Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Are You Cereous? Life Came from an Asteroid?
CEH ^ | March 5, 2009

Posted on 03/06/2009 4:12:22 PM PST by GodGunsGuts

click here to read article


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-82 next last
To: GodGunsGuts

South Park joke..


21 posted on 03/06/2009 4:43:33 PM PST by mnehring
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts
“See what happens when storytellers are allowed into the science lab? This makes Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs sound scholarly. Contest: see if you can top this. Make up the wackiest theory for the origin of life you can, and see if you can get Space.com to publish it. Tell them you’re an astrobiologist. You could be one, too, because the only job requirements are life membership in the Darwin Party and a vivid imagination.”

You have given new meaning to the term Cracker-head. Are you forming a cracker-head club.

22 posted on 03/06/2009 4:44:01 PM PST by org.whodat (Auto unions bad: Machinists union good=Hypocrisy)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: AndyTheBear

No, the spaghetti monster transcends our definition of life with his tomato saucy goodness. The spaghetti monster is the only being man is incapable of truly understanding...


23 posted on 03/06/2009 4:44:57 PM PST by mnehring
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts
My friend, I know exactly why you posted this. You like to poke sticks at people who disagree with you.

It's an unbecoming trait.

24 posted on 03/06/2009 4:45:02 PM PST by Jean S
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: MyTwoCopperCoins

“Weren’t Martian rocks found in Antarctica?”

Why a Mars Rock Hits Earth Every Month
By Robert Roy Britt, Senior Science Writer
November 7, 2002

Every month, on average, a rock from Mars lands on Earth. Most are never found, but those that have been picked up suggest that the theory for how they get here having been booted from the Red Planet by very large asteroid impacts is not fully accurate.

Now a new computer simulation appears to solve the puzzle by showing that relatively small collisions can do the trick.

Scientists know that space rocks ranging from the size of a car to that of a city have hit Mars many times throughout history. In some of these collisions, chunks of Mars are flung into space and never return. Some go on journeys that can last millions of years before being captured by our own planets gravity.

Meteorite hunters have found about 26 rocks on Earth that have been identified as having come from Mars (some of these broke apart upon entering the atmosphere, so the 26 rocks were found as about 40 separate pieces).

Scientists had thought it took a serious wallop to instigate these interplanetary exchanges. Yet the new research finds that craters as small as 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) wide on Mars could have been the starting points for rocky odysseys.

This minimum crater diameter is at least four times smaller than previous estimates, the scientists write in an account published today in the online version of the journal Science.

The study was done by James Head and Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona, with Boris Ivanov of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The scientists said terrain covered by weaker material, which might be created in previous impacts, requires larger events to scoot stuff all the way to Earth. That means, they say, that Martian meteorites found on Earth should tend be from a young Mars, a projection that fits with the dating done on actual rocks that have been collected.

In an interview with SPACE.com, Head, who also works for Raytheon Missile Systems, explained what the new simulation reveals.

An asteroid one-and-a-half times the size of a football field slams into Mars at 22,370 mph (10 kilometers per second). The energy of the impact is equal to about 60 megatons of TNT, comparable to the largest nuclear devices ever tested.

A strong shock wave begins to form. The leading edge of the shock wave reflects off the surface from below and interferes destructively with the rest of the incoming shock wave, canceling out the high pressure near the surface. At the surface, the pressure is zero, according to the simulation. Just below the surface, however, the pressure is great.

“The pressure difference accelerates the material to high speed,” Head said. “About 10 million fragments averaging 5 centimeters across [2 inches] are accelerated to speeds in excess of 5 kilometers per second [11,180 miles per hour].”

That is the escape velocity of Mars, the speed needed to leave the planet without going into orbit around it.

“According to the celestial mechanics people, about 7.5 percent of this material is destined to land on the Earth,” Head says. “More than half of that lands in the first 10 million years after the impact.”

Impacts of this size and larger occur every 200,000 years or so on Mars. About once every 2 million years, an impact of this size occurs on terrain suited to the scenario Head and his colleagues lay out. This means fragments from several impacts are in transit all the time.

“This works out to about one Martian meteorite landing on Earth each month,” Head said.

These are not the only space rocks that hit Earth, Head points out. While only a few dozen Mars meteorites have been discovered, the total number of space rocks collected on our planet is about 20,000.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_knocks_021107.html


Answers to how they know these meteorites (found on Earth) came from Mars:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22mars+meteorite%22+earth&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2


25 posted on 03/06/2009 4:45:26 PM PST by ETL (ALL the Obama-commie connections at my FR Home page: http://www.freerepublic.com/~etl/)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts
Good post.

Another evolutionist who thinks life must have accidently started somewhere else instead of earth, somewhere far away, where the rules don't apply or the rules are different sometimes, but always by accident.

26 posted on 03/06/2009 4:47:10 PM PST by Old Landmarks (No fear of man, none!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jean S

==My friend, I know exactly why you posted this. You like to poke sticks at people who disagree with you. It’s an unbecoming trait.

Now I know you’re not an IDer.


27 posted on 03/06/2009 4:47:43 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts

Wow, you really are an arrogant ass.


28 posted on 03/06/2009 4:49:27 PM PST by Jean S
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 27 | View Replies]

To: Old Landmarks

Thank you. Someone else, who claims to be an IDer (of all things), thinks my post drawing attention to this Evo-craziness is “unbecoming.” LOL


29 posted on 03/06/2009 4:51:31 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Jean S

Takes one to know one d:op


30 posted on 03/06/2009 4:51:57 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts
Takes one to know one d:op

I don't know what a d:op is but I'll wear the label proudly. You are a hoot!

31 posted on 03/06/2009 4:57:10 PM PST by Jean S
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts

That’s a cool idea...I’m an astrobiologist. Didn’t George Castanza always want to be a Marine Biologist?

Keep the pressure on these guys, GGG. I’ve always wondered why they care about origins, if their presuppositions begin with excluding the possibility of thoughtful intent. And, if there is no intent to this whole thing, then they are meaningless self-recognizing protoplasms with no significance or value.


32 posted on 03/06/2009 4:58:36 PM PST by Dutchboy88
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jean S

It’s all in good fun, Jean S.

PS That was me, with my hat sideways, sticking my tongue out at you. Ha, ha, haha, ha...d:op


33 posted on 03/06/2009 4:58:55 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies]

To: MHGinTN

If I recall, Velikovsky surmised that the asteroid belt contains the remains of a busted planet.
Or maybe that was Zechariah Sitkin.
Anyway, they are very entertaining writers full of wonderful thought experiments and scenarios, but last I heard there was no evidence whatsoever that the asteroids were ever parts of a large planet; and there is some evidence that they were NOT.
And if they were not, the odds on Ceres having sprouted life are mighty low.


34 posted on 03/06/2009 5:01:12 PM PST by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast (American Revolution II -- overdue.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Dutchboy88

...and even their so-called “self-recognition” is nothing but the product of arbitrary chemical reactions flashing on the gray screen of their “mind.”


35 posted on 03/06/2009 5:01:41 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts
Ceres may be small, but its H2O molecules add up. He figures that “The total volume of all this water is something like 40 times greater than all the oceans on Earth.”

He figures wrong!

36 posted on 03/06/2009 5:03:16 PM PST by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast (American Revolution II -- overdue.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: mountainlion
Now they want me to believe that life came form some unknown place by unknown process.

The article didn't say that or imply that. They are speculating that life could possibly have been brought to earth from an asteroid or possibly a comet....Which after all, is a possibility. If you have proof establishing that is not possible, I'd like to hear or see that proof or evidence.

37 posted on 03/06/2009 5:09:28 PM PST by dragnet2
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts

In other words, the diameter of Ceres is about the distance between London and Marseilles, or roughly one end of France to the other. Not Spain France and Germany put together, unless you’re measuring them by their youthful waistlines. ;)

Try putting “40x more” than all the earth’s water on a rock the size of France.


38 posted on 03/06/2009 5:16:06 PM PST by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast (American Revolution II -- overdue.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: GodGunsGuts
Given enough time, almost anything could happen, or maybe not? Is time finite or infinite?

It's above my pay grade.

39 posted on 03/06/2009 5:19:40 PM PST by smokingfrog ( Dear Mr. Obama - Please make it rain candy! P.S. I like jelly beans.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Jean S; GodGunsGuts

40 posted on 03/06/2009 5:19:41 PM PST by 668 - Neighbor of the Beast (American Revolution II -- overdue.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-6061-8081-82 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson