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Science & Technology => Outer Space => Topic started by: Bad Penny on March 16, 2011, 01:46:50 am



Title: Solar Theory re: Japan Quake May Rescue My Mercury Theory (If Correct!)
Post by: Bad Penny on March 16, 2011, 01:46:50 am
A little over a year ago, I posted this item on PJW's old website (the name of which eludes me at this moment).  As that website no longer exists, the only record of that post in my possession is an early draft which, somehow, fails to mention a couple of my key points, that being the fact that the eccentricity of Mercury's orbit around the sun creates a tremendously oscillatory solar gravitational force (essentially, massive "solar tides"), which ripped the tectonically dying (now tectonically dead) planet apart.  It also included an attempt to calculate the sun's gravitational lock upon Mercury (I wound up flubbing the calculations, but the fact of Mercury's day being two-thirds of her year, as opposed to the Moon's day being identical to her year, clearly means that the sun's gravitational lock upon Mercury is 2/3 the Earth's gravitational lock upon the moon).

So, why is Mercury being ripped apart by the sun, when the moon isn't being ripped apart by the Earth?  (Indeed, the moon has been in the process of escaping Earth's orbit (perhaps, eventually,to become an independent planet) ever since she was formed.)   I accept the theory that the moon accreted from the ejecta of a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized planet, which means only the least dense crustal material would have remained in orbit rather than crashing back into Earth, meaning the moon was never tectonically active, and is, today, a unitary, solid body (essentially, a big puff-ball in the sky).  (This further explains the moon's lack of mass relative to the smaller Mercury.)  Thus, it has never had any layers to peel apart.

Anyways, the ideas promulgated in the materials included in the Prison Planet article:

http://www.prisonplanet.com/both-japan-and-new-zealand-earthquakes-volcanic-eruptions-were-precisely-predicted-last-month-by-solar-watchers.html

would seem to support my theory concerning the sun's ability to wreck a planet.

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Here's my original post:

Is There a Geologist in the House? (Science Question)

« on: March 02, 2010, 11:58:20 PM »


Earlier this evening I watched a show on National Geographic called "Journey to the edge of the Universe", in which was mentioned the fact that the planet Mercury, which is a ball of solid iron with a relatively thin coating of rock, was obviously the core of what had once been a much larger planet.  The show said that Mercury must have collided with another planet to produce this result, but I posit an alternative theory: that, when the planet cooled to the point of tectonic death, its various layers separated, leaving the original crust and most of the mantle susceptible to being ripped apart by the immense solar tidal forces, and, eventually, torn off and pulled into the sun by solar gravitational attraction (in the manner of old plywood separating into its various layers).


(I draw my facts for the following discussion from this webpage:


http://www.universetoday.com/tag/planet-mercury/ .)


Mercury has a volume of 0.056 Earths, and Mercury's enormous iron core is 0.42 Mercurys, whereas Earth's core is only 0.17 Earths.


This means Mercury's core is equal to 0.02352 Earths, or 0.1383529 Earth cores, and, if you take the math further (and assuming that Mercury's core was originally proportionally identical to Earth's relative to the total volume of the planet, which assumption I admit I can't defend, but I'm just looking for a ballpark figure), you find that the original planet must have had a volume equal to 0.17 Earths, (coincidentally,exactly the proportion of Earth's core to the total volume of the Earth (and, no, I didn't just get snagged by a tautology: I checked my math both conceptually and numerically, and that's really just the way it is!)).  This further means, if my assumptions are correct, that Mercury lost 86.16471% of its volume, whatever the event that caused the volume loss (which did not, in turn, cause equivalent loss of mass, as Mercury, being smaller than Earth's moon, has, proportionally, more than twice the gravitational attraction (i.e., in absolute terms, more than twice the mass of the larger Moon).


What does anyone else think?


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Edit:


I'm not here advocating that Mercury was totally tectonically dead at the time of the major volume-loss event (which event I theorize took place over an immense period of time (and may, in fact, be continuing, too slowly for humans to have observed since we gained the capability to observe the planets)).  In fact, evidence of lava flows on the current surface of Mercury conclusively proves quite the opposite.  I'm only arguing that Mercury had cooled and solidified to an extent sufficient to cause the effect I described (and I have no idea what point that may be!).  But, the omnipresence of impact craters confirm that the planet is currently tectonically dead.


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And, as far as concerns the strength of solar tidal forces operating upon Mercury, I'm working out the math right now.  This involves, not only the gravitational equation, but also angular momentum equations given Mercury's mean sidereal day cycle of three days per two years (as opposed to Earth's 365.25 days per year), combined with Mercury's short year relative to Earth's (88 Earth days).


I'm gonna have to get drunk to do that type of math correctly, and then re-check it while sober, so don't expect me to post it for some time (give me about 24 hours).


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Further edit:


Actually, all I have to do concerning the angular momentum equation is to use the ABSOLUTE rate of Mercury's rotation about her axis.


Major thinking flaw!