring facing the Earth due to their mutually strong gravities.

The material in the arc or ring eventually gathered into a sphere due to its own gravity (like a drop of water gathering into a bubble as it leaves a faucet). But the sphere makeup was not homogeneous. The denser material was on the side facing the Earth. With the denser material on the side facing the Earth, the Moon cannot rotate due to their mutual gravity forces. Thus, it is forced to always keep the dense side facing the Earth (of course, in a sense, the Moon does rotate as it moves around the Earth keeping its dense side toward the Earth like a ball twirled on a string).

Recent analyses of Moon rocks show strong evidence that a least the near side of the Moon is made of material that came from Earth.

The object did not affect all of Earth’s surface. The area affected directly by the object became a huge wound that was partially filled in by the molten mantel which rose, cooled, and hardened. The thin crust under the ocean is mostly basalt, an igneous, volcanic rock formed as the result of extremely high temperatures. This is significantly different from the crust in the unaffected areas (land). The rest of the wound was filled with water to form a massive ocean.

The Moon is about one fiftieth the size of Earth. Currently, water covers about 70% of the Earth’s surface. The object would have lifted an average net depth of material of about 35 miles of the Earth’s lithosphere (crust and upper mantel) to create a wound that size.

The material gathered consisted of lithosphere material from the entire northern hemisphere and, to a much less extent, part of the southern hemisphere (the Earth is slightly pear-shaped with slightly more mass in the southern hemisphere). Eventually, some the material from the southern hemisphere moved north to fill in the wound to create the current land-ocean configuration.

The object lost little or no material due to the object having come from a more distant (from the Sun) point than the Earth, where it is much colder, and had a more developed crust. Coming so close to a planet so much larger than itself and, coming from behind the way it did, invoked a process called gravity assisted trajectory (the same process used by NASA to speed up their space probes). This gave the object a significant net gain in speed that sent it on a new path after it passed.

The Earth’s orbit was originally circular, but its orbit is now slightly elliptical or “eccentric”. That eccentricity was caused by the gravity-assisted trajectory process. In addition to imparting additional velocity to the object, it slightly reduced the orbital velocity of the Earth (conservation of energy) which, in turn, changed the shape of Earth’s orbit. At the time of the object’s passing, the Earth’s axis of rotation was perpendicular to its orbital plane. However, as the object passed along a path just below the North Pole (therefore above the earth’s center of gravity or pivot point), the pull of its gravity plus the pull of the large amount of material breaking off from Earth produced a lever action that caused the Earth to tilt in the direction of the object. Also, since the material gathered came mostly from the northern hemisphere, that created an imbalance that further affected the axis’ orientation.

It is possible that the object’s passing had something to do with the formation of the tectonic plates in the Earth’s lithosphere. The surfaces of other planets suffering similar tectonic (gigantic) forces did not fracture into plates. Their surfaces just “wrinkled” into mountains and valleys. The object’s passing could have caused massive earthquakes that resulted in the breaking up of the Earth’s lithosphere into plates.

The passing of the object likely had the effect of somewhat reducing the speed of the Earth’s spin.

References:

Wikipedia: Giant-Impact Hypothesis Geology of the Pacific Ocean Pangaea Earth Tilt Theory Mars

When and How Did Plate Tectonics Begin? by Mary Caperton Morton

The Moon Compared to Earth by Fraser Cain

Fission Theory by Stephen Himson


 * The gravitational force between two objects is given by the equation:

F = G*m1*m2/r**2

Where (in our case):

G = 6.67X10-11 Nm2/kg2 (the gravitational constant) m1 = 5.97X1024 kg (Earth) m2 = 6.42X1023 kg (Mars – possible object size) r = 1X10**9 km (possible distance between the Earth and the object)

The gravitational force would be about 2.56 X 10**20 Newtons.

This was pitted against a force of about 9.7X10**12 Newtons from Earth trying to hold onto its surface material.


 * current Earth’s tangential velocity of its surface elements is a little over 1,000 mph and the moon’s tangential (orbital) velocity is 2,300 mph. The Earth was probably spinning 5 or 6 times its current speed at the time of the object’s passing so the tangential velocity could have been as high as 6,000 mph.

Appendix: The object was Mars

The most likely candidate for the object is Mars, the outer-most of the four rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars). Mars orbits in the same direction as Earth as do all the solar system’s planets with only small angular differences in their orbital planes.

Earth and Mars had been in the solar system for a long time without affecting each other with Mars orbiting much further away from the Sun. Something happened to Mars (probably one or more head-on impacts) that caused it to slow down and start to fall out of its orbit. We occasionally get meteorites that have been shown to have come from Mars. It has been suggested they are the result of impact(s) on Mars.

As Mars spiraled down, it gained speed and encountered Earth. Their mutual gravity caused Mars to really speed up and head for a collision. But the collision did not happen. Mars’ momentum carried it on by, but it came quite close to Earth.

Coming so close to a planet so much larger than itself (its volume is about 18% of Earth’s) and, coming from behind the way it did, invoked the gravity-assisted trajectory process which gave Mars a significant net gain in speed that sent it into a new orbit after it passed as described for the object. The process to get to the new orbit is called an orbit transfer trajectory. That kind of trajectory always results in an elliptical orbit if no other action is taken. Mars’ orbit is a pronounced ellipse. Mars’ gravity is a little over a third of Earth’s gravity, but the gravitational force between the two planets would be exceptionally large (see calculation above).

Coming from an orbit that was further from the Sun than the Earth where it is colder, Mars was in a late stage of cooling and had a very thick crust so Mars lost little or no material.

Therefore, Mars seems to meet all the specifications described for the object