An alternative theory about moon rodinia and maria

[IosifK]

This can answer two of the unanswered questions about the moon.

Why are the maria concentrated on the near side?

I believe that the moon was not formed slowly by debris after the impact
that you now know created the moon. I believe the moon was ejected as it is
shaped right now from Earth by the impact the same way a smaller ball
bounces back when you throw it on a large rotating basketball. The impactor
was split in two parts during the impact. One stayed above the crust of
Earth and became the first supercontinent and the other one bounced back and
became the moon (they do have same age and density because of that). The most possible impact site I've found is the ring of fire. You will say that tectonic plates change shape and that they don't look at all like the did billion years ago but I believe this is wrong. I believe that tectonic plates are created by impacts and impacts cause continental drift. (K/T extinction / gulf of mexico / carribean plate / splitting of pangea). I do not believe that tectonic plates change shape rapidly (like a crack on ice will not change shape a lot).

The phillipines and pacific plate. They look a lot like the near side of
the moon and they were probably created by the impact. When the impact
occurred all volcanoes near those plates gone off at the same time. The
impact craters you now call maria are probably the result of Earth's
volcanoes (Sulfur has been found near them). I did some minor research and I
compared the negative photo of the moon with the current map of Earth. I
think I can see something that looks like australia at the bottom right side
of the near side of the moon and I compared the area of that with the real
Australia. Real Australia is 4 times bigger than that (which is the radius
ratio of Earth:Moon) and I believe this was caused by water corrosion.

Why is the Moon's center of mass off center? Because of the tidal lock with
the Earth?

The moon's center of mass is probably off center because of sulfur that
exists in the near side of the moon. There is a strong connection between
sulfur and water (you use sulfur to dehydrate fruits) and I believe
this is the reason we get tides (or tidal locking)

Pictures:

(negative map of moon)





Can you comment on this please?

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 25 2004, 01:30 PM
The moon's center of mass is probably off center because of sulfur that exists in the near side of the moon. There is a strong connection between sulfur and water (you use sulfur to dehydrate fruits) and I believe this is the reason we get tides (or tidal locking)

Do I understand that you propose that there is some force aside from gravity that would attract water to Sulfur and vice versa through a quarter million miles of near vacuum? I imagine that such a force would make it hard to carry Sulfur in ocean going freighters.

[IosifK]

Yes you are right. I am wrong :>
Let me try generating an answer for the second question that is sound enough for gravity to work :>

Get a hemisphere of iron and heat it from bellow so that you melt the lower part of it and then let it freeze into a ball. Where will the center of gravity be? Won't the center of gravity be on the side you've heated it - points to Earth (gravity)?

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 25 2004, 02:27 PM
Get a hemisphere of iron and heat it from bellow so that you melt the lower part of it and then let it freeze into a ball. Where will the center of gravity be? Won't the center of gravity be on the side you've heated it - points to Earth (gravity)?

I am not sure what you mean by 'bellow' or 'lower part' in your description. Perhaps if you draw another picture you could explain better.

[IosifK]

something like this but imagine the hemisphere shaped moon being on the crust of earth and not above it at the time it was heated.

umm.. while you are reading this i've got a question for you that has little to do with this theory.
has anyone considered that the black sea is a crater?
I just saw the arabian plate and thought it was created by an impact. Then I checked for possible surface impact craters and found the black sea - alpes - greek islands. Could this be an impact crater? Could this impact be the reason for the permian - triassic extinction?

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 26 2004, 02:21 AM
Could this be an impact crater? Could this impact be the reason for the permian - triassic extinction?

Well, every big hole in the ground, or ring of mountains could be a crater, but they don't have to be. Do you have some dating evidence that ties the Black Sea to this particular extinction? There are a lot of possible causes for mass extinctions. We've identified impact as the likely cause for two of them.

Concerning your earlier request about a hemisphere shaped moon getting partially melted, I can't help you with that. There are just too many variables that I can't nail down.

[IosifK]

No I don't have any time evidence. If my theory is correct then probably whatever times we've calculated for history of Earth surface maps is probably wrong (if you consider that impacts create tectonic plates and lead to continental drift) so I can't really tell, but i'd like for a geologer to take this theory into consideration and maybe provide an alternative "history of earth" with this. I can't do that. I'm just a computer programmer :>

[IosifK]

No more comments? :/

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 26 2004, 08:33 PM
No more comments?

Patience! A lot of us don't read the forum much on weekends because Fraser usually only posts new stories only on weekdays.

Also, your theory is not expressed so completely that there is anything obvious to accept of argue against.

In this case, the date for the formation of the moon is pretty well established, as is the date for the formation of the solar system. These dates were determined using ratios of long lived isotopes and their decay products, and would be pretty difficult to refute.

You are asking for a 'geologer' to look over your theory and create an alternative history. Basically, you will need to do a lot more work to convince anyone that it is worth their time to help you on this.

As a computer programmer, perhaps you can write some code to do the kind of finite element analysis to simulate the birth of the moon as you think it may have happened. Look at the forces and energy transfer of each element and show how it works.

For my part, I don't see what you think is wrong with the current idea of how the moon formed, or, for that matter, what could have provided the energy required to lift the moon away from the Earth without destroying both in the process. I think if you do your finite element analysis, you will discover that what you propose is impossible.

[IosifK]

In this case, the date for the formation of the moon is pretty well established

Yes the date is pretty well established. But is 4.6 billion years the age of the moon or the age of the impactor?

Before I even start writing code I need a lot of information like: What is the total mass of the surface features of Earth so I can determine the total mass of the impactor. Or.. How much elastic are the tectonic plates?

I also would like someone to give me all the physics information I can get about friction between two rotating objects at time of impact and how does this friction affect the course and the rotation of each object after the impact (like pool). This is extremely hard for me since I don't remember a lot of physics although I had 90% at school

Simply put: I can't do this alone :/

For my part, I don't see what you think is wrong with the current idea of how the moon formed

The current theory can't answer those two questions I posted at the beggining and I was very curious about both. Also.. if that is indeed the map of the first supercontinent then this could help geology a lot don't you think?

PS: Sorry about my english. Speaking science terminology in a foreign language is extremely hard

[Duane]

The phillipines and pacific plate. They look a lot like the near side of
the moon and they were probably created by the impact.

Hiyas losifk, welcome to the forum

There are a few points where you make some fundamental errors, and this comment is one that jumps right out at me.

They were definately not created by impact, they are the result of 4 billion years of plate tectonics. The Pacific Basin looks the way it does right now only by coincidence. The plates that carry the continents move, and the basin looks the way it does because of the accidental alignment of the plates today. In a few million years, the basin will look very different.

The Phillipines are also the result of tectonics. They sit on a subduction zone, an area where the heat and pressure of the crust being forced under another area of crust has resulted in eruptions, which formed the island chain. The islands are not as old as the Pacific Basin by several tens of millions of years.

I believe the moon was ejected as it is
shaped right now from Earth by the impact the same way a smaller ball
bounces back when you throw it on a large rotating basketball.

Interesting analogy, however very very different from the impact of two rocky objects the size of the Moon and Earth. An impact between two such massive bodies, even a glancing impact, would not result in "bounce", they would result in full or partial merger.

People have a Hollywood-induced picture of impacts, however in those cases it is an impact between two very different sized bodies. An direct impact of objects carrying the mass of the Earth and Moon would leave no sign that we could see today, because the two objects would merge togeather. The heat from the merger would totally melt both bodies, causing them to become one homogenous melted blob of rock and metal.

Even in a glancing impact, the bulk of the smaller impactor would merge with the larger, leaving a spray of melted rock to go into orbit.

One stayed above the crust of
Earth and became the first supercontinent and the other one bounced back and
became the moon (they do have same age and density because of that).

There are several errors here. First, although the density of the Moon and continents is similar, the chemical differences are extreme. Lunar soils show an almost complete lack of volitiles, whereas continental rock is full of them. There have been at least two and as many as four times that all of the continents have come togeather to form a super continent.

Age is a different story. The age of the continents varies from about 3.96 Billion years (The Canadian Shield for eg) to about 1 Billion years old (yo) or less (The Rocky Mountains for eg). The oldest rocks are about the same age as lunar maria rock brought back by astronauts (They are about 3.2 billion to 3.8 billion yo) but less than the older highland rocks, which are about 4.3 to 4.5 Billion yo. This suggests the proto-earth/moon collision took place over 4 billion years ago, or before the formation of the oldest terrestrial rocks.

You will say that tectonic plates change shape and that they don't look at all like the did billion years ago but I believe this is wrong. I believe that tectonic plates are created by impacts and impacts cause continental drift. (K/T extinction / gulf of mexico / carribean plate / splitting of pangea). I do not believe that tectonic plates change shape rapidly (like a crack on ice will not change shape a lot).

Well, what can one say to a belief? You are wrong, as measurements of the moving plates will show. There is a very good explanation about the age of the earth which also discusses the means by which the relative ages of the rocks were determined, the history of scientific endevors to determine that age, and why the plates look as they do today.

Best wishes

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 26 2004, 10:50 PM
Before I even start writing code I need a lot of information like: What is the total mass of the surface features of Earth so I can determine the total mass of the impactor. Or.. How much elastic are the tectonic plates?

I also would like someone to give me all the physics information I can get about friction between two rotating objects at time of impact and how does this friction affect the course and the rotation of each object after the impact (like pool).

If I were to get this infomation to you, I'd have to look it up on the web first. The data is there. You should look it up, your the one with a vested interest. You have a chance to become an expert on this subject, but it will take time.

[Planetwatcher]

Well don't give up IosifK, you do make some good points. One of the lesser known and lesser accepted theories regarding the origen of the Moon was that it was once part of the Earth, but was some how seperated from the Earth when it was still in it's moton state and more liquid then solid.
It was speculated that this occurred in what is now the Pacific Ocean.

I don't have any real evidence one way or another, but then, neither does anyone else. B)

[IosifK]

There are a few points where you make some fundamental errors, and this comment is one that jumps right out at me.

They were definately not created by impact, they are the result of 4 billion years of plate tectonics. The Pacific Basin looks the way it does right now only by coincidence. The plates that carry the continents move, and the basin looks the way it does because of the accidental alignment of the plates today. In a few million years, the basin will look very different.

I am not wrong (at least you can't prove that I am wrong). I believe science has never considered this theory. Science always chooses the most complicated theory of all and always rewards the one that came up with it because he is the only one that can understand it :> The tectonic plates do change shape / melt / collide with each other but this shape change is minor like cracks on ice and it is the result of freezing and heating the cracked ice a lot of times (ice ages?). This shape change could not break up a whole supercontinent. How can science say that an impact doesn't affect the lithosphere? The lithosphere is where the continents rest on! If you hit a continent you also hit the lithosphere and the asthenosphere.

Let's begin. Take one bucket full of water. Put it in the fridge until the top freezes and becomes ice. The ice would never form with a crack in it. You must do something to the bucket in order to crack the ice. I can come up with a lot of theories about how to crack the ice. These theories include: Squeezing the bucket, rapidly heating the bucket, pulling the bucket etc etc. All these theories are scientific valid. Now forget about all these complicated theories and just hit the ice directly. Congratulations.. You've created your first tectonic plate. Now notice that all the other theories I mentioned above are the result of this action and also notice that this theory is also scientific valid. Try the same experiment again but put some mud over the ice. Then hit the mud. The ice will crack again but now that you've got mud over the ice, the mud will break up at the same time and float above each individual fragment of ice. Now try moving a fragment of ice. Notice that all the other fragments of ice have to move along with it. This is what I meant at the beggining.

Now.. look at a map of tectonic plates. Find possible impact sites. I've found 3. The arabian plate, the carribean plate and the ring of fire. I assume that the order the impacts occured was: "Ring of fire" (first supercontinent), "Arabian plate" (Splitting of one supercontinent into Gondwana and eurasia and leads to extinction of 99% of life on Earth) and last comes the carribean plate (Splitting of Gondwana into africa, america etc and leads to extinction of dinosaurs).

Let me show my version of the Gondwana break up by drawing since I do not know the kind of physics / geology / astrophysics / astronomy / paleontology (why did you have to split the sciences? :/) I need in order to write this with math. But I do know about logic and sense since this is my job.









About the carribean plate. I do not know if it was all melted and left a gap there for a new carribean plate to appear (freeze) after years passed on. Do we know the age of each tectonic plate?

At the last picture you see africa and america sitting on the outer edge (the one further away from the ridge) of the tectonic plates and this is why the midatlantic ridge is expanding. The weight of each continent is causing the plate to sink in each side. You probably know this already but I've just discovered it :>

Anyone cared to assotiate the variations of the orbits of planets and the rotation of each planet / moon with impacts?

Thanks for finding my theory interesting by the way :>

(This was edited.. had many mistakes.. sorry replace pangea with Gondwana in the pictures)

[IosifK]

Originally posted by Planetwatcher@Sep 27 2004, 07:20 AM
Well don't give up IosifK, you do make some good points. One of the lesser known and lesser accepted theories regarding the origen of the Moon was that it was once part of the Earth, but was some how seperated from the Earth when it was still in it's moton state and more liquid then solid.
It was speculated that this occurred in what is now the Pacific Ocean.

I don't have any real evidence one way or another, but then, neither does anyone else. B)

Really? Wow.. do you have any url / link for that?

[antoniseb]

I do not agree with your idea about where the moon came from for reasons stated above, but let me say that I very much admire the fact that you are producing some reasonable graphics to explain your idea. Nice job!

[IosifK]

I found something that might answer your question about where did the force that caused the moon to bounce away came from. And I quote from http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/lectures/age_o..._the_earth.html <-- Age of Earth

The earth&#39;s crust is actually a two-component layer. The lithosphere is a thin layer of rock (average density of 2.7 grams per cc) and "floats" on top of a plastic-like layer called the asthenosphere. Plastic-like materials are weird - they deform under stress but don&#39;t really break. A glacier is a good example of a material that moves and flows plastically. The convective heat currents in the mantle impinge on the asthenosphere causing deformation and subsequent movement of the lithospheric plates.

This process can be simulated in your kitchen by putting some jello in a bowl and putting some peebles on top of the jello. As you shake the bottom of the bowl, the jello deforms but doesn&#39;t break and the rocks that float on the jello collide. (apologies to real geologists for this analogy).


Asthenosphere.. Deformation and elasticity&#33;

[IosifK]

First, although the density of the Moon and continents is similar, the chemical differences are extreme. Lunar soils show an almost complete lack of volitiles, whereas continental rock is full of them

What if this chemical difference was developed after the impact? I don&#39;t even know if Earth had an atmosphere or even water before that impact. Don&#39;t you have to melt something to get an atmosphere?

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 27 2004, 05:37 PM
Asthenosphere.. Deformation and elasticity&#33;

It&#39;s one thing to be able to deform over hundreds of thousands of years, and another to be able to make an elastic collision happen over the course of a minute or so.

Two planet-sized rigid bodies will not have an elastic collision. The forces involved are far greater than the bonds that hold solid objects together.

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 27 2004, 10:31 PM
What if this chemical difference was developed after the impact? I don&#39;t even know if Earth had an atmosphere or even water before that impact.

You are right, the volatiles were probably driven out of the debris that reformed the moon. It is very likely that the Earth had a very substantial atmosphere before the collision, and lost a great deal of it during that event.

[IosifK]

At about 400 km from the surface the pressure on the mantle eases enough that it becomes partially molten and plastic - behaving more like a liquid than a solid. This region is called the asthenosphere

http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/j_b_benn.../tectonics.html

Asthenosphere
(solid, but
1 - 10% liquid)

http://www.schoolscience.co.uk/content/4/c...doilch4pg2.html

So we&#39;re not exactly talking about "solid objects" or bonds that hold solid objects together.

I don&#39;t understand what does the scale (two planet-sized bodies) have to do with physics. You probably ment mass or density.

The forces involved are far greater than the bonds that hold solid objects together.

This is.. too complicated for me. Do you mean you&#39;ll crack the solid object by the impact? I assume that "crack" is what you meant by "forces far greater than the bonds". But we&#39;re not talking about a 100% solid object.

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 27 2004, 11:33 PM
I don&#39;t understand what does the scale (two planet-sized bodies) have to do with physics. You probably ment mass or density.

I did mean size, but if you need to think of an analogy on a personal scale. Imagine two water balloons on a collision course with each other. If they are travelling a few miles per hour, they will bouce off of each other. If they are travelling at 30,000 miles per hour as the object that hit the Earth and formed the moon did, they will not bounce. They will spray all over the place.

[IosifK]

But if asthenosphere is elastic and it sits upon a liquid outer core then wouldn&#39;t you say that Earth is the most elastic object you can even imagine?

Look at the scenario 4 of this page:

http://www.xtec.es/recursos/astronom/moon/camerone.htm

I tried explaining my idea to mr. Cameron but I failed miserably :>



This is a total merge as you can see. But I cannot tell if the mass of the impactor in this scenario is similar to the one i&#39;m talking about. Nor can I understand if this scenario takes rotation or friction into consideration because I can&#39;t make up all the complicated scientific terms. I haven&#39;t found any site that actually has the masses of all continents yet. I&#39;m searching for that.

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 28 2004, 07:03 PM
I haven&#39;t found any site that actually has the masses of all continents yet.

You could get the square milage of the continents easily enough, and use an educated guess as to the depth of the crust at the time of the collision. I&#39;m guessing all of the continents together cover 150 million square kilometers, that the crust was three kilometers thick at that time, and had a density of 3 gm/cc. Each cubic meter would have a mass of 3000 kilograms, so each cubic kilometer would have a mass of 3 trillion kilograms. So the mass of the continents would be 1.5 sextillion kilograms. Adjust your numbers based on where you guess differently than I did.

BTW, the GIF you included looks a lot like how I imagine it happening. Perhaps the hit was not head on, but it would still form one unified blob with a halo of debris very quickly.

[IosifK]

Yes I&#39;ve realised that you imagine the impact like that. But I imagine the impact like this GIF bellow but without the moon ever colliding with the Earth a second time. Instead of the merging I imagine the moon thrown away into orbit:



(notice the hemisphere)

How can you do this impact without the full merge? I don&#39;t know but I&#39;m guessing:
Gravity from sun on the hemisphere that we now call the moon.
Variations of Earth&#39;s orbit.
Earth&#39;s orbit and speed.
Bizzare rotation of both objects.

And I repeat : I can&#39;t do this alone :>

Thanks for the thought about the mass. However if my theory is right the total surface area of the first supercontinent was 4 times smaller than the current sum of all surface areas. I can&#39;t do this calculation with this method because I can&#39;t even imagine how thick the crust was at that time.

[IosifK]

More pictures :>













I need your help converting this

into this


Can this happen because of the sun&#39;s gravity?

[antoniseb]

Concerning the masses of the Impactor and ProtoEarth, I suspect that a significant amount of matter was blasted free by the collision.

Concerning your third image, two issues: 1- you show heat radiating up from the Earth, but the heat of collision should already have affected you&#39;re hemisphere object.. 2- you show gravity toward the Earth, but as the hemisphere is in free-fall at that point it would not feel gravity toward the Earth as much as it would feel self-gravity, though it is also the case that it would feel very strong differential gravity [tidal forces] that should be able to tear it apart for the brief time that it is within 20,000 miles of the Earth.

Concerning your fourth image, what gave the now spherical moon enough angular momentum to circularize the orbit? It should have fallen back down onto the Earth [assuming that this bounce idea is possible.

[IosifK]

1- you show heat radiating up from the Earth, but the heat of collision should already have affected you&#39;re hemisphere object..

yes you are right.. I should have drawn heat on the first image.

2- - you show gravity toward the Earth, but as the hemisphere is in free-fall at that point it would not feel gravity toward the Earth as much as it would feel self-gravity

That&#39;s correct too. I should have just drawn the center of gravity

Both of these don&#39;t really change anything.


About this:

Concerning your fourth image, what gave the now spherical moon enough angular momentum to circularize the orbit? It should have fallen back down onto the Earth [assuming that this bounce idea is possible

This is what i&#39;m asking help for. Can you tell me if any of these could have done it:

Sun&#39;s tidal forces
Sun&#39;s gravity on the moon
Variation of protoearth orbit
Protoearth speed and direction
Rotation of each object

[antoniseb]

Originally posted by IosifK@Sep 29 2004, 10:06 PM
Can you tell me if any of these could have done it:

Not to my knowledge.

[IosifK]

I strongly believe that it is gravity from the sun that results in this. I believe you consider that Earth is self-gravitating for all the impact scenarios (is that the case?). Now if you do put the sun on that scenario you&#39;ll see that gravity from the sun on each of those two spherical-like objects on the 4th picture is completely different. The objects are orbiting each other during impact. So gravity from sun will be stronger on the object nearest to the sun and weaker to the other object and this might result in making this "orbit" circular&#33; Also consider that the masses of the two objects in this picture are equal but this scenario considers an impact between two half-earth-mass objects. This is probably not the case in our scenario