The Space Thread

[Viktor Karpenko]

I do believe there was a collision betwen Earth and some Mars-sized body in the past that not only shaped our planet like it is today but that also blasted material into the orbit around Earth and formed the Moon.

↑ That is known as the "Giant impact hypothesis".


The giant impact hypothesis states that the Moon was formed out of the debris left over from an indirect collision between the Earth and an astronomical body the size of Mars, approximately 4.5 Gya (four and a half billion years ago) in the Hadean eon. The colliding body is sometimes called Theia, for the mythical Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, the goddess of the Moon. An alternative name for the colliding body is Orpheus, for the legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth.

Has there been, or is there still a Planet X

Hmm... Nope, Planet X was disproved 6 months before Robert Harrington's death, when E. Myles Standish had used data from Voyager 2's 1989 flyby of Neptune, which had revised the planet's total mass downward by 0.5%, an amount comparable to the mass of Mars to recalculate its gravitational effect on Uranus. When Neptune's newly determined mass was used in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Developmental Ephemeris (JPL DE), the supposed discrepancies in the Uranian orbit, and with them the need for a Planet X, vanished.

Yeah but nowadays the term Planet X is used to describe any other hypothetical trans-Neptunian planets, so it does exists.

[MadManCK]

In one of my own theories, Mars was once part of the Earth.
According to some research, the earth once had 1.4 gravity and a 3 to 4x thicker athmosphere than now, explaining giant trees and animals. So the mass was also 1.4x as now.
The pacific looks like a giant scar and it is weird that there is almost no landmass at that side of the planet. So maybe that is where the legendary Mu, or Lemuria once was.
And if you take a look at the surface of Mars, it would explain why there once was running water there. And the rest of the surface looks like giant scars as well.
And Mars is about 0.3 time the weight of the Earth.

It would also explain the tectonic plate movements. And a lot more. Like the sudden extinction of the big dinos etc.
In addition to that, you can see large craters in the oceans near Mexico.

It is always funny to make your own theories and see if you can find evidence or supporting research for it

[Miao]

But for that to happen, Mars and Earth would need to have rocks with nearly identical isotopic signatures.

[MadManCK]

It is not watertight yet. But interesting anyway.
With a lot of research going on on Mars and more info becoming available, maybe one day some real solid evidence backs it up.

[grooks10]

I've always found it interesting that black holes can "capture" light, even though photons never stop traveling at 3.0*10^8 meters per second. My friend and I theorized a couple years ago that it is actually the space itself that is collapsing into the singularity, and once the space starts collapsing at a speed equal to or greater than the speed above, the light is stationary from an external point of view, but it's still technically moving. I guess that border where the space collapses at the speed of light would be the event horizon. I don't know if we were right, but it's interesting to think about!

Also! Did you all know that Saturn is forming a new moon as we speak? This is the first time scientists have ever seen anything like this! From the photo I saw, it looked like the various particles and chunks of matter started clumping together, then the forces of gravity started taking effect because the moon is just on the outer-layer of the ring.

[Oskad-87]

Good idea for a thread. I can tell you that space makes me feel so small. But it makes me feel so special. When I stare up at the night sky, the wondering I do makes it seem as if the world as I know is fake, meaningless.
Space is the ultimate of the unknown.

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2 moons of Saturn, Titan and Rhea captured by Cassini. I love space.

http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/cassini/saturn- ... y2s4SO0uTl" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[MadManCK]

I've always found it interesting that black holes can "capture" light, even though photons never stop traveling at 3.0*10^8 meters per second. My friend and I theorized a couple years ago that it is actually the space itself that is collapsing into the singularity, and once the space starts collapsing at a speed equal to or greater than the speed above, the light is stationary from an external point of view, but it's still technically moving. I guess that border where the space collapses at the speed of light would be the event horizon. I don't know if we were right, but it's interesting to think about!

Gravity fields can bend light. There are cosmic "lenses" in certain places that let astronomers look even deeper back in space time.
If you can bend it far enough you can be "faster" than light, if you take direct a shortcut to the source. And maybe some objects travel at the near-speed of light and only look like they are in a fixed position because of that. Time does not move linear at extreme speeds. Only that principle is mind boggling.

What i find intriguing is that the gravity fields of far away stars are interacting with each other. All being interconnected somehow.

Like a giant cosmic brain ...

[grooks10]

Gravity fields can bend light. There are cosmic "lenses" in certain places that let astronomers look even deeper back in space time.
If you can bend it far enough you can be "faster" than light, if you take direct a shortcut to the source. And maybe some objects travel at the near-speed of light and only look like they are in a fixed position because of that. Time does not move linear at extreme speeds. Only that principle is mind boggling.

I really like your point here! And yes, it is true that gravitational fields "bend" light, even though that's not the whole story. From what I have read, gravitational fields bend space itself inward, but the light is actually still traveling in a straight line through the bent space (even though it doesn't look that way to an outside observer). So I wonder if there's an object that is massive enough to capture light in an orbit and what that would look like! And your point on time is also very interesting. One theory that I have read into a bit is that time is measured in the number of wavelengths of light that you encounter. The faster you travel, the fewer light wavelengths you will experience traveling in a certain direction since the speed of light is always fixed. This is why it is *possible* for us to travel back in time; if we travel faster than the speed of light, we can catch up to the light radiating from events that happened already in the past. We would have to travel substantially faster than the speed of light to catch up to the light of events that happened many years in the past, and obviously any person traveling that velocity would be...dead. But hey, it's fun to think about this stuff!

[Viktor Karpenko]

Excellent photos of car-sized Wales UFO. Hovers, glows, spins, divides in two, rejoins, jets away at mind-boggling speed. Assuming no hoax, electromagnetism is the ONLY possible physics that can begin to explain this phenomenon.

http://www.openminds.tv/witness-photogr ... ales/26983" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[MadManCK]

So I wonder if there's an object that is massive enough to capture light in an orbit and what that would look like!

This is what that would look like...

...

http://maroonbeard.com/wp-content/uploa ... ky-Way.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;