The Death of Mars Theory

andrew · 2006-03-31 15:32:38

Friday March 31, 2006 - Andrew LeMay – andrewlemay@hotmail.com

The Death of Mars Theory:

In the past, Mars was a planet with a moon large enough to influence water, seasons, and gravity. With a gravitational ratio equal to that of our Earth and moon, Mars was capable of supporting a molten core that generated heat, which helped to regulate the temperature of the Martian atmosphere (Olympus Mons).

Then, a large collision occurred between the Mars moon and a rouge asteroid. The colliding bodies left behind two distinctly different, broken remnants (Phobos and Deimos).

Eventually, some of those pieces impacted Mars to create craters and debris. Fragments were scattered throughout space, hurdling large meteorites toward earth (Meteorite ALH84001).

After the Mars moon was destroyed, there was not enough opposing gravity to keep the planet's molten core spinning. This eventually stopped the Mars core which failed to generate internal heat, causing too much of a temperature flux to sustain its warm atmosphere.

In conclusion, the Mars that we see today is from unknown years of elemental erosion. If we as people wish to terraform the planet Mars for human habitation, we must first rebuild its moon to invigorate the core of Mars again.

Friday March 31, 2006 - Andrew LeMay – andrewlemay@hotmail.com

MarsDog · 2006-03-31 20:50:23

Maybe the gas giants could spare a few moons.
Or something really large from the Kuiper belt ?

Mars is as good as it is going to get for centuries.
But, definitively, could use a sister planet.

John Creighton · 2006-03-31 21:05:54

Arn't Phobes and Deimos different in compostion?

Commodore · 2006-03-31 22:45:32

A definate, I'd say likely explanation of the current situation on Mars.

I don't think its a problem limited to Mars either. A large imported satillite around Venus could have a similar effect by speeding up the molten core and curtailing the apparently constant volcanism, effect the day period, and improve the magnetic field. Other bodies orbiting the gas giants could benefit as well.

Of course the process of moving large celestial bodies is well beyond our current abilities, As is likely to be for centuries to come. And by the time we do, life support capabilies will probably be at the point that we can overcome all but the gravity issue on the larger bodies without reengineering planetary systems.

MarsDog · 2006-04-01 00:36:43

http://www.google.com/search?client=ope … 8&oe=utf-8

Using almost cycler obits,
asteroids could be used for gravity coupled momentum/energy transfers.
Move Earth's Moon to orbit Mars, Venus moved to become Earth's sister planet.

Rxke · 2006-04-01 01:20:17

Disclaimer: I'm no expert, heehee.

But I don't buy it.

Earth's extremely large moon (compared to Earth, not absolutely) is seen as somewhat of an anomaly in celestial mechanics. Earth and Moon are considered to have been one initially, but a catastrophic impact (young solar system, still lots of debris before the gas giant had time to mop the scrap away) ) would've torn earth apart, creating a Moon.

So... It looks highly unlikely to me that :

a) the same thing happened on proto-Mars (creation by impact and stabille subsequent orbit of very large Moon)
b) said moon then later being impacted w/ such an energy that it reached escape velocity.

Occams Razor says no.

I mean: there are no compelling pointers that say there was a giant moon to begin with, so theorising a creation of one and its subsequent dissappearance... You'll have to come up with a very good 'smoking gun' to make that plausible.

I'm not saying it's inpossible, but I'd like to see... Some pointers that could fit your theory.
One thing that does or doesn't fit: the remnant magnetic orientations: does this point to a once spinning core, but later impact made it stop spinning and the havoc stirred up the mantle so big time that the orientation we see now was 'scattered' (i.e. large chunks of mantle being 'rearranged'?)

But... Earth's core heat is created by radioactive decay, nothing to do w/ gravity, and the spinning that creates the magnetic fields is considered to be a result of said heat: like water in a kettle, it 'travels' up and down(convection) combined with the spinning of Earth. And that's only the outer layers of the core, the 'real' core is so much compressed it has become solid again, despite it being actually hotter than the outer layers of it.

Mars being so much smaller mass than Earth; IIRC they theorise it simply cooled down much quicker than Earth, nothing fancy about that.

Sorry for bad grammar: too much coffee, too little sleep. Too deeply in love.

MarsDog · 2006-04-02 17:45:18

Tidal heating of Earth is small compared to Io.
Similarly, Mars would have had very unusual configuration for lost Moon(s)

Could try to figure out watts/square meter from tidal forces on Earth.
Geothermal flow is known, part from radioactivity, part from tidal heating.
Energy from Earth's rotation goes into heating and change of Moon's orbit by 38mm/year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_energy_budget

andrew · 2006-04-03 22:08:36

Arn't Phobes and Deimos different in compostion?

Yes they are! One is the composition of ex-Mars moon, the other could be the asteroid. The big question is... are either of the 2 current Mars moons of the same composition as the meteorite found in antarctica?

andrew · 2006-04-03 22:12:09

Maybe the gas giants could spare a few moons.
Or something really large from the Kuiper belt ?
Mars is as good as it is going to get for centuries.
But, definitively, could use a sister planet.

Great idea! If we can land on a comet, what are the possibilities of us forming the 2 current moons into 1? Do you think it would be easier to borrow a bunch of asteroids and make a moon, or move a moon?

MarsDog · 2006-04-03 23:03:20

The asteroids and small moons will be valuable as momentum transfer objects.
So preferred would be moving large Moons and Kuiper objects.

I like the idea of mutually tidally locked planets in Mars orbit.
Make a large water planet of 1G, floating cities etc.
They could be even be so close as to share a space elevator at the center of gravity.

karov · 2006-04-04 11:20:29

One 1G water world ( i.e. about 10e3 kg/m3 density ) should have mass >10 times bigger than Earth, i.e. >100 martian masses. I think it is pointless to move one gas-stripped Neptune or Uranus to Mars, asside the fact that KB material almost surely is insufficient to form such body. One`d need to use OCloud material to do so, and the only possitive side effect would be that this mass is orbited closer to the Sun, so presumably its GPE ( gravitational potential energy ) turned into usefull industrial power... Better coalesce the moon&mars%earth size water-worlds directly in the Outer system ( still converting the GPE from the coalescion into usefull form...) and use buterfly-wings thin soletas to concentrate only 1000 times the sun`s light...

MarsDog · 2006-04-05 00:13:56

Force = G * M / r^2 is same for water world
M = density * (4/3) * pi * r^3
Substituting: F = G * demsity * (4/3) *pi * r^3 / r^2
Equating Earth and Water World, cancelling to get
density1*r1 = density2*r2
5.5 times Earth radius

You are correct
Total volume is 166 times Earth and Mass is 30 times Earth.

Escape velocity

11.2 * sqrt(30/5.5) = 26.2 km/sec

Then the atmosphere interactions ?

karov · 2006-04-05 10:05:20

Thanks! I didn`t have time to calculate - just guessed!

In principle I like the idea of almost pure water world. ( But not at Mars - or rather with Mars orbiting it..) This figure proves that water is vey serious building material not only for tube-worlds ( chilled to under -50-60 Celsius to become harder than quarz, perfect cosmic radiation insulator... ) , but also for anchor-worlds. Using water we trap as constituent of solid material the volatile hydrogen... There are also gas clouds out of alcohol out there -- we could coalesce them directly in liquid surface gravitating play-grounds... Thus you`d have the carbon on hand, too.

Look for the Barnards globula: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_cloud

Later in separate theme , about the artificially assisted Star formation...

MarsDog · 2006-04-06 02:54:21

Sun is pushing away the interstellar gas.
So we are stuck with with only materials as far as the Oort cloud.
" It is believed that the total mass of comets in the Oort cloud is many times
that of Earth, and estimates range between five and 100 Earth masses."
Maybe there is a water planet there, just the right size, ready to be moved.

Eventually, mining, disassembling the gas giants seem plausible, but
will have to look up how.

===================

Back to andrew's supposition:
Martian rocks have been dated to be cold for very long time.
Impact would have warmed Mars.
Dating of surface and interior profiling of Mars might produce something suprising

karov · 2006-04-06 06:50:20

Oort cloud -- rather between 50 and 500 Earth masses. More than 85% of the Cloud`s population is estimated to "reside" in the Inner OC under 50 000 AE distance. And the rest 15% distributed spherically up to 2.5-3 ly radius off-sun. And yes it is HIGHLY probable that lots of moon and mars-zised bodies are out there -- ready for colonization with huge soletas conentrating Sun`s and not only sun`s light onto them, and without to move them closer to the Sun... Even Earth -sized ae possible. Everytime the planet formation is quite violeent process and up to 90% of the protoplanes -- from moon to earth size are muscled out by the gas-giant settling on their orbits... The simulations show that not 10 but 100 times more protoplanets are born out of average solar nebula... Here also works the empirical rule "as smaller, as more numerous so the Third realm ( KB ) and the Forth realm ( OC ) of the Solar empire contains the REAL wealth of ANY star system -- in materials, composition, mass, gravitational potential energy, etc. etc.
I noticed one rule, which is good viewing possition for this wealth. See the gradation:
--1. there are >5 000 NEO bigger than 1 km ( First Realm - inner, rocky planets zone Sun-Mars)
--2. there are > 5 000 000 Main belt objects bigger than 1 km ( Second Realm, outer gas-giant planets zone Mars-Neptune )
--3. There are > 5 000 000 000 KBO bigger than 1 km ( Third Realm )
--4. There are > 5 000 000 000 000 OCO bigger than 1 km ( Forth Realm )
============================

Mining the gas-giants and any other gravity well worths ONLY if you swap cheap matter ( hydrogen and helium ) for astronomical "metals" - any other element... Thi could be usefull not only for the elements profit but also because so, you store the hydrogen for the dark distant future, when someday one might need to fuse all this hydrogeen into carbon or even iron/nikel in order to extract and utilize the potential nuclear eneergy out of it ( plus the xcess of gravitational potential energy cause the ironing of the gas-giants will cause them to contract... ), PLUS to use thess purified H/He balls for gravity anchors for shell-worlds ( Birch style )... kinda up-side-downing of the aveage configuration of the gas giants -- putting their nin H/He cores as deposited over at 1G equipotential terraformed surface...

I ment exactly this when suggesting to terraform the Molecular Clods / Neebulas -- why to just let them collaps into regular solar sysem, loosing so much planets, habitable surface, energy , ejected mass... When we could use this to turn several solar massing clouds into arrays of dozens of little red dawrfs or even pure H/He jupiter or smaller size gas-giants, litered with fusion plants lasing with almost 100% eefficiency in controld acc. the demand rate, and the rest 2-3% on average "impurities" of "metals" to turn into solid habitable ground - rotating or anchored... But for this - back in the separate theme...
=======================================

Mars & impacts...

See: http://www.google.com/mars/

The whole northern hemisphere of Mars is several kilometers lower than the Southern hemisphere - i.e. the northern hemisphere is indeed GIANT impact crater. The size of the impactor ( the maximum one ) could be easily estimated via using th Impact simulator or via calculating the gravitational binding energy of Mars. Serious hit. Caused by other protoplanet merging in. Moon size? The focil bulging of the southern hemisphere is pretty obvious to be result of the hit recoil...The other major hit, you see is the Helas baisin - much smaller body. NOt planemo, perhaps 200-300 km wide, hitting under big angle -- the planetary forensics could see the recoil effect -- the Tharsis bulge... ALL these hits occured when Mars formed, the same way as the case with Earth-Moon or Pluto-CHaron, or the stripping of Mercury, by hit and run blow...

Tholzel · 2006-04-08 09:23:30

""The whole northern hemisphere of Mars is several kilometers lower than the Southern hemisphere - i.e. the northern hemisphere is indeed GIANT impact crater. The size of the impactor ( the maximum one ) could be easily estimated via using th Impact simulator or via calculating the gravitational binding energy of Mars. Serious hit. Caused by other protoplanet merging in. Moon size? The focil bulging of the southern hemisphere is pretty obvious to be result of the hit recoil...The other major hit, you see is the Helas baisin - much smaller body. NOt planemo, perhaps 200-300 km wide, hitting under big angle -- the planetary forensics could see the recoil effect -- the Tharsis bulge... ALL these hits occured when Mars formed, the same way as the case with Earth-Moon or Pluto-CHaron, or the stripping of Mercury, by hit and run blow...""

The problem here is that IF that were true, then it would have happend long before any life occurred. Or, giving you the benefit of the doubt, life had occurred, but in any case would have been snuffed out by such an impact--as it was on Earth several times.

The net-net: Other than microbial life--which seems to be everywhere, Mars never had a stable, life-friendly environment (that Earth did--thanks in large part to its very large moon) long enough for anything interesting to evolve.

karov · 2006-04-08 10:00:29

The problem here is that IF that were true, then it would have happend long before any life occurred. Or, giving you the benefit of the doubt, life had occurred, but in any case would have been snuffed out by such an impact--as it was on Earth several times.
The dominant theory confirmed by most evidences and simulations states that such impact occured in the first billion years of the solar-system`s planetary formation. Every now existing body "suffered" hits from such impactors -- i.e. this is the final stage of planetary coalescence. The bigger worlds swallow the smaller, sometimes decompress them via hit and run encounters, or muscle out their orbits toward the Sun or eject them off-system... Finally from >1000 remain about 10. The origin of life is postulated to be after the first this billion of years, although I agree that as the planet-formation is very robust and universal process, taking place EVERYWHERE - around even the most shortliving massive super-stars, around the supernovas corpses out of the fallback... the same way - the life it self should be ubiquitous and the giant crashes of the planetary formation to not diturb it so much...
The net-net: Other than microbial life--which seems to be everywhere, Mars never had a stable, life-friendly environment (that Earth did--thanks in large part to its very large moon) long enough for anything interesting to evolve.
Earth`s moon formation was due to Mars-sized impactor merger. Whether the ubiquitous microbial life existed before the impact which gave the final shape of the system, or whether this eventual life survived is not important. Unfortunatelly the inner system run out of such huge impactors, or rather the one for Venus, indeed hit and got naked-cored Mercury, otherwise we`d have another more Earth-like Venus -- with better diurnal cycle, with thinner crust allowing plate tectonics ( essencial for the chemical atmosphere homeostasis - the carbo-silicate cycle, nitrogen cycle...), and with more water excavated byb the hit from the depths.

Tholzel · 2006-05-12 15:27:40

<<After the Mars moon was destroyed, there was not enough opposing gravity to keep the planet's molten core spinning. This eventually stopped the Mars core which failed to generate internal heat, causing too much of a temperature flux to sustain its warm atmosphere. >>

It's not the heat that disapated when Mars' theorized larger moon was eliminated, but the magnetic field. The molten iron core on Earth is churned by our very large moon, creating the magnetic field that creates the van Allen belt--which shields us from deadly cosmic rays. If we lost our moon, this churning would cease, the magnetic field would stop, the van Allen belt would disappear, and our planet would be cleansed of life by the influx of deadly cosmic radiation.

SRAM · 2006-08-14 20:38:24

Pure speculation, yet an interesting theory.

There is no proof of a "molten core" of ANY planetary body.

Pure speculation.

nickname · 2006-08-16 05:07:51

Tholzel,

The tidal action on the core of the earth isn't much now, but a billion or two years ago its was immense.

This might be the reason we still have a molten core now.
If we look at similar moonless planets in our solar system Mars and Venus they are long dead and simply might have run the course for heat they could produce.

I'm amazed no one has thought about a few billion years of tidal action on earths core caused by the moon.

When we start closely looking for places that have life in the universe, i think we will be looking at moons around Jovian type planets more than earth like places with moons.

Our moon the size it is with an earth like planet in the right stellar place will be quite rare.

nickname · 2006-08-16 05:23:46

Just a wild guess at finding another earth moon type system

Chance of earth sized planet at right stellar place 1/10 ... systems
Chance that said planet is a water world 1/10 ...wet
Chance of planetary crash that forms large moon 1/1,000,000 ... crashes
Chance that end product is earthlike 1/10 ... atmospheric remains of crash, spin composition etc

1 in a billion stars.
Might be a long look for earth 2

Belinda · 2006-08-16 10:52:27

Our moon the size it is with an earth like planet in the right stellar place will be quite rare.

If you think of the Earth/ Moon system as a binary system, like some asteroids or KBOs (or indeed stars) only very mismatched in size, it needn't be so rare.

(Come on someone out there, - put me right on my physics! Why isn't the Earth/ Moon a binary system?)

SRAM · 2006-08-16 12:55:22

There are no "cores" .

Planetary formation in error.

Mass calculation in error.

nickname · 2006-08-16 15:43:09

Belinda,

Other than Pluto Charon system the rest is all captured items.
Small objects traveling at similar velocities can gravitationally perturb each other slowly.

Large sized worlds cant capture each other, they either perturb and collide, or simply perturb each other and both feel the gradational effects of the pass bye.

For an earth mars sort of collision to happen, first a planet has to be perturbed from its original orbit, then collide with another planet in the correct place at the correct time.
Forming a moon and earth from it requires a precise angular collision or you get one big world with no moon, or very small moon.

The odds pile up against earth 2 if you factor in the % of stars that are not good for life anywhere near them.
Probably making my guess at more like one in 50 billion, and i haven't even touched on the life starts %.

If earth like places are required for intelligent life then we might be searching forever for Et as 99% of the time earth has been here it had no intelligent life, and not to sure about now either.

SRAM,

Lava?
Where does that come from?

Belinda · 2006-08-16 16:22:30

Nickname:

Other than Pluto Charon system the rest is all captured items.

You mean, all for e.g. asteroidal or Kuiper Belt binary systems are the result of capture?

The odds pile up against earth 2 if you factor in the % of stars that are not good for life anywhere near them.
Probably making my guess at more like one in 50 billion, and i haven't even touched on the life starts %.

I think the idea of 'earth 2' is based on there being lots of Sun-type stars each of which will have a 'habitable zone' (where water can be wet) in some of which a planet capable of bearing life might orbit, though (if it does) whether it will actually bear life? - We don't yet know for sure how life gets started from chemistry.

If earth like places are required for intelligent life then we might be searching forever for Et as 99% of the time earth has been here it had no intelligent life, and not to sure about now either

Define 'intelligence'.

earth 2

Used to be on tv. I loved the vehicles, architecture and VR, if the characters and 'message' were excruciating.

Lava?
Where does that come from?

My understanding is it comes from the upper part of the mantle due to partial melting. That the Earth is layered is inferred from seismic waves (S waves don't go through liquid, S waves don't go through the outer core, therefore... etc.) and from the composition of chondritic meteorites which are supposed to be the most unaltered material in the Solar System; heavier stuff (iron etc.) must have sunk to the centre, lighter stuff on the outside.

'course, like the ancient Greek model of the Earth surrounded by a crystal sphere embedded with stars, - the above could be superseded anytime.

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