Posted on 06/16/2004 2:30:59 PM PDT by ckilmer
They might, but the lack of atmospheric pressure and gravitational atraction would cause sudden evaporation into space like the primordial atmosphere the moon once owned .
In related news, rain is caused by meteor showers.
>> Wasting European time and money -- it's from ESA.
Oh well in that case, the world needs more studies like this one. *snicker*
Unlike the earth, it doesn't have PMS...
I'm with you on the comet theory. Check this article out...
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/blackspot.html
Every few seconds a "snowball" the size of a small house breaks up as it approaches Earth and deposits a large cloud of water vapor in Earth's upper atmosphere.
A million comets is 1 comet every 1000 years for a billion years.
I thought this hypothesis was idiotic, too. But I read a fascinating article a few years ago about it, and was surprised to see that what had been tossed aside decades ago as a silly theory was actually gaining renewed support because of some sort of breakthrough in astronomy that lent some serious credibility to it.
Crude estimates of the brightness of small comets which are devoid of brightly glowing dust particles are indeed about the brightness of Venus, and their impact rate is about 10 million per year. It is remarkable that the orbits and speeds calculated for many of the "fireballs" are similar to those for the small comets.
From here...
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/lecture/lect5.html
Dirty snowballs the size of houses, by the millions.
What's the liklihood that comet ice is going to bear any resemblance to water that has been on earth for at least 4000 years and been evaporated and rained and eroded rocks and been filtered through bedrock and drained back into the ocean any number of times?
Well, yes.... but there was already water by the time Noah came around. ;-)
Comets May Be the Source of Earth's Water
http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/comet_water_source.html?2332006
"Because of their large ice content, comets were leading candidates for many years, but recent analysis of comet water has shown that comet water is significantly different from typical ocean water on Earth. Asteroidal ice may give a better match to Earth's water, but until now, any ice that the asteroids may have once contained was thought to either be long gone or so deeply buried inside large asteroids as to be inaccessible for further analysis. The discovery of main-belt comets means that this ice is not gone and is still accessible (right on the surfaces of at least some objects in the main belt, and at times, even venting into space)."
There is no size limit to a comet :)
A planet the size of jupiter can be a comet if it flies through space unbound by a star. Besides, millions of comes of a period of billions of years is not that much.
Im waiting for discovery of tiny red life forms in the comet ice :)
This topic is from 2004. :')
oops.
But why did you send me a ping from an old thread?
It's related to a topic you'd recently started, or something'.
Thanks!
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