Cassini Images Reveal Spectacular Evidence Of An Active Moon

Space Daily.com ^ | Dec 07, 2005 | JPL, NASA

[staytrue]

I think the Moon, is important because the Moon-formation collision that is now the leading candidate for how it formed reliquified the Earth and likely contributed heavy elements, iron, and water to the young Earth. This has kept our core molten

I think the moon is important too and the moon/earth system is a billion to one chance against. Further, you are right about keeping the core liquid but maybe not for the right reason. The moon has no iron core. Most likely the iron core of the incoming object merged with earth while the lighter stuff got blasted into orbit to form the moon. This left earth with a bigger than normal core than mars or venus and this made it slower to crystallize.

[TN4Liberty]

They aren't allowed to talk, of course.

Yeah, that makes for great radio.

[Question_Assumptions]

I think the moon is important too and the moon/earth system is a billion to one chance against.

It could be higher than that. Robin Canup and others have done simulations of the sort of collision needed to create our moon and it's a fairly specific range of speeds and angles. Even when that's correct, about a third of their simulations produced an unstable two moon system that broke down after about a century.

Further, you are right about keeping the core liquid but maybe not for the right reason. The moon has no iron core. Most likely the iron core of the incoming object merged with earth while the lighter stuff got blasted into orbit to form the moon. This left earth with a bigger than normal core than mars or venus and this made it slower to crystallize.

That's actually a large part of what I had in mind. I think the collision did add heat but I think the bigger contribution was, as you point out, the addition of iron and heavy (possibly radioactive) elements to the Earth's core that are necessary to drive the magnetic field. Of course it's also possible that the off-center collision that Canup and others speciulate about set the whole thing spinning faster, too. If the poles are about to reverse (or the magnetic field is about to disappear, as some real alarmists speculate), we'll get a good lesson in just how important our magnetic field is to life on Earth the hard way.

[staytrue]

Past Magnetic field reversal does not appear to have bad effects on life. I suspect that most animals adapted by taking a siesta from 10 am to 2 pm and underwater animals had no problem.

[RightWhale]

A couple proponents of the artificial moon idea were on Coast last night. For some reason which I do not know, Hoagland showed up to hog their time, but they did make their point, which is that the chances of such an extreme moon are so small that the superior and more likely idea is that the moon was built by time travellers from our near future about 600 million years ago to make earth habitable.

[Question_Assumptions]

I think you should post that on the thread discussing the similarities between Intellgent Design and SETI. :-)

[Question_Assumptions]

I think you should post that on the thread discussing the similarities between Intell[i]gent Design and SETI. :-) Ooops. The tread title is "SETI and Intelligent Design"

[lexington minuteman 1775]

And a taco to go.

[bert]

....Looks like a hole in the Ozone layer...dang those SUV's....

And my wife says.."why do you spend so much tome on Free Republic"

I would have to live without this outstanding observation by Deguello. The atmosphere must definitely have a discontinuity where the matter is being ejected.

[BikerNYC]

Astronipple?

[bert]

.....Their might be some other limiting factor ......

They came as insects and live among us as termites.

[Tolkien]

You beat me to it.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 12/07/2005. Thanks tricky_k_1972.

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