Plate tectonics, mountain building, and the Flood

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I assume you have calculated the kinetic energy of the planetisimal assuming ‘free fall’
conditions. In this case the impact velocity would be directed vertically and I would accept your calculation for a 300km deep crater and the complete devastation of the planetissimal itself.
But this is not at all the case for a coalescing binary.
Under stable conditions the system would have angular momentum and this will be preserved from the start of the collapse right to and beyond the time of contact.

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I calculated the impact at an angle of 1 degree from the horizontal. If it comes straight in the crater is much deeper, more than 1000 km deep. BTW an object in orbit is in free fall and the kinetic energy depends on its velocity and mass. At a grazing angle of 0.05 degrees I still get a crater 100 km deep.

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This means that as the orbit of the planetissimal becomes smaller the tangential velocity must increase and at the same time the centripetal force must also increase to keep the object from escaping. Hence some of the centripetal force is used up to keep the object in its orbit and some of it is used to bring the object downwards.
For this reason the actual acceleration in the vertical direction will small and it could takes days if not weeks to impact time.

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It is theoretically possible for the planetissimal to orbit the earth at say only 1000 meters or less above the surface of the earth

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Sure if you have no atmosphere and the surface is flat. But what happened to all the kinetic and potential energy it had when it was in a much higher orbit? How are you gradually bleeding off energy to get a slowly decaying orbit?

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By the time the planetissimal gets to the point of grazing the earth’s surface its vertical velocity will be small but its tangential velocity would be extremely high.
So rather than the object making a 300km hole in the ocean bed as you suggest it would be more likely to bulldoze a fairly shallow (0.5 to 1.0km deep) trough some 200km wide and 18,000km long.

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How do you cut an 18,000 km long track in a 12,756 km diameter sphere when you hit at a grazing angle with an object 1300 miles in diameter? The geometry of this doesn’t seem to make sense. 18,000 km is almost half way around the earth. Are you saying it maintains itself in a low orbit as it cuts this trench? A 10^22 kg bulldozer moving at 8 km/sec. Does this seem like nonsense to anyone else or is it just me?

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As for the planetisssimal ‘bouncing’ on first contact this again follows logically if the vertical velocity is low and the tangential velocity high enough to keep the planetissimal more or less suspended above impact level.

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Also knowing the internal structure of the Earth it is not unexpected that the planetissimal will have a very similar internal structure. Thus like two giant balls with relatively thin skins of solid basalt and a softer interior the planetissimal can be expected to ‘bounce’ at least once if not twice before finally being brought to rest and broken up.

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Sooner or later you have to expend all the kinetic and potential energy this object had when it was in a higher orbit. Bouncing in for a soft landing just makes no physical sense.

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Finally the conversion of kinetic energy to heat is essential to partially melt and transform the contents of the interior of the planetissimal. Today we live on top of the contents of the planetissimal and all around us the effects of this great heat is plain to see unless one is blinded by traditional theories in Geology.

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Yes the kinetic energy will be expended as heat after the object blasts through the crust and probably disintegrates and blows some of planet earth out into space as back splash. I really don't think that it is traditional geology that is blinding here.Randy

"Ofcourse the Geologists felt threatened by
the new interpretation but could not offer any facts in opposition either)"
--I question this.. maybe they just didn't offer you 'facts in opposition' because you didn't want to accept them as such?"And I am still waiting for some real facts-not reinstatement of existing theories which I am more than familiar with and can see
their weaknesses."
--You might find something relevant if you look back at post #96.-------------------

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Much too much to explain this in detail here.

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That would be because you can't explain it at all.

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The composition of each star in a binary makes no difference to the dynamics whatsoever. Only the masses and orbits matter.

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I've explained why in fact it does matter. Pure hydrogen clouds won't collapse into these tiny little stars. And a pure hydrogen star won't produce the heavy elements.

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My higher elements are not manufactured within the stars but within the resulting cloud of gas and dust. Again too much to explain here.

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It is a cloud of gas. Where do you get pressures and energies rivaling those inside an exploding star? You may get heat and radiation, but you can't get pressure in a cloud of gas.

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I will ignore your remarks on the personal bits that you throw in-quite unnecessary if I may say so.

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If you wish to bump your credibility with references to your teaching career, then I think it is quite reasonable to ask what you taught.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

This planetesimal theory for the origin of Pangaea simply cannot work.That is because a colliding planetesimal would create a giant crater, not a supercontinent.A planetesimal with Pangaea's volume would have a diameter of about 1000 km, and using this crater-size-calculation page, the resulting crater would have a diameter of ~10,000 km.The other inputs were such reasonable ones as asteroid-like impact velocity, both the planetesimal and the Earth's surface being solid rock, and so forth.And a likely aftermath of that planetesimal strike would be massive volcanic eruptions like those that produced the lunar maria and Earth flood basalts.

Also, someone had asked where all the pre-Pangaea supercontinents had gone. Their material is still in existence; those continents had broken up and reassembled more than once, as I had pointed out in my "Continental Bumper Cars" thread.

Thanks for your continued interest in the crashed planetissimal theory.
What I am trying to emphasize is that an object already in orbit with the earth has angular momentum and kinetic energy just as our Moon has today. The Earth can be likened to an anchor to which a strong rope is attached to the object. If now you give the rope an additional tug you will not stop the object from moving but it has to move that much faster to maintain the angular momentum.
Continue tugging at it and the object will still stay in orbit but move even faster to maintain the angular momentum. You can continue doing this right until the obgect apear to hover just above the earth surface. Even at this stage the air resistance will not be significant if we assume the earth's atmosphere to be say 10miles high but if air resistance is considered it will simply result in a quicker touchdown but in the same way. If there was no air or other resistance and the tabgential velocity was just right the object would go on orbitting the earth indefinitely-just like the Moon but only just above the Earth's surface.
A final tug at the rope will bring it down with only a minimimal effect vertically but tremendous kinetic energy in the tangential energy. It is this energy only that is available to cause devastation of the planetissimal itself and of the surface it rides on. I believe it will have enough kinetic energy to scrape its way half way round the world. The figures I gave you for the width and depth of the grove is ofcourse pure conjecture and was given for illustrative purposes only. The picture of this stupendous event came to me as I meditated upon a verse in the Bible which says 'He spread the Earth upon the waters' so I now know exactly what that means but it has not been easy to convince others and I do understand your difficulties with it. But if we can accept that the Earth once had another binary partner then the mechanism for the collapse of this binary can be scientifically worked out and is in accordance with how I have just described it.
We also have to remember that the planetissimal remains 'in orbit' of sorts even after it has crashed which is why it is not travelling in a straight line or along a flat surface. It is travelling along a curve path on a curved surface.

Thanks for your comment.
We are not talking of a collision in the way that asteroids collide with the Earth. We are considering the effects of a body that had immense angular momebtum about the Earth before it coalsced with the Earth. Very big difference.

Immense clouds of hydrogen still have an immense self gravity which is why they contract to such an extent that at their core the pressures become so immense that the electron round the proton of a hydrogen atom coalsces with the proton and forms a neutron.
So in my local binary star it does not matter at all what stage of stellar evolution had taken place.To deal with the formation of all 100 or so elements from hydrogen
would require me to rewrite a chapter of my book here. It would be easier for me to send you a copy-its free.I see no good reason whatsoever for a large enough cloud of pure hydrogen not to contract into a dense solid body in space. It does not have to have any other element to do this. I maintain in the book that the heat/pressure generated in the coalscement must be comparable to that attained within a star by pure gravitational contraction. Again my theory for element formation compared with conventional theory and I describe both.I chose hydrogen only as a starting point because hydrogen is the simplest form of matter with just one proton and one electron. This atom is really a binary system so the whole theme of my book is binary systems from beginning to end.Sorry about my last remark-Since you ask- by profession I am a consultant engineer in Geotechnics and a part time university lecturer in the same subject-which is why I am in constant contact with geologists and the soil and rocks we see in our profession.
Because my ideas are somewhat radical it would be unfair to the university I am associated with to capitalize on their name and this is why it is not in my book and best if I do not divulge it over the internet. I know you will understand.

I worked out the size of the planetissimal to be even larger than
you quote. As I have been explaining in the last few posts we are not dealing with an asteroid type impact. Hence the calculation page you have used does not apply. We are dealing with an orbitting planetisssimal whose orbit is steadilly decreasing and continues in 'orbit' even after its base is just above the earths surface.
Such a planetissimal is likely to break up and spill its contents
over a very wide area -a giant elliptoid in shape I am told. An asteroid impact only makes a crater and destroys the asteroid itself.

I stand corrected.But even an inspiraling satellite does not quite fit. As it approaches the Earth, it will reach the Roche Limit and break apart. That limit is 2.45 times the radius of the primary, for primary and satellite having the same density (if not, then scale the primary's size appropriately). Doing that for a rocky object (3 g/cm^3) yields a Roche limit of 3 Earth radii or 19,000 km.So as that former satellite spiraled into the Earth, it broke apart long before it reached the Earth's surface and ground itself into a big ring of dust and small rocks around the Earth.This ring would be close to the Earth's equator's plane, which is where its remains would fall. But there is no known evidence of remains of an Earth ring, especially one as massive as all of the Earth's continental crust.

I was thinking of the Roche limit this morning and was going to look it up. Thanks for the information.
But if the invading planetissmal broke up before hitting the Earth the broken bits would still have the same momentum and the planetissimal would therefore still behave as a whole body for a short while-long enough I think for it to behave in the way I think it did. I dont entirely agree that the orbit would have been along the equatorial plane. If the planetissimal had been a recent capture by the Earth it could have been in a slightly inclined plane like Pluto for example. I believe that this planetissimal was the one that gave the Earth an inclined axis so its orbit would not have been parallel to the present equator of the Earth. If there was a ring of dust we would not expect to find it now but the major part of the remains is what I believe we live on today.

LRP,You need to use two equations; one to find the orbital velocity of your planetisimal as it grazes the atmosphere, and the other to find its kinetic energy as it actually enters the atmosphere. If you understand that the falling body converts kinetic energy into heat energy via friction, then you will finally how your theory results in the vaporization* of the oceans, melting of the entire crust and much of the mantle.There is no need to return until you can show your work solving those two equations.{edited to add *vaporization... doh}[This message has been edited by wehappyfew, 01-31-2003]

Look at Saturn's rings. Or the rings of the other big outer planets. It cannot be coincidence that they are all in their primaries' equatorial planes.The reason that these rings are flattened and in their primaries' equatorial planes is because of collisions -- if a ring is inclined, then its primary's equatorial bulge will cause its particles' orbits to precess at different speeds, and the ring will become blurred. And north-going and south-going particles in the ring will collide with each other as they meet near the primary's equator, with the average outcome being less out-of-plane velocity. Resulting in the ring becoming flattened and in its primary's equatorial plane.So the ring theory for the origin of continents simply cannot possibly work.

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You need to use two equations; one to find the orbital velocity of your planetisimal as it grazes the atmosphere, and the other to find its kinetic energy as it actually enters the atmosphere. If you understand that the falling body converts kinetic energy into heat energy via friction, then you will finally how your theory results in the melting of the oceans, the entire crust and much of the mantle.

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I pointed this out before. The kinetic energy as it enters the atmosphere is on the order of 5 x10^29 J depending on the mass of the object. I get that for 1300 mile diameter object with a density of about 3.5. Velocity in low earth orbit is about 8 km/sec.Another problem is that I calculate that the combination of kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy is higher in high orbit than the kinetic energy in low orbit even though it moves faster in low orbit. Somehow the object must slowly shed energy to "spiral in". You can figure this out by calculating the orbital period and thus the speed in each orbit to get 1/2mv^2 and the potential energy from mgh. I don't have the numbers here but can post them later if necessary. The required equations can probably be found in any undergrad physics book. Tidal coupling will apply torque to the object and cause it to move away not sprial in. But what amazes me is that someone who claims to have writen a book on the subject apparently just now thought of the Roche limit. It seems to me that this "model" violates the first law of thermodynamics as well as Newton's laws of motion and probably some other physical laws as well.Randy

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Immense clouds of hydrogen still have an immense self gravity which is why they contract to such an extent that at their core the pressures become so immense that the electron round the proton of a hydrogen atom coalsces with the proton and forms a neutron.

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A cloud of pure hydrogen cools very evenly and so forms very large stars in the order of 100-200 solar masses, not two half solar mass binaries.

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So in my local binary star it does not matter at all what stage of stellar evolution had taken place.

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This doesn't follow from what you said. Besides that, if you start with a cloud of pure hydrogen right out of the BB, you start with zero stellar evolution anyway. So, are you starting with a cloud of pure hydrogen right out of the BB or not?

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To deal with the formation of all 100 or so elements from hydrogen
would require me to rewrite a chapter of my book here.

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I'm only interested in the formation of elements above iron. The rest aren't too much of a problem, though even second generation stars have low ratios of metals. Forming them all in one generation is a bit of a stretch.

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I see no good reason whatsoever for a large enough cloud of pure hydrogen not to contract into a dense solid body in space. It does not have to have any other element to do this.

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It does need elements besides hydrogen to condence into many stars rather than one huge star. I provided a link to the research several posts ago.

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I maintain in the book that the heat/pressure generated in the coalscement must be comparable to that attained within a star by pure gravitational contraction.

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The heavier elements are not generated until a star explodes. The elements above iron are not generated in the cores of stars under normal circumstances but only in the massive energy releases of stellar explosions.

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Because my ideas are somewhat radical it would be unfair to the university I am associated with to capitalize on their name and this is why it is not in my book and best if I do not divulge it over the internet. I know you will understand.

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Yes, that I understand.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com