Long-Destroyed Fifth Planet May Have Caused Lunar Cataclysm, Researchers Say
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Posted by vannrox
On News/Activism 03/25/2002 5:42:10 PM EST · 151 replies · 1,942+ views
SPACE dot COM | 18 March 2002 ,posted: 03:00 pm ET | By Leonard David, Senior Space Writer
Asteroid Vesta: The 10th Planet? Discovery Brightens Odds of Finding Another Pluto Nemesis: The Million Dollar Question HOUSTON, TEXAS -- Our solar system may have had a fifth terrestrial planet, one that was swallowed up by the Sun. But before it was destroyed, the now missing-in-action world made a mess of things. 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. Moreover, Planet V...
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Mysterious deep-space object raises questions on Solar System's origins
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/14/2005 1:12:29 PM EST · 44 replies · 678+ views
PhysOrg | December 13, 2005 | AFP
Astronomers working in Canada, France and the United States said they had found a small deep-space object, nicknamed Buffy, that challenges mainstream theories about the evolution of the Solar System. The rock lies in the Kuiper Belt, the name for the flock of objects beyond Neptune's orbit that are believed to be leftover rubble from the Solar System's building phase and are the source for many comets... Measuring between 500 and 1,000 kilometers (300 to 600 miles) across and taking about 440 years to make just one circuit of the Sun, Buffy is remarkable not for its size -- around...
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Nemesis: Does the Sun Have a 'Companion'?
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Posted by vannrox
On News/Activism 02/10/2003 2:03:23 PM EST · 26 replies · 320+ views
SPACE dot COM | 03 April 2001 | By Robert Roy Britt
Nemesis: Does the Sun Have a 'Companion'?By Robert Roy BrittSenior Science Writerposted: 07:00 am ET03 April 2001 "The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance. It's know'n so many things that ain't so." -- A favorite quote of Richard A. Muller, by 19th century humorist Josh Billings.When you think big, as Richard A. Muller does, you're bound to create ideas now and then that are so compelling you just can't let go of them -- ideas so outlandish that mainstream scientists are equally eager to dismiss them.Muller, a physicist at University of California at Berkeley, has had...
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New evidence for the Moon's soft middle
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 12/27/2004 5:29:35 PM EST · 32 replies · 730+ views
New Scientist | 14 February 2002 | Will Knight
New calculations that indicate how the Moon's surface and interior react to the gravitational pull of the Earth and the Sun have produced further evidence that molten "slush" exists beneath the lunar surface... The first evidence of a soft region near the Moon's core was found using seismological equipment placed at different places on the surface during the Apollo missions. These found that moonquakes lost their energy when they traveled further than 1,000 kilometers below the Moon's surface. Since 1977, when these measurements ended, there has been no further evidence.
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Not Enough Comets in the Cupboard
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Posted by bondserv
On News/Activism 09/13/2003 8:17:25 PM EDT · 123 replies · 336+ views
Creation-Evolution Headlines | Creation-Evolution Headlines
Not Enough Comets in the Cupboard -- 09/03/2003 There's a shortage of comets. -- The Hubble Space Telescope peered into the Kuiper Belt cupboard, and found it nearly empty -- only 4% of the predicted supply was found. -- Astronomers needed a bigger storehouse to explain the number of short-period comets now inhabiting the solar system. -- The Kuiper Belt, a region of small icy bodies beyond Neptune, has been the favored source of comets with orbital periods 200 years or less, but the new measurements, soon to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, are 'wildly inconsistent' with the observed number of...
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Red Planet's Ancient Equator Located
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 04/24/2005 11:18:25 PM EDT · 53 replies · 783+ views
Scientific American (online) | April 20, 2005 | Sarah Graham
Jafar Arkani-Hamed of McGill University discovered that five impact basins--dubbed Argyre, Hellas, Isidis, Thaumasia and Utopia--form an arclike pattern on the Martian surface. Three of the basins are well-preserved and remain visible today. The locations of the other two, in contrast, were inferred from measurements of anomalies in the planet's gravitational field... a single source--most likely an asteroid that was initially circling the sun in the same plane as Mars--created all five craters. At one point the asteroid passed close to the Red Planet... and was broken apart by the force of the planet's gravity. The resulting five pieces subsequently...
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Reworked images reveal hot Venus
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Posted by Central Scrutiniser
On News/Activism 01/14/2004 8:25:16 PM EST · 45 replies · 760+ views
BBC | 1-13-03 | Dr David Whitehouse
Reworked images reveal hot Venus By Dr David Whitehouse Mars it is not: Reprocessed Venus image As the world looks at Mars, an American scientist has produced the best images ever obtained from the surface of a rather different planet - Venus. The second planet from the Sun is blanketed with a thick layer of cloud. Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed and recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian surface which is hotter even than the inside of a household oven. Original digital...
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Stellar encounters as the origin of distant Solar System objects in highly eccentric orbits
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Posted by nicollo
On General/Chat 12/02/2004 7:51:41 PM EST · 38 replies · 738+ views
Nature Magazine | Dec 2/ 2004 | Scott J. Kenyon and Benjamin C. Bromley
If you can make sense of it, here's the article: Stellar encounters as the origin of distant Solar System objects in highly eccentric orbits SCOTT J. KENYON AND BENJAMIN C. BROMLEY The Kuiper belt extends from the orbit of Neptune at 30 AU to an abrupt outer edge about 50 AU from the Sun. Beyond the edge is a sparse population of objects with large orbital eccentricities. Neptune shapes the dynamics of most Kuiper belt objects, but the recently discovered planet 2003 VB12 (Sedna) has an eccentric orbit with a perihelion distance of 70 AU, far beyond Neptune's gravitational influence....
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Was Mercury a 'hit-and-run' planet?
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Posted by Swordmaker
On General/Chat 01/26/2006 1:26:47 AM EST · 3 replies · 139+ views
MSNBC Space News | Jan. 11, 2006 | By Robert Roy Britt
Computer modeling suggests that collision affected its formation New computer modeling shows that the planet Mercury might have been formed in a hit-and-run collision that stripped off its outer layers. Astronomers have long assumed that collisions played a huge role in planet formation. The early solar system would have been loaded with dust that became rock that became planets, the thinking goes. Computer models generally have objects sticking together to make ever-larger objects ó or in large crashes, two objects might become gravitationally bound. In the new scenario, a glancing blow would dramatically alter the smaller object, even disintegrating...
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When the Days Were Shorter
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Posted by SunkenCiv
On General/Chat 10/04/2004 1:31:59 PM EDT · 23 replies · 651+ views
Alaska Science Forum (Article #742) | November 11, 1985 | Larry Gedney
Present-day nautilus shells almost invariably show thirty daily growth lines (give or take a couple) between the major partitions, or septa, in their shells. Paleontologists find fewer and fewer growth lines between septa in progressively older fossils. 420 million years ago, when the moon circled the earth once every nine days, the very first nautiloids show only nine growth lines between septa. The moon was closer to the earth and revolved about it faster, and the earth itself was rotating faster on its axis than it is now. The day had only twenty-one hours, and the moon loomed enormous in...
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