Mercury - a left-over of the crash that created the Moon?, Highly speculative but maybe worth it |
Mercury - a left-over of the crash that created the Moon?, Highly speculative but maybe worth it |
Dec 7 2007, 12:19 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 14-April 06 From: Berlin Member No.: 744 |
Having agreed upon the Moon being created by a grazing collision with a Mars-sized object, could we give any thoughts to what happened to the impactor afterwards? Since it was a grazing collision, it might have been melted but not destroyed, only with some material ripped from it (and from the Earth) which ended up in Earth orbit to coalsce into what we know as the Moon today. But what happened to the impactor after it passed the Earth? Could it still hang around somewhere in the Solar System? I suppose it would bear some significant markings after the event, for instance have its outer layers stripped. But wait a second... Mercury DOES have its outer layers stripped off, with an unusually high mean density resulting from a core which could be considered oversized for such a small planetary body. In the wake of MESSENGER beginning to reveal Mercury's secrets in January, could anyone bother to give any thoughts to this idea? I am not sure whether it had been put forth previously or not, I am just curious if it could make any sense to have the impactor impact the Earth in a grazing manner and then end up parked in an elliptical orbit close to the Sun, with its outer layers stripped and an "oversized" original core left inside...
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Oct 26 2008, 05:40 AM
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 57 Joined: 13-February 06 From: Brisbane, Australia Member No.: 679 |
Mercury is like a Mars minus a big chunk of mantle. A high speed collision between a proto-Mercury and another object might just put Mercury into an eccentric orbit and blow the bulk of the mantle away into space.
I find it curious that the Moon-forming impactor, Theia, struck Earth with almost zero hyperbolic excess - plus its chemical composition was too akin for it to have formed far away from Earth's radial position. Could Theia have been a Lagrange point planet that formed in Earth's orbit? Could proto-Mercury have formed in Venus's? And what whacked into Mars to wipe off a hemisphere? |
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