Re: [math-fun] Holding much water
Methinks "atmosphere-strip theory" might better be called "hydrogen-strip theory", since Venus's atmosphere is a heck of a lot thicker than Earth's. I don't know how much hydrogen is bound up in the crust of Venus in various compounds, but I doubt that anyone else does either. There are other potential effects the Earth's Moon could have aside from the possible effects on the Earth's magnetic field. It could have helped to sweep up various light materials for the Earth during the early history of the Solar system. If Venus & the Earth are similarly sized & similarly located, and yet Venus has this incredibly thick atmosphere and the Earth doesn't, then I'm willing to listen to any theories in which the Moon helps to get rid of some of the Earth's primordial atmosphere -- e.g., carbon dioxide. So far, the hydrogen stripping theory kills off hydrogen on Venus, but how does the non-existence of that stripping on Earth kill off all the garbage in the Earth's early atmosphere? I know that some of the planet formation theories have the big planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, etc. -- "shepherding" some of the smaller planets into formation. I've seen some computer animations which show the inner planet eccentricities varying quite a bit during the last 4.5 billion years. Do any of the planet formation theories contemplate the Earth and Venus swapping orbits? Could there have been some sort of orbit-crossing event -- perhaps the one that created the Moon -- that could have dramatically shifted either the Earth's or Venus's orbital position? At 01:46 PM 4/5/2016, Warren D Smith wrote:
--Venus's hydrogen is gone. Hence no water, no ammonia, no chemistry involving H, no life.
Their ref 4 hopefully provided evidence. If so, then HB's disputation of atmosphere-strip theory, is busted by observational evidence.
--diddlysquat. Venus is extremely dry and has about 10^(-8) the absolute amount of H on Earth.
="Henry Baker" <hbaker1@pipeline.com> Could there have been some sort of orbit-crossing event -- perhaps the one that created the Moon -- that could have dramatically shifted either the Earth's or Venus's orbital position?
Amusingly, this thread has somehow begun to sound downright Velikovskyan (especially in view of the original planetary electromagnetism discussion) For a Good Time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision http://www.amazon.com/Stargazers-Gravediggers-Immanuel-Velikovsky-ebook/dp/B 00ALQVMS2 http://www.varchive.org/ce/cosmos.htm
Up until the 1960's, no one took seriously the continental drift theory. (I recall my MIT undergraduate advisor being so excited by continental drift; having read about these theories while still in grade school, I yawned!). Up until the 1980's, no one took seriously the asteroid theory of dino destruction. Up until a few years ago, no one took seriously some of the collision theories of the origin of the Moon. While Velikovsky probably had no serious scientific reason to suggest such drama, it has become clear that the cosmos isn't the "steady state" boring place that scientists had assumed so confidently earlier in my lifetime. (Electrical engineering in the 1950's had also become stuck in a "steady state" paradigm, but that's a whole nuther story.) That's the problem with chaotic systems-- they look peaceful/rhythmic until they aren't. Once you have >2 bodies and there isn't a multiple-orders-of-magnitude hierarchy in masses/energies/etc., then expect chaos. What seems to have become clear from the large number of computer simulations of our solar system is that it *looks* peaceful *now*, only because during the early stages, most of the bad actors were ejected from the system. So, if you ignore a large number of ejected planets flying around the galaxy in all directions, then the vast majority of little solar systems will appear to be relatively peaceful places. So what happens in the off chance that one of these ejected planets -- perhaps from another solar system -- happens to wander nearby to us? At 12:19 PM 4/6/2016, Marc LeBrun wrote:
="Henry Baker" <hbaker1@pipeline.com> Could there have been some sort of orbit-crossing event -- perhaps the one that created the Moon -- that could have dramatically shifted either the Earth's or Venus's orbital position?
Amusingly, this thread has somehow begun to sound downright Velikovskyan (especially in view of the original planetary electromagnetism discussion)
For a Good Time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Velikovsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worlds_in_Collision http://www.amazon.com/Stargazers-Gravediggers-Immanuel-Velikovsky-ebook/dp/B 00ALQVMS2 http://www.varchive.org/ce/cosmos.htm
="Henry Baker" <hbaker1@pipeline.com> While Velikovsky probably had no serious scientific reason to suggest such drama, it has become clear that the cosmos isn't the "steady state" boring place that scientists had assumed so confidently earlier in my lifetime.
Yes. My comments were in no way intended to inhibit such speculations, just to note that good new ideas can resonate weirdly with rightly-rejected ones. The proponents of "punctuated equilibrium" felt the need to distinguish it from Velikovsky-style catastrophism. "Velikovsky is neither crank nor charlatan although... he is at least gloriously wrong..." --Stephan Jay Gould (per Wikipedia) Or there's Gosper's observation that enough epicycles actually could have accounted for any observed orbit...
Aren't epicycles the earliest version of Fourier series? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferent_and_epicycle Now if someone could show that Ptolemy invented the FFT... At 05:04 PM 4/6/2016, Marc LeBrun wrote:
Or there's Gosper's observation that enough epicycles actually could have accounted for any observed orbit...
participants (2)
-
Henry Baker -
Marc LeBrun