From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Wed Jun 27 2001 - 11:43:45 MDT
John Clark wrote:
>
> From: Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com> Wrote:
>
> > You are forgetting repetition. How many times did the
> > object fly by the earth and moon? We don't know.
>
> It doesn't matter. Even if the Chixulub object had crashed directly onto the
> Moon and thus transferred 100% of its momentum to the Moon the change
> in its orbit would have been insignificant because the Moon is at least
> 10 billion times as massive as the Chixulub object.
Again: we don't know how large an object hitting the moon would have
been. All we know is an estimate of that chunk which hit earth.
Additionally: Imagine a larger object in a resonant orbit with the earth
and the moon, such that it would either borrow velocity from the earth
and give it to the moon, or vice versa, till its orbit degraded and was
calved, one chunk of which hit the Yucatan. It actually doesn't matter
how large or small the object is if it is transferring velocity from
earth to the moon or the reverse, it is merely a conductor of momentum.
All it requires is repetition and time. If the object orbited the earth
and moon resonantly in a elongated elliptical orbit that pointed toward
either the leading or trailing earth-sun lagrange points, it would
function as I describe. As its orbit degraded, the amount of energy it
transferred at each pass would increase, at some point exceeding the
ability of the tectonic system to keep up with the change in tidal
stress, and voila, you get a period of vulcanism prior to impact, and at
the end, severe tidal and frictional stresses from ionospheric perigee
flybys that would have a) caused a larger object to calve, and b)
resulted in the calved object impacting at perigee at a very shallow
angle, like, say, 10 degrees, like the Yucatan object did, in fact,
impact at. The remainder of the object would likely have been slingshot
out of earth orbit to occupy a highly inclined orbit around the sun that
no longer threatened earth. That the Yucatan object came from the south
indicates that the object's orbital inclination would have been very
steep, which would also be a stable place to orbit, less likely to
directly impact the moon while still serving as a momentum conduit.
To prove this, all you need is to find such an asteroid/comet fossil in
such an inclined orbit around the Sun, land a probe on it and dig to
find evidence that it had once grazed Earth's upper atmosphere.
Mike Lorrey
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