[vannrox]

Interesting.

[RightWhale]

van Flandern says Mars was a moon of the 5th planet, which would have made it the 4th planet at that time. Why did it explode? It may have been a duplicate thread planet.

[null and void]

Quite!

Does timing agree with any major extinction event? Anyone?

[buffyt]

Yes it is very interesting.

"Getting back to the Moon with a settlement for resource exploitation is another step forward."

May I take the liberty of suggesting that we send all liberal Democrat politicians and movie stars to the new lunar settlement? I will start a collection to pay for it.

[T. P. Pole]

Maybe off topic, but how did they age the rocks on the moon. Too old for C14, no fossils for geo column dating. How'd they get the age?

[codebreaker]

So Planet 5 set off the orbit of Mars and part of it crashed into Earth?

[Capt. Tom]

When I was a kid I remember hearing there were calculations made that posited another planet because of the orbits of existing planets.

They called it Vulcan. Any astronomers remember that story?? - Tom

[ValenB4]

If only they had had the chance to read Al Gore's book, maybe they could have been saved.

[JenB]

Odd; I 'knew' this when I was 10 from reading science fiction. Every time scientists come up with something writers predicted decades ago, I have a good laugh. Thanks for posting this article!

[The UnVeiled Lady]

Must be a slow news day.  Similar theories by the Russian Immanuel Velikovsky were totally discounted.  Even the Dems can't negate the law of conservation of angular momentum.  Sounds like more junk science.

[satchmodog9]

We need reparations fot the displaced single cell victims of this obvious right wing sponsored event.

[LostTribe]

bump to blam.

[general_re]

[Redcloak]

We all know what a mess exploding planets can make. When Ceti Alpha 6 exploded, the shock shifted the orbit of Ceti Alpha 5 and everything was laid waste.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

[A} lot of potential orbits in the Solar System are chaotic and unstable

Sire, je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese.

When Newton presented his work on Celestial Mechanics, he stopped short of a complete work--treating the planets and the Sun as a series of individual two-body problems. At the time, he is said to have remarked concerning the remaining and unaccounted for perturbations in the orbits of the planets: "The rest is in the hands of the Creator."

Laplace, the great mathematician, set himself the ambitious task of refining and perfecting Newton's calculations involving mechanics in a book that should offer a complete solution of the great mechanical problem presented by the solar system. The result was the highly acclaimed five volume set, Mecanique Celeste. In it he shows that the (current) solar system is stable and self-regulating.

When Laplace presented the first edition of his work to Napoleon--so the story goes--Napoleon alluded to Newton and remarked, "Monsieur Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." To this Laplace replied bluntly, "Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis."

[Bob J]

I thought there was a theory that the asteriod belt was itself the remnants of a planetary collision?

[habs4ever]

Hmmmmmm...ping.

[Utopia]

This is an old theory. It sbeen around for decades. One of the names given to this planet is: Minerva

[Elsie]

"The extra planet formed on a low-eccentricity orbit that was long-lived, but unstable,"

---

Come on..... which way do you want it?

[Robert A Cook PE]

Hmmmmn.

Why not?

After all, the Bible tells us that the moon was created much later than the earth's rocks, seas, and first life.

[Sam Cree]

Read later, gracias.