T or E

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />Have you considered the possibility that Mars and P-V might also have once occupied the third position of the Titius-Bode series? (Venus-1, Earth-2, Mars-3).<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">See Table I in metaresearch.org/solar%20system/origins/...nal-solar-system.asp and note the column "original period", which makes more dynamical sense and works better than the Titius-Bode law. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">At one point I began to wonder about the inference in Table 1 that the Earth was much closer to the Sun in the early solar system than it is now. Would Earth at that distance have been too hot to have oceans?
["The Original Solor System," TVF. Quoted from link in last post, from Conclusion.]<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

One of the things I've been wondering about was P-V or whichever of its moons was the home for intellegent life. If Mars, (or Body-C), at a distance of 1.3 au in your revision, was able to sustain liquid water, at a time when the Earth was considerably hotter, we might have a logical scenario. The pre-Cambrian bacteria that lived on the Earth could have withstood more extreme temperatures, but advanced forms of life that may have been evolving in P-V's orbit, would need liquid water.

Neil

On a not unrelated topic, I've been reading about a theory by Thomas Gold who (picking up from Russian scientists) thinks that hydrocarbons are not biogenic, that is, not created by decaying animal and vegetable matter, which became, millions of years latter, petroleum, natural gas, and coal. Rather, he thinks that hydrocarbons are abiogenic and were around since the formation of the Earth.

The reason I bring this up is because he thinks that the conventional "accretion model" for the formation of the planets is necessary to his theory, because if the Earth was originally a ball of molten rock, all hydrocarbons would have been oxidized.

First question: is he right? Second question: under the fission model for the formation of the planets, did the Earth and other planets begin as firey balls of molton matter, (as was believed in the 19th century), or were they at least partially solid right from the beginning?

Neil

Here's another question for Tom or anyone who feels like tackling it:

We've been thinking about the probable age of the artifacts on Mars, especially the apparent faces. JP Levasseur did a preliminary investigaion (as yet unpublished, I believe) using hi-res MOLA data. This data suggests, if I remember it correctly, that the Profile Image is essentially on flat ground with some small variations.

There has also been mention, from time to time, of dust storms on Mars in other posts (and frequently accompanying MSSS images). I remember reading in one of TVF's papers, (can't remember which just now), that since Mars' atmosphere is only of small fraction of Earth's, dust storms would not be caused by atmospheric conditions, i.e. weather. They would instead be the result of meteor collisions with Mars.

Whatever their cause, obviously dust storms exist on Mars, and due to gravity, most dust settles. The result would be a kind of sedimentation where eventually, over long periods of time, dust would settle over any flat art on the planet's surface. Eventually it seems, these faces, at least the flat ones, would be covered by the regolith.

My question here is whether anyone has calculated sedimentation rate of dust on Mars. Perhaps such a calculation could help determine the aproximate age of these faces.

Neil

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />My question here is whether anyone has calculated sedimentation rate of dust on Mars.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I did that calculation a while back. Dust appears opague from a great distance when it is virtually invisible from inside. The calculation indicated that the accumulation in 3.2 million years (my estimate of the minimum age of Cydonia) was not enough to create a coating a single dust grain thick.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Is [Gold] right?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">His theory has not caught on. I'm not familiar enough with his reasoning to offer an opinion of my own.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">under the fission model for the formation of the planets, did the Earth and other planets begin as firey balls of molton matter, (as was believed in the 19th century), or were they at least partially solid right from the beginning?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">They began is fireballs, having fissioned from the Sun. However, it was a much larger, cooler, T-Tauri-type Sun than what we have today.

All planets then started as balls of mostly hydrogen and helium. But if their masses were below a critical threshold, those gases would quickly escape into space, leaving only heavier elements behind. And of those, the heaviest would tend to drop to the center.

The detailed evolution has not been worked out from this sketch. So I don't know if the Earth started out hot enough to eliminate Gold's theory as you describe it. -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by neilderosa</i>
<br />On a not unrelated topic, I've been reading about a theory by Thomas Gold who (picking up from Russian scientists) thinks that hydrocarbons are not biogenic, that is, not created by decaying animal and vegetable matter, which became, millions of years latter, petroleum, natural gas, and coal. Rather, he thinks that hydrocarbons are abiogenic and were around since the formation of the Earth.

Neil
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I agree that petroleum is not biogenic. One can't oxidize unless enough oxygen is available. Given many fuel candidates, oxygen will first react with metals, forming salts. Hydrocarbons are not first in line for oxidation. The fact that large reserves of petroleum, just like large ore deposits, exist within the Earth should give one reason to doubt the gravitational accretion model for planets, moons, etc. Metaresearch has been publishing articles over the last few years which implicitly argue against the standard gravitational accretion model, whether intentional or not.

Gregg Wilson