[RightWhale]

van Flandern says Mars was a moon of the 5th planet, which would have made it the 4th planet at that time. Why did it explode? It may have been a duplicate thread planet.

[buffyt]

You mean it was simply deleted? Geez.... I hate when that happens.

[#3Fan]

van Flandern says Mars was a moon of the 5th planet, which would have made it the 4th planet at that time. Why did it explode? It may have been a duplicate thread planet.

The structure of a planet could cause it to explode as it cooled. Kind of like an implosion.

[Lazamataz]

van Flandern says Mars was a moon of the 5th planet, which would have made it the 4th planet at that time. Why did it explode? It may have been a duplicate thread planet.

It was a troll planet, and the Viking Kitties zotted it.

[ovrtaxt]

Why did it explode?

Perhaps Jupiter's gravity ended up ripping it apart? That's been my theory about the asteroid belt, that it's the remains of a planet that couldn't handle the relationship with Jupiter. I don't know how that fits into this theory in the article.

[Old_Mil]

There is a problem in having a "spike" in the lunar cratering rate.

No problem at all. The universe is just much younger than many scientists suspect, and God created in 7 days. However, rather than latching on to this obvious conclusion, let's come up with one that won't upset the applecart: "A long time ago, in our very own galaxy and solar system, there existed an evil galatic empire ruled by a despot named Darth Vader. This evil despot created an enormous planet like space station which was capable of vaporizing planets with a giant laser beam. This despot had imprisoned a member of the ruling family of the fifth planet of our own solar system and as way to force her to divulge information, he ordered the fifth planet destroyed. Debris from the destruction of the fifth planet impacted our moon, thus explaining the spike in impact craters 3.9 million years old."

Flying spaghetti monster, indeed.