Asteroid Belt - Exploded Planet?!

What do you all make of this data, is it feasible an if not why?

http://www.metaresearch.org/solar system/eph/eph2000.asp

 

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This is an old hypothesis that has fallen into disfavor for many reasons.

The nebular hypothesis explains quite well why a planet could never have formed between Mars and Jupiter. The exploded planet hypothesis does not refute adequately that.

Both hypotheses start and end with a bunch of rocks in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. By the nebular hypothesis, the end condition is the same as the initial condition, minus a bunch of rocks flung out of the solar system by gravitational interaction with Jupiter and Mars.

The exploded planet hypothesis has the rocks coalescing into a planet before being blown to smithereens, which requires an obscene amount of energy to accomplish. The end condition is the same as the initial condition, minus a whole bunch of rocks flung out of the solar system by the explosion and by gravitational interaction with Jupiter and Mars. Occam's Scalpel says to cut out the planet and the explosion.

As noted in the website, one problem with the exploded planet hypothesis is the missing mass. This excerpt from the website attempts to explain away the problem:

Consider what would happen if the Earth exploded today. Surface and crustal rocks would shatter and fragment, but remain rocks. However, rocks from depths greater than about 40 km are under so much pressure at high temperature that, if suddenly released into a vacuum, such rocks would vaporize. As a consequence, over 99% of the Earth’s total mass would vaporize in an explosion, with only its low-pressure crustal and upper mantle layers surviving.​

Bottom line:

• The only thing that indicates that a planet should be between Mars and Jupiter is our inventive minds that like to see patterns. There is no underlying physics behind the 0.4+0.3*2(n-2) rule. Its just a pattern.
• The nebular hypothesis explains quite well why the pattern is broken. The nebular hypothesis explains all of the phenomenom noted in the paper and then some.
• The exploded mass hypothesis requires an incredibly powerful explosion to break up a planet and cannot explain what happened to the vast majority of the planetary mass.
• Occam's Scalpel says to cut out the BS.

 

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You know, gasplanets have rings around them, so couldn't the asteroid belt be the sun's big ring?

 

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What do you mean there isn't enough mass, where did it go?! Wouldn't the explosion have tossed out lighter debris into space, that's where it went

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As I recall, there are numerous populations of belt asteroids: defined by each population sharing a common orientation in space of rotation axis that differs from the rotation axis orientations of the other object populations.

That is, across the population of all belt asteroids, the orientation of rotation axes is not random, as one might expect from pieces cast off from a single exploding object -- a common point of origin.

 

The 'exploded planet' explanation is almost certainly correct for most of the asteroids.

We have HUGE chunks of solid iron/nickel floating in space, as asteroids. Sometimes they strike earth. Nowadays, most of the strikes are of the small ones still left, on the order of hundreds of pounds to many tons (still smaller burn up in the atmosphere). Meteor Crater in Arizona was one of the larger ones. Several very large and eroded craters (in Canada?), barely recognizable as such, are mined for iron ore. The largest intact Iron meteor I've seen is about five feet by ten feet by five feet in size. A HUGE chunk of iron.

There is no other reasonable explanation for the existence of these chunks of Iron floating in space in our solar system, in wild elliptical orbits about the Sun that sometimes carry them into the path of our Earth, other than that they are the remains of a destroyed/shattered planet. They have all the signs of molten metal that rapidly cooled. They can only be the remains of the Iron/Nickel core of such exploded/shattered planet.

Releasing the pressure would not 'vaporize' the underlying rock of a planet, but would send out trillions of small globs that would quickly cool in the depths of space, forming asteroids.

It would be easy to imagine a scenario of shattering of a planet. Had there been two planets in orbit in the Asteroid Belt region, and one of the orbits was perturbed by nearby Jupiter, it would have been sent into a mild elliptical oribt crossing the path of the inner-orbital planet, and eventually crashing into it. That would certainly shatter both. Most of that mass would then have wild elliptical orbits, and only about 5% would remain in orbits close to the original orbits. Over time, most of the wild orbits would intersect the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Moon and Mars, cratering the inner planets, and removing the debris, except for the small percentage that still crashes into Earth nowadays. Read my other posts about this, please.

 

The idea that Mars was once the moon of a shattered planet is also intriguing, as suggested by the referenced web-page. That might bear further research. Its two small moons are captured asteroids.

 

The collided, thermally differentiated planetesimals is a still better explanation.

 

Is that when a "planetesimal" heats, melts, and forms an iron core, then collides with another large object and shatters, releasing small chunks of the iron core into space?

Isn't that about the same as a 'shattered planet/exploded planet' scenario?

 

I would buy that the asteroid belt could be at least partly the debris from a collision or a series of collisions between two or more planetesimals or dwarf planets, but not a collision between two full sized planets. Especially considering the new, restrictive definition of planetary status.
Currently, a celestial body to qualify as a planet must
be in orbit around the Sun
be large enough that it takes on a nearly round shape
have cleared its orbit of other objects.

The asteroid belt might have held a number of planetary embryos or dwarf planets, but probably not a full sized planet.

 

The third point of that definition is very unclear.
Imo, the definition was made just to get rid of Pluto and not to create a good definition of what a planet is.

 

Would Ceres be a former moon of former "dwarf planets", "planetesimals" or "planets"?

Imo, two "full sized planets" could crash into each other just as easily as two "dwarf planets". Either way, most of the debri of the collision would end up in wild elliptical oribts, taking the material into the orbits of the inner planets, where it would eventually have been removed over the course of a billion years or so by collisions with the Sun and inner planets. The 5% residual that had retained nearly circular, or mild elliptical, oribts would then remain as the asteroid belt, which would tend to circularize over time (similar to the rings of rock debris of the outer planets).

In any event, it is almost certain that somewhere in our solar system a molten, gravitationally differentiated body with an iron core became shattered (by explosion or collision or otherwise), creating large numbers (billions) of chunks of iron, some of which still strike Earth nowadays, which we call Iron meteorites, which make up about 10% of all the meteor strikes, the rest being the stony and carbonaceous-chondrite type. That 10% is also roughly the percentage of the Earth that makes up the iron core.

One of the interesting aspects of this is that it predicts the possible existence of very rare gold meteorites, if the iron core had a small body of gold in its interior, gravitationally stratified as well due to the much greater density of gold (and assuming the intense pressure keeps it from homogenizing with the iron). Such a rare gold meteorite might have been found in the 1970s in Australia (circa 1974), when a 100 pound chunk of gold was found a few inches below the surface of the outback, miles away from any mountains or any probable sources of gold. It was found with a metal detector by a prospector, and reported in the newspapers of the day.

Anyway, the point of this post is that there is a very good reason to send probes to the asteroid belt, to gather more information about this. There should be lots of iron asteroids there, as well as other evidence to detail the belt's origin. Then maybe we could have less speculation, and more fact.

 

We very probably live on a planet that was shattered and re-accreted. The best moon-formation theory rests on this. So, to say that it would be impossible or unlikely is a bit hasty.

However, any exploded planet is not going to distribute itself evenly around the solar system. There is no way that the mass from the explosion is all going to attain escape velocity. Any broken-up planet is going to have a higher chance of re-accreting than it did in the first place, it already has the proximity.

 

Swivel:

I agree with most of your posts. You take a very pragmatic/practical approach to things.

The most widely-held (general consensus) moon formation theory rests on the idea of the proto-Earth being shattered/re-accreted after having been struck by a large planetesimal ("dwarf planet"), but with much of the mantle then accreting into a moon. However, it is by no means the "best" theory, as I've expounded upon previously.

I have not seen anyone disagree with my posts above that the iron meteorites represent the shattered remnants of a former iron core of a planet/planetesimal that was molten and had undergone gravitational stratification. Clearly, we know that at least one planet shattered/fragmented, to create all those HUGE chunks of iron floating in space, sometimes striking Earth, sometimes Mercury, etc.

In reading the web site of the first post of this thread (above), it mentions "exploding" planets.

Perhaps the earliest mention of an "exploding" planet was in the 1940s with the first Superman comic book, in which in that fictional story the planet "Krypton" exploded, with meteoritic fragments reaching the Earth called "Kryptonite".

While it is a tempting idea, and referenced in the first post in this thread, I cannot conceive of any natural mechanism that would cause a planet to explode. The closest idea I've had is that possibly a man-made strangelet (created at the LHC, etc.) might result in a slow runaway fusion reaction, eventually producing a fast enough fusion rate to cause an explosion. But that would be a man-made disaster, not a natural one.

In nature, not even the idea I proposed circa 1996 that a large bolus of Uranium/Thorium might exist in the central region of the Iron Core of planets, which could possibly produce some fission energy, only produces it relatively slowly (along the lines of the natural fission reactor in Africa, though much larger), with perhaps enough energy release to drive a plate-tectonics/volcanism (such as for Earth, etc.), but never enough to explode a planet.

Alternativley, the collision of two planets or dwarf planets is not difficult to imagine, as you recognized in your post.

Should two (or more) planets/dwarf-planets have once existed in the asteroid belt region, the orbit of the outer one could readily have been perturbed by Jupiter. We already know that the orbits of the outer planets have migrated significantly over billions of years, as the planets gravitationally interact with one another.

It is not difficult to conceive that a number of 'unlucky' passes of the outer planet in the asteroid belt region would have taken it progressively closer to Jupiter, under Jupiter's gravitational influence, sending it into a more elliptical orbit, which would have then had its orbit cross the orbit of the inner planet of the asteroid belt region. That series of events would eventually lead to the collision of those two planets.

Such a collision would surely have completely shattered both planets, leading to the creation of large numbers of asteroidal bodies in wild elliptical orbits, most of which would ultimately have been swept clean of our solar system by collisions with Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars and most with the Sun. A residual fraction, say about 2-3%, would have remained in mild elliptical orbits, in the same plane of the ecliptic, and would have eventually circularized their orbits into a ring of debris, namely the asteroid belt. Or, so the theory goes.

Anyway, that scenario is well worth investigating further, by sending probes to the asteroid belt to examine dozens/hundreds of them. Already, we see from some photos that collisions with smaller ones result in impact craters that erode/ablade the larger body. They do not appear to accrete into a larger body when struck, but rather wear down into a smaller and smaller body, which is what 'intuition' would seem to suggest, as well (since it's rather difficult to do the experiment).

In reading the web site that gave rise to this thread (first post, above), it is also noted that the collision theory giving rise to a moon should actually produce many smaller bodies in orbit about Earth that do not accrete into a single body. That is but one difficulty with the collision theory. The other main problem is that a colliding dwarf planet would come in from just about any direction, due to Earth's gravity pulling it in, and the resultant spray of molten mantle material would almost certainly end up in some orbit other than the one close to the plane of the ecliptic. Finally, even if the small cloud of spray ejecta, forming many bodies in orbit about Earth, were to eventually coalesce into a single moon, they would by then be solid, not molten, yet we know the moon was once molten with basaltic flows on its surface.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know the jury is still out as to the moon'c creation, and I believe the model proposed that the Earth-Moon was formed from a single cloud of hot Hydrogen gas, which formed two gas-giant planets with inner cores of molten material, is the better theory.

Regards,


Walter L. Wagner (Dr.)

 

It is certain that there were once planetesimals in the region of the asteroid belt. They're still there!

The larger asteroids are certainly differentiated, and were very likely once molten. There is very good evidence for Vesta in particular, because meteorites from Vesta have been identified. There are likely to have been larger planetesimals in the early solar system that were broken up. This is not controversial.

The focus of most current research seems to be on ironing out the details of the history of inidividual meteorites and asteroid groups - which asteroids are accreted rubble, which have been consolidated to some degree, which have been melted partially or completely by ²⁶Al or other radioactivity, which have been partially melted by impacts, which have undergone some combination of the above and in what order...

Following are some abbreviated abstracts of relevant journal articles. All were accessed through www.sciencedirect.com. There are many more similar articles if you want to go hunting.

This one discusses the possible history of S-type asteroids:

Studies of the internal structure of asteroids … appear to be in conflict for the S-type asteroids, Eros, Gaspra, and Ida. ... These conflicting views may be reconciled if 10–50 km S-type asteroids formed as rubble piles, but were later consolidated into coherent bodies.Many meteorites are breccias that testify to a long history of impact fragmentation and consolidation by alteration, metamorphism, igneous and impact processes.
Ordinary chondrites, which are the best analogs for S asteroids, are commonly breccias. Some may have formed in cratering events, but many appear to have formed during disruption and reaccretion of their parent asteroids. Some breccias were lithified during metamorphism, and a few were lithified by injected impact melt, but most are regolith and fragmental breccias that were lithified by mild or moderate shock, like their lunar analogs.
…Spin data suggest that smaller asteroids 0.6–6 km in size are unconsolidated rubble piles. C-type asteroids, which are more porous than S-types, and their analogs, the volatile-rich carbonaceous chondrites, were probably not lithified by shock.
Scott ERD and Wilson L 2005, Meteoritic and other constraints on the internal structure and impact history of small asteroids, Icarus 174 (2005) 46–53​

This one describes the types and degrees of melting experienced by asteroids, as suggested by meteorite evidence.

The world's meteorite collections contain meteorites from at least 27 primitive, chondritic and 108 partially or totally melted asteroids. Detailed studies of these meteorites have shown that all of their asteroidal parent bodies have been thermally altered by internal heating to some degree. These alterations range from low temperature, aqueous processes ( 0 to < 300°C), to thermal metamorphism ( 400 to 950°C), to partial melting and formation of unfractionated ( 980–1050°C) and fractionated ( 1000 to >1250°C) residues, to partial and complete melting, differentiation and fractional crystallization of asteroids ( 1150 to 1250°C). The most likely heat source was the decay of short-lived radionuclides, notably 26Al. These thermal alterations took place penecontemporaneously on all asteroids of which we have samples, and in the first few Ma of solar system history. The asteroid 4 Vesta, the likely parent body of the HED meteorites, is a highly differentiated object, may have a metal core, and can be viewed as the smallest of the terrestrial planets. It accreted, was heated, was partially to completely melted, and formed an extrusive basaltic crust, all within a few Ma of formation of CAIs and the dawn of the solar system.
Keil K 2000, Thermal alteration of asteroids: evidence from meteorites
Planetary and Space Science Volume 48, Issue 10, August 2000, Pages 887-903​

This one describes the fascinating history of one particular anomalous meteorite, the Shallowater aubrite:

... Shallowater experienced an extraordinarily complex and unusual, three-stage cooling history, ...
Stage 1: Very fast cooling from ≥1,580°C to somewhere above 712°C, at a rate of ≥100°C/hour through 1000°C; above 1000°C, the rate was probably much faster.
Stage 2: Very slow cooling (annealing), from 712 to 680°C at a rate of ≤7.5°C/10⁶ y.
Stage 3: Fast cooling, from 680 to 600°C at a rate of ≥0.5°C/day and from 600 to 300°C at a rate of ≥0.4°C/day.
This complex cooling history suggests an equally unusual origin for Shallowater, as follows: A completely or partly molten asteroid of nearly pure enstatite composition was broken up by low-velocity impact with a solid, E-like object. The melt cooled very fast (stage 1), due to incorporation of cold (≥20%) projectile debris (the xenoliths). Fragments reassembled into a rubble-pile body while T was ≥712°C, and deeply buried materials (like the object that is now Shallowater) cooled very slowly from 712 to 680°C (stage 2). The anneal of stage 2 requires burial at a depth of 40 km on a 100 km diameter asteroid.
Excavation from this depth by impact to account for the fast cooling of stage 3 can be accounted for in two scenarios.
Scenario 1: During catastrophic impact, the Shallowater object could have been by chance near the surface (within 10 m) of a very large fragment, thus accounting for the fast cooling and for surviving for 4.5 × 10⁹ y.
Scenario 2: The Shallowater object may have been excavated by break-up and subsequently buried near the surface of a gravitationally reassembled body. This would require yet a second break-up and reassembly episode.
Keil K, Ntaflos T, Taylor GJ, Brearley AJ, Newsom HE, and Romig, AD Jr The Shallowater aubrite: Evidence for origin by planetesimal impacts, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta Volume 53, Issue 12 , December 1989, Pages 3291-3307​

 

The one that references Tom Van Flandern an awful lot?

It is my understanding that the most recent sophisticated computer models of such a collision do not indicate that difficulty. Simulations of a Late Forming Lunar Impact, Robin Canup, Icarus 168 (2004) 433–456.

It would be expected that the impactor would have had an orbit in the plane of the ecliptic. With an incoming speed of 4km/s (ibid), it would not be significantly deflected before striking Earth.

Are you sure? How much would the newly accreted Moon's core be heated by gravitational pressure and radioactivity? How much of the surface was heated by large later impacts? How much was the Moon heated by tidal forces early in its life, when it was closer and spinning at an unknown rate? How much volcanism occurred on the Moon during this time?

There are too many unknowns to glibly conclude that the giant impact predicts a lack of Lunar basalt plains.

This is certainly true, although the difficulties appear to be much more subtle than you suggest.

Part of the difficulty is that it is difficult to devise tests of the giant impact model. The dynamics of the impact are so complex and with so many variables that it is difficult to be certain about what it actually predicts. Most of the effort to date appears to be on defining constraints within which the impact must fall (when could it have happened, what could the Earth have looked like at that time, how large an impactor, what composition, and so on).

There were some interesting relevant presentations discussing some of these issues at this year's Lunar and Planetary Science conference.
For example, see the Constraints on the Formation of the Moon from High-Precision Nd-Isotope Measurements of
Lunar Basalts presentation in the Lunar History From Samples stream.

 

I think most forumites know, but I should point out that I'm not an expert in any science field... but flatter myself that I'm not bad at quick research (although a proper lit review takes more time than I can afford to spend here

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). You could describe me as a "Google expert".

Anyway, feel free to rip me to shreds if you know what you're talking about!

 

Pete:

Thanks for the references. I was aware of much of that, but not all.

In particular, if the impactor were in the same relative orbital plane as Earth, it would not be speeding past by much, when it got pulled in by Earth's gravity. The 'thickness' of the plane would have been quite large, and thus I believe that most of the velocity differential of the impactor would have been acquired due to its gravitational pull into Earth, in which case it would be coming in from just about any angle. However, that alone does not exclude an impactor theory, as happenstance could also have allowed for an impactor to have come in from close to plane of the ecliptic.

Also, yes, it is known that some of the asteroids in the asteroid belt are compacted rubble. There's lots more to be learned out there. Is it not possible that the spherical asteroids were once former moons?

Also, Al-26, a positron emitter of half-life of some 730,000 years, has always been suggested as one of the intermediate half-life isotopes that could have caused melting of rock into which it had been incorporated. That requires the formation of such rock within a few million years of the supernova giving rise to the Al-26, or else it would be decayed out. However, there is not really any evidence yet that there was sufficient Al-26 to cause rock to melt, though it would have heated it. The same is true for the other radioisotopes that have been suggested. Hence, the need to examine alternative scenarios for causing a melt of a 'planetesimal' or 'dwarf planet' or 'planet'. Also, the impact of incoming asteroids does cause some very minor shock melt along the impact region, but again it is quite small. There was an article during the past year in Scientific American, in which meteorites were examined for evidence of such impacts, with relatively negative results for causing melt.

Thus, the jury is still out as to how we obtained molten planets/planetesimals. The gas ball theory I proposed circumvents that difficulty.

One of the ideas being explored is that large clouds of Hydrogen gas, with all the other newly created isotopes of our solar system mixed in, when forming into gas balls (some of which became gas-ball giants, with rain-out of the heavier elements when the gas-balls cooled down), could have formed smaller gas-balls in which the phase transition went from gas to solid, rather than gas to liquid, which would essentially form material similar to a carbonaceous chondrite. That is, essentially, the theory behind formation of those solids, I believe, though supposedly in a vast cloud, rather than in a smaller spherical cloud undergoing rapid cooling, as I've suggested.

As for the most recent computer simulations of having lots of globules orbiting earth accreting into the moon, I was aware of the models, but I don't put much trust in them, as of yet. Anyone can, by fudging the parameters, get their 'models' to work, and I'm not certain that the most recent models are actually valid. To me, it appears that the biggest draw-back is one of time; the time it would take to re-accrete into a Moon would allow for all the globules to solidfy (cool), and again there is no mechanism to make them become molten once again as they accreted back into a Moon.

Anyway, there is definitely room for far more research.

 

Hi Walter glad to see you're still posting...

At any rate, FYI the largest known iron asteroid is the main belt asteriod "16 Psyche" which is a 150 mile wide sphere of pure nickel/iron. It is thought to be the core of a planetoid which has had its mantle chipped away from it from impacts.

For comparison the Earths outer (liquid) core is 4200 miles wide with 1,440 mile wide inner (solid) core imbedded in that. Of interest is that there is another 360 mile inner-inner core of unknown composition, they can tell its there from seismic data, but not what it is.

 

Maast:

Where you been? Glad to see you're back to actively posting. Recently retired?

I was unaware of the "16 Psyche" asteroid you referenced. That sounds exactly like what it is. When those asteroids ram into each other, they don't stick and grow bigger, a la the 'general consensus theory' of planetary formation. They smash to smithereens. Lots of such chipping away at the softer rock of an asteroid would indeed eventually leave the much tougher iron core relatively intact. Wouldn't it be a blast to be out there with a solar furnace (many designs already filed with the Patent office) to use such an asteroid as the starting material for a space-station!

As to an inner inner core, my theory of planetary formation by compression of a spherical gas cloud of hot enriched Hydrogen, allowing for a 'rain-out' of heavier elements as the cloud radiates away its heat energy, increasing the internal pressure, essentially results in a stratified sphere of molten materials. Stratification is factored by both the boiling points (temperature at which the element/compound turns from gas to liquid), as well as density due to gravity.

Anyway, stratification occurs due to gravity under other models as well.

One should predict that the densest materials should form an inner inner core, which is what I predicted back in 1996 in a small paper I wrote on the topic. Some of that might be Uranium/Thorium as a bolus, which might undergo some fission in such arrangement, providing a small continuing energy source for plate tectonics motions.

Another prediction is that a very small amount of gold (a sphere about 15 miles in diameter, roughly), if it can be squeezed out of the iron under that intense pressure, would also form a small bolus in an inner sphere inside of the iron core (because of its much greater density) for a planet the size of Earth. We do know that Gold does get squeezed out of rock under high temperature and pressure, migrating into the cracks to form veins. Thus, "16 Psyche" might just have a heart of Gold!

This also predicts the occasional very rare Gold meteorite. A shattered molten planet (from collision by another planet) would spray molten iron, mantle, and possibly molten gold, every-which-way. Just such a meteorite might have been found in the Australian outback circa 1974, when the newspapers of the day reported a prospector using a metal detector found a 100# chunk of gold just inches below the surface, many miles away from any mountains, or other probable sources of gold. Maybe you read about that back then. I did, but didn't put 2 and 2 together at the time.

Just read where NGC/Boeing missed out on the moon-ship; the winning contract going to Lockheed instead. Maybe NGC or Boeing will get the contract on the Asteroid robot-ship instead!