HR: 11:20h
AN: P42B-01 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: The Origin of Three Double Planets in the Inner Solar System
AU: * Van Flandern, T
EM: tomvf@metaresearch.org
AF: Meta Research, 994 Woolsey Ct, Sequim, WA 98382-5058, United States
AB: The fission hypothesis is a valid generic formation mechanism for all major planets and moons in the solar system, neatly solving the angular momentum and accretion paradoxes of the standard model. This makes fission the most probable mechanism for the Moon's origin, as independent evidence had earlier concluded. (See chapter 14 of "Dark Matter, Missing Planets and New Comets", T. Van Flandern, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 2nd ed. 1999.) Its main strength is that no helper hypotheses are needed to meet all important constraints. R.S. Harrington's backwards integration of the Moon showed that the original obliquity of Earth at the time when the Moon fissioned in Earth's equatorial plane was 8 degrees, similar to the Sun's present axial tilt. J.A. O'Keefe showed that the original lunar mass was about 10 percent of Earth's, making the term "binary planet" apropos. Most of what we know about Venus and Mercury supports the hypothesis of an origin very similar to Earth-Moon. But Mercury's relatively higher mass resulted in escape from Venus about 500 million years after formation. (See "A dynamical investigation of the conjecture that Mercury is an escaped satellite of Venus", T.C. Van Flandern and R.S. Harrington, Icarus 28:435-440, 1976.) Most of what we now know about Mars supports a similar origin for Mars and a now-exploded parent planet. (See "The challenge of the exploded planet hypothesis", Int'l J.AstroBio. 6:185-197, 2007). That scenario is now encapsulated in an attractive 4-minute video showing the connection of that explosion to the K/T boundary event on Earth.
UR: http://metaresearch.org/solarsystem/originalss.asp
DE: 5205 Formation of stars and planets
DE: 5450 Orbital and rotational dynamics (1221)
DE: 5455 Origin and evolution
DE: 6225 Mars
DE: 6235 Mercury
SC: Planetary Sciences [P]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting