[meteorite-list] Early Mercury Impact Showered Earth

From: Sterling K. Webb <sterling_k_webb_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sun Apr 9 01:29:51 2006
Message-ID: <005101c65b93$38bf7770$19ee8c46_at_ATARIENGINE>

Hi, Larry, Rob, List

    Well, I left it out because of its short shelf life!
No sooner was it put forward, than we discovered
that 2003 EL61 has two satellites in what seem to
be circular, co-planar orbits, which makes impact
origin pretty unlikely and then, within a week or two
(before or after?), two extra satellites of Pluto with
orbits in the plane of Charon.
    I feel sorry for whoever rushed forward with
that suggestion only to be cut down in the prime
of life, so to speak. A theory ought to have the
shelf life of say, a Twinkie, or at the very least,
a Cheeto.
    Just plain bad luck; it was a perfectly logical
and reasonable suggestion. It's just that we don't
have a universe as logical and reasonable as our
theories some days.
    Not to get drug into another long weirdness,
but one of the interesting flaws of all our theories
of the origin of the solar system is that they should
explain the origin of big satellite systems just as
"easily" as they describe the origin of big planetary
systems, only they don't. Whoops! In fact, the
"how do satellite systems form?" debate is like
its own little sideshow, and is a much less
settled area of the theory generally.
    Similarly, we all believe the Titus-Bode "Law" is
not a "law" at all, just a misleading coincidence, and
yet, if you configure it as a "power law" and jigger
the coefficient, presto! you have a satellite "law."
You can construct "Titus-Bode Laws" for the Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus satellite systems, all with different
coefficients for each planet, but identical in form,
only you have to leave out the small random
satellites.
    As originally expressed, Titus-Bode is just
a power law with a coefficient of 2.0. It fits the
Solar System much better with a coefficient of
1.80 to 1.82. Satellite systems require smaller
coefficients still. No explanation as to why that
should be. Maybe there is something hiding
"under" the Titus-Bode regularity that will
become blindingly obvious once we figure
out everything else.



Sterling K. Webb
-----------------------------------------------------------
----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Lebofsky" <lebofsky_at_lpl.arizona.edu>
To: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb_at_sbcglobal.net>
Cc: "Rob McCafferty" <rob_mccafferty_at_yahoo.com>;
<meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 9:21 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Early Mercury Impact Showered Earth


> Hi Sterling:
>
> You left out the most recent of the "impact theories": how do we get so
> many
> Trans Neptunian Objects with satellites? Large impacts!
>
> Larry
>
>
>
Received on Sun 09 Apr 2006 01:05:29 AM PDT