Cosmic

1. Cosmic Collisions • What a blast…

2. Cosmic Collisions…What a blast… The Astronomy Attic

3. In preparing the present volume, it has been the endeavor of the publishers to omit no branch of study that may be useful in the busy life of these busy times, and a perusal of the book will convince the reader that every subject has been treated concisely and thoroughly, presenting in an attractive shape all those points that go to make a finished education…It is customary to burden the initial pages of a new publication with apologies. The publishers of this book have none to make… This excerpt is from the preface of The Home Library Cyclopedia Reference published in 1885. As the following pages reveal knowledge about the third rock from the sun was in its infancy…

4. Science teaches us that the earth was doubtless once a glowing star, and under the head of Physical Geography we can see that the Scriptures confirm this doctrine. The crust upon which we thrive is only the cinders and ashes of a fearful conflagration, and the air we breathe is only the gas left over when the fuel was consumed. The question of origin is always a difficult one to answer. Over a century ago such queries were often deferred to the answers found in Scripture. It is also noteworthy to noticed that space drawn pictures of our planet always show it cloud free.

5. But I ( famous science author of the time, Richard Proctor) do not think that there is much vegetation on Mars, or that many living creatures of the higher types of Martian life as it once existed still remain. All that is known about the planet tends to show that the time when it attained that stage of planetary existence through which our earth is now passing must be set millions of years, perhaps hundreds of millions of years ago. It is interesting to notice how today we are comfortable with large quantities of time. Our predecessors stretched their imaginations to envision …perhaps hundreds of millions of years…

6. When Jupiter is examined with the telescope it will be seen that he is crossed by belts of vapor; and when we consider the results of the spectrum analysis of the planet, we may fairly assume that Jupiter is in a very heated state, and that we cannot really perceive the actual body of the planet. There is an immense quantity of water thus surrounding Jupiter, and he seems to be still in the condition in which our earth was before geology grasps its state, and long ere vegetation or life appeared. The waters have yet to be “gathered together into one place,” and the dry land has yet to appear. Under these conditions we can safely assume that there are no inhabitants on the “giant planet.” The belts or zones of Jupiter vary in hue, and the continual changes which are taking place in this cloud region tend to show that disturbances of great magnitude and importance are occurring. It is useless to speculate upon what will happen in Jupiter when the disc is eventually cooled. The planet, we know, has not nearly reached maturity; the earth is in the full prime of its life; and the moon is dead and deserted. What the millions of years which must elapse before Jupiter has cooled may bring forth we need not try to find out. The earth will then, in all probability, be as dreary as the moon is now, and we shall have returned to dust. Is there a kinship between the planets? Can we use the clues we find at these other places to learn more about the Earth in time? Does the moon represent our future and Jupiter our past?

7. Cosmic Collisions…What a blast… Space Scars

8. The moon is a hidden disc of hidden books.Reach an arm into it and feel around with your hands and you bring out books already written and many books yet to be written, for the moon holds past, present, future…Excerpt from Carl Sandburg’s poem Two Moon Fantasies What do the pages of this companion planet tell us about our own?

10. How does Nature make circular surface depression features? Explanation: Sinkholes Glacial Human Volcanic Impact

11. Sinkholes can be rule out by the generally dark colors of the lunar rock that are observed. In Southern Minnesota sinkholes are present and the rocks are light buff colorswhile Northern Minnesota dark colored rocks show no such features. Sinkholes also require the presence of underground water.

12. Glacial formed depressions require an active hydrologic cycle. A planetary atmosphere is a requirement.

13. Humans have been responsible for a few lunar depressions. Several unsuccessful robotic soft landing attempts and intentional crashes are apart of human space exploration history.

14. Volcanic is a possibility that eventually was ruled out with the Apollo lunar landings. Notice that mountains on the moon have a very smooth and rounded profile.

15. Impact seem to emerge by the process of elimination. But this idea seems a bit strange as these words attributed to Thomas Jefferson suggest, “It is easier to believe that Yankee professors would lie than that stones would fall from the sky.” What we know today as meteorites were known as thunder stones, rocks thought to display unusual looks because they were struck by lightning. What other lines of support would give us confidence that this did indeed happen? The movie at the hyperlink below illustrates the process well. http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~shane/movies/asteroid-impact.mov

16. The support for impacts includes: • Impact craters on Earth • Impact craters on other celestial bodies • Observed impacting events-http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/sl9/ • Experimental simulation • Computer modeling

17. The Formation of an Impact Crater (Source: University of Washington) • Here is the scenario of an impact by a 10-km asteroid or comet on the Earth: • The asteroid delivers its vast amount of kinetic energy (KE)--which had been stored initially as gravitational potential energy (GPE). • Because energy is conserved, the KE is converted to thermal energy or transferred as kinetic energy as the surface material gets airborne. • Shock waves propagate into the target rocks and the impacting body. • The rock becomes almost fluid. • A decompression wave follows the shock wave. Decompressed material sprays out of the cavity as an expanding conical sheet. • The ejecta represents overturned layers. • In large impact structures, the rock walls slump inward soon after excavation of the initial cavity. • As slumping material converges inward, it produces a pronounced central peak.

18. Cosmic Collisions…What a blast… Earth Endures

19. Several mass extinctions in the history of our planet are now thought to be the result of an impact event. Within the last few decades evidence to support the role of such an extraterrestrial influence on the development of the trajectory of life’s path on this place in space documents this as the likely case for the demise of the dinosaurs and other coexisting species. The “terrible lizards” were very successful biological experiments. They occupied global environments and spanned about 150 million years. Although they probably invented flight I often wonder if they continued to rule the planet what other ingenious outcomes would result. Since Nature operates by the premise, if it aint broke why fix it, I am not sure that written language or digital technology or organ transplants or …would be associated with this wet world whirling through space and time. I know you and I would not be sharing our thoughts. Life is fragile…and precious…handle with care.

20. The fossil record shows that a mass extinction happened 65 million years ago.Support includes: • Global observations of a sterile clay layer that marks the boundary between rock layers that preserve dinosaur and other fossils from more recent rocks that do not. • This rock layer contain high levels of iridium an element found in meteorites but is in low abundance on the surface of the Earth. • The clay layer also contains microscopic soot particles and quartz particles that have surface striations,shocked induced scratches. Such shocked created features are present in sand grains near underground nuclear explosion test sites. • An underground crater in size and age has been found near Chicxulib in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. • About 2000 earth crossing asteroids are known • Comet and asteroid collisions with the Sun and Jupiter have been observed. • Earth craters exist and evidence to support recent past collisions is likely. (See the following hyperlinks) • http://www-th.bo.infn.it/tunguska/ Tunguska event • http://www.astro.washington.edu/smith/Astro150/Lectures/KT/Slide0.html EXCELLENT! Here are slides used in Dr. Toby Smith’s University of Washington lectures. There are no captions so some may not make much sense • http://www.solarviews.com/eng/tercrate.htm Terrestrial impacts (Scroll Down)

21. Cosmic Collisions…What a blast… All Of It

22. They (the heavens) are now seen to resemble a luxuriant garden, which contains the greatest variety of productions, in different flourishing beds; and one advantage we may at least reap from it is, that we can, as it were, extend the range of our experience to an immense duration. For,to continue the simile I have borrowed from the vegetable kingdom, is it not almost the same thing, whether we live successively to witness the germination, blooming, foliage, fecundity, fading, withering and corruption of a plant, or whether a vast number of specimens, selected from every stage through which the plant passes in the course of its existence, be brought at once to our view? William Herschel 18th Century Astronomer

23. In this picture of the asteroid Ida notice that it has a moon that orbits around it. Notice too how both bodies display craters. Impacts are preserved on nearly every celestial body in the solar system. Gaseous and plasma type bodies like Jupiter and the sun do not maintain a lengthy record of a past collision. Dynamic bodies that have internal and atmospheric interface processes erase in time any hints that a collision was part of its history. How can all this past cosmic collision violence be explained?

24. Observations: • A Solar System exists that displays collision evidence on a system-wide scale. • Planet orbits show: • Nearly circular orbital geometry • Nearly all located in the same plane • Nearly orbit and spin in the same direction

25. Ultimately we may need supernatural explanations, since science has difficulty with why questions but humans have continued to progress using science towards more natural explanations. Notice in these relatively recent explanations, 1900 and 1917, how,rare singular side swiping star catastrophes were invoked to explain the origin of the Solar System. Such thinking would likely guarantee our uniqueness in all of the universe.

26. Beginning in the 1940’s a new idea began to emerge that made planets more common in Nature. This thought, the Condensation Model, created planets as a by-product of star formation. Review the following hyperlinks for more details:http://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/movies/solarsystemformation.movhttp://www.cds.caltech.edu/~shane/movies/solar_system_form.movhttp://www.lpi.usra.edu/education/timeline/solar system evolution excellent

27. Support for the Condensation Model Includes: • Various developmental stages are observed • Other planetary systems are found around other stars • Jupiter etc. are miniature systems (not isolated event) • Supportive computer modeling • Compatible with theories for star formation and the origin of the Universe

28. Cosmic Collisions…What a blast… Big Blast Blessing

29. This neighbor is a nuisance…because… It is too big…It’s diameter is ¼ of our planet.

30. This neighbor is a nuisance…because… It orbits in the wrong place…non-equatorial.

31. This neighbor is a nuisance…because… It is too light…the densities (grams/cm3) of Mercury,Venus,Earth,moon,Mars: 5.43, 5.25, 5.52, 3.34, 3.95.

32. This neighbor is a nuisance…because… It should not be here…Moons are found in the the outer solar system. Mercury and Venus are devoid of any companionship while Mars has two puny captured asteroids.

33. This neighbor is a nuisance…because… Post Apollo sample results show a moon with rocks that unlike Earth have minerals that tend to have high melting points. An iron core is absent.

35. All these ideas have problems. The fission theory is not supported by physics. Imagine an automobile tire spinning in mud. The chunks of mud are not one-fourth the size of the tire. The capture idea is attractive but it requires that a low probability event happen. The size of the moon again would pose a problem. Coaccretion would favor an equatorial orbit. That is not what is observed. Nature can not be all three of these ideas and perhaps as the post-Apollo missions suggest it is none of them. The best new idea is described at the following hyperlinks: http://www.psi.edu/projects/moon/moon.html http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/origins2.html Be sure to watch the movie.

36. In the early history of the Solar System, the Condensation Model suggests a time of heavy bombardment. The giant impact hypothesis provides Earth with a caring companion. Not only does the moon contribute to the generation of the tides but its gravitational influences helps to stabilize aspects of our orbital behavior. The tides create changeable environments that demand life forms to be inventive in their adaptation to periods of wetness and dryness. Perhaps life’s invasion of the land needed the tidal incentive invoked by the moon. Orbital stability allowed life to flourish under less chaotic circumstances. A moon born of the the giant impact hypothesis some speculate was ultimately responsible for crafting the type of planet we have today. Without such a collision this place would be nearly covered by a deep world-wide ocean. As I think about such a planet, I realize that the ocean environment is generally pretty uniform. There are changes in pressure, temperature, salinity etc. Overall it is somewhat bland in comparison to the variety of places and the totally 3-D rich land domain. Does the biology that needs the intelligence we see in the higher primates demand the stimulating problems posed by rocky environs? The motivation to land humans on the moon was driven by the politics of the Cold War. If science drove such a decision, we would still be exploring its many gifts. Having a handy moon though is important because it allowed us to take those feeble steps to gain confidence and test our ideas. By not going to the moon civilization would have failed to be stimulated by the problems that were needed to be solved. Getting a human cargo to the moon requires fast and precise calculations to be made. Societies that do such research find way to bring these solutions into their cultural and economic development. Many other examples from the exploration of space support Emerson’s words, “The more advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.”

37. As we move beyond the human habitat, we are gaining perspective on ourselves as custodians of the planet. Norman Cousins

38. What are we to make of the celestial collisions that gave birth to the stimulating and stabilizing moon and another that helped to eliminate from a content planet the dominant dinosaurs? Such… Big Blast Blessings… Cosmic Collisions…What a Blast!… We live a charmed existence… Charming… Simply…Charming…

39. We have not inherited the Earth from our fathers; we are borrowing it from our children.Chief Seattle Credits Larry Mascotti