[meteorite-list] Planet V (for Five)

From: Rob McCafferty <rob_mccafferty_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Apr 28 12:07:50 2006
Message-ID: <20060427211208.16158.qmail_at_web50905.mail.yahoo.com>

Hello list

For those people recently who wereharping on about the
apparent disintegration of this list, this is an
example of the sort of gem which I find make it all
worth while.

I like a lot of what is in this post and wish I had
the celestial mechanics ability (and time too) to work
on it (With a healthy dollop of simulation programming
thrown in too)

I will restric myself to one thought to raise
regarding this topic and this is; Did all trace of
this planet disappear? Does anyone have any idea where
NWA3133 may fit into the picture?

Rob McCafferty

--- "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb_at_sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

> Hi, List,
>
> With several stories being posted about the new
> research on lunar return samples showing that there
> was indeed a Late Heavy Bombardment with a sharp
> peak after a quiet period, instead of the Final
> Flurry
> of an ongoing bombardment, I realized that the
> Planet V
> hypothesis put forward several years ago to account
> for the LHB also ties in with several other new
> developments.
>
> The Asteroid Belt "should be" a zone of
> relatively
> similar objects in relatively circular, non-inclined
> orbits;
> that's what ALL the Solar System formation theories
> would predict, despite the differing formation
> mechanisms they propose.
>
> But, of course the "real" Asteroid Belt isn't
> like
> that. There are a wide variety of compositions, like
> iron asteroids (that could never have formed that
> far
> out), dry asteroids, wet asteroids, carbonaceous
> asteroids, differentiated asteroids,
> non-differentiated
> asteroids, asteroids with diamonds, asteroids that
> smell
> like bubble gum... You name it. In short, every
> oddball composition we know from meteorites.
>
> The SRI published a computer simulation earlier
> this year (about which Ron Baalke posted to The
> List)
> that suggests the Asteroid Zone is full of objects
> that formed elsewhere in the Solar System (like iron
> asteroids) because they were ALL deflected there
> from
> other parts of the Solar System. It is silent on
> what
> did the deflecting, but the simulations seems to
> show
> that's the only way they could get there
>
> And, there are asteroid "families" with very
> distinctive
> eccentric and inclined orbits, grouped together. The
> "delta-V" required to drive asteroids into those
> orbits
> requires repeated close encounters with a body
> larger
> than Mars (about 1 to 4 Mars masses). This
> observation
> is decades old, but no one has ever suggested,
> again,
> what did the deflecting, or when.
>
> Below is a news story about Chambers and
> Lissauer's
> Planet V (for Five) hypothesis, which they offer as
> an
> explanation for the Late Lunar Bombardment, but it
> seems to me that the hypothesis may have "legs," as
> they say, and that the other unexplained conditions
> described above offer some confirmatory
> implications.
>
> And, if you're looking for other unexplained
> facts
> to tuck into the envelope, there's the anomalous
> slow,
> backward rotation of Venus (a "day" longer than its
> "year"), for which repeated close encounters with a
> large body has been suggested as a cause. Planet V?
>
> And last, there's the mantle-stripping Big Splat
>
> on Mercury. We've always "assumed" that it took
> place as early as our own Moon-forming Big Impact,
> but it could have happened at 3.8 to 3.9 billion
> years
> ago instead, the final outcome of Planet V's rogue
> career. Guess we have to wait for that Mercury
> Sample Return Mission to find out...
>
> Here's the only Chambers paper on the hypothesis
> that I could get to, for free anyway:
>
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2002/pdf/1093.pdf
>
> There's an Australian paper that tries to
> duplicate
> the results of Chambers and Lissauer, but can't.
> http://eo.ucar.edu/staff/dward/sao/dward617paper.pdf
>
> Its flaw is that it makes Planet V a puny little
> thing, about 5 to 8 times too small to do the job.
> But then, so does Chambers, because he wants
> Planet V to end up crashing into the Sun, a silly
> notion whose attractions I am blind to. I like the
> Big Splat.
>
> But I understand his problem. If you're going
> to stick another planet in the Solar System to
> account for all these things, why, you have to get
> rid
> of it somehow since it doesn't seem to be around
> any more!
>
> Mercury makes a perfectly good "hit man."
>
>
> Sterling K. Webb
>
----------------------------------------------------------
>
>
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/fifth_planet_020318.html
>
> Long-Destroyed Fifth Planet May Have Caused
> Lunar Cataclysm, Researchers Say
> By Leonard David, Senior Space Writer
> posted: 03:00 pm ET, 18 March 2002
>
> HOUSTON, TEXAS -- Our solar system may have had a
> fifth terrestrial planet, one that was swallowed up
> by the Sun.
> But before it was destroyed, the now
> missing-in-action
> world made a mess of things.
> Space scientists John Chambers and Jack Lissauer
> of
> NASA's Ames Research Center hypothesize that along
> with Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars -- the
> terrestrial,
> rocky planets -- there was a fifth terrestrial
> world, likely
> just outside of Mars's orbit and before the inner
> asteroid
> belt.
> Moreover, Planet V was a troublemaker. The
> computer
> modeling findings of Chambers and Lissauer were
> presented
> during the 33rd Lunar and Planetary Science
> Conference,
> held here March 11-15, and sponsored by NASA and the
>
> Lunar and Planetary Institute.
> It is commonly believed that during the
> formative years
> of our solar system, between 3.8 billion and 4
> billion years
> ago, the Moon and Earth took a pounding from space
> debris.
> However, there is an on-going debate as to whether
> or not
> the bruising impacts tailed off 3.8 billion year ago
> or if there
> was a sudden increase - a "spike" -- in the impact
> rate
> around 3.9 billion years ago, with quiet periods
> before
> and afterwards?
> This epoch of time is tagged as the "lunar
> cataclysm" -
> also a wakeup call on the cosmological clock when
> the
> first evidence of life is believed to have appeared
> on Earth.
> The great cover-up: Having a swarm of objects
> clobbering the Moon in a narrow point of time would
> have resurfaced most of our celestial next door
> neighbor,
> covering up its early history. Being that the Moon
> is so
> small, Earth would have been on the receiving end of
>
> any destructive deluge too.
> Moon-walking astronauts brought back a cache of
> lunar material. Later analysis showed that virtually
> all
> impact rocks in the "Apollo collection" sported
> nearly
> the same age, 3.9 billion years, and none were
> older.
> But some scientists claim that these samples were
> "biased", as they came from a small area of the
> Moon,
> and are the result of a localized pummeling, not
> some
> lunar big bang.
> There is a problem in having a "spike" in the
> lunar
> cratering rate. That scenario is tough to devise.
> Things
> should have been settling down, according to solar
> system creation experts. Having chunks of stuff come
>
> zipping along some hundreds of millions of years
> later
>
=== message truncated ===


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Received on Thu 27 Apr 2006 05:12:08 PM PDT