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The planet that hit the earth to create the moon - Question



 
 
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  #1  
Old May 8th 05, 07:19 PM
Matalog
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Default The planet that hit the earth to create the moon - Question

Does anybody know the name of the mars-sized planet that supposedly hit the
earth and created the moon was called? I was watching Natural World just
now and it said the name of the planet - it began with V or F i think.


Thanks for any help.

  #2  
Old May 10th 05, 02:00 PM
Andrew Gray
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On 2005-05-08, Matalog wrote:
Does anybody know the name of the mars-sized planet that supposedly hit the
earth and created the moon was called? I was watching Natural World just
now and it said the name of the planet - it began with V or F i think.


I've heard "Theia" and "Orpheus" used, although as I understand it
there's no "official" name. Theia is more common, I believe, and is also
mythologically elegant - she was a minor goddess who gave birth, among
others, to Selene...

Others, hmm. V or F? "Phaeton" is (or at least can be, it's not a word
anyone uses these days) pronounced with an F; it was hypothesised to
exist where the asteroid belt is now, between Mars and Jupiter.
(Fittingly, there is now an asteroid Phaethon..) I think some may now
apply the term to a hypothetical "destroyed planet" there, but I vaguely
recall a different name being used. These are all very unofficial,
though.

"Vulcan" was a hypothetical planet inside the orbit of Mercury; one or
two nineteenth-century observations were made, but these are now thought
to be mistakes; if it's there, we've singularly failed to notice it.

--
-Andrew Gray

  #3  
Old May 10th 05, 10:43 PM
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Matalog wrote:
Does anybody know the name of the mars-sized planet that supposedly

hit the
earth and created the moon was called? I was watching Natural World

just
now and it said the name of the planet - it began with V or F i

think.


Thanks for any help.


Since the event was a couple of billion years ago before any life
existed on Earth, there was no one around to name it (unless you
believe in ETs). Heck, not even the Earth had a name then. Now, it
probably likely that the planetologists have given the impacting body a
name; meteorites are usually given the name of the crater they create,
but since there's no evidence of a crater, it's more likely to be
called something like Proto-Moon, or Proto-Luna. (Planetologists tend
not to be imaginative in naming things in my experience, although in
the last decade or so they've gotten better.) It's possible some fringe
group, astrologists or ufo believers have given it a name (maybe from
non-European mythology, Shiva would probably be appropriate), but it's
not recogized by any scientific group.

  #4  
Old May 11th 05, 01:13 AM
null
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Matalog wrote:
Does anybody know the name of the mars-sized planet that
supposedly hit the earth and created the moon was called?


Theia ?

All the best, Timo

--
Prof. Timo Salmi ftp & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/ archives 193.166.120.5
Department of Accounting and Business Finance ; University of Vaasa
http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/ ; FIN-65101, Finland
Timo's FAQ materials at http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/tsfaq.html
  #5  
Old May 11th 05, 11:13 PM
Hud Nordin
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In article ,
Matalog wrote:
Does anybody know the name of the mars-sized planet that supposedly hit the
earth and created the moon was called? I was watching Natural World just
now and it said the name of the planet - it began with V or F i think.


I've heard it called "Vulcan" -- god of fire, blacksmith to the gods.
Seems fitting.

I'm sure that as a hypothetical body it doesn't have an official name.
--
Hud Nordin Silicon Valley
  #6  
Old May 12th 05, 10:58 PM
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Andrew Gray wrote:
On 2005-05-08, Matalog wrote:
Does anybody know the name of the mars-sized planet that supposedly

hit the
earth and created the moon was called? I was watching Natural

World just
now and it said the name of the planet - it began with V or F i

think.

I've heard "Theia" and "Orpheus" used, although as I understand it
there's no "official" name. Theia is more common, I believe, and is

also
mythologically elegant - she was a minor goddess who gave birth,

among
others, to Selene...

Others, hmm. V or F? "Phaeton" is (or at least can be, it's not a

word
anyone uses these days) pronounced with an F; it was hypothesised to
exist where the asteroid belt is now, between Mars and Jupiter.
(Fittingly, there is now an asteroid Phaethon..) I think some may now


apply the term to a hypothetical "destroyed planet" there, but I

vaguely
recall a different name being used. These are all very unofficial,
though.

"Vulcan" was a hypothetical planet inside the orbit of Mercury; one

or
two nineteenth-century observations were made, but these are now

thought
to be mistakes; if it's there, we've singularly failed to notice it.

--
-Andrew Gray



I've run across Phaeton (that's the usual spelling) in several older
sources applied to the supposed planet between Mars and Jupiter. I
don't know when or who started the application, but it was popular
enough to be used for a couple of science fiction stories in the 30s or
40s. In Greek mythology, Phaeton was the son of the Sun god (either
Helios or Apollo) and everyone doubted his claim. So he went on one of
those quests that were so common in mythology and finally met his
father and after big reunion scene, Daddy basically gives the kid a
blank check (backed up by a binding oath- it's guy thing, ladies) to be
granded any wish he wants. Of course, Teen Angel asks for the stupidest
(nowadays, it would the coolest) thing possible, to drive the Chariot
of the Sun, and typical Greek Tragedy results.

V? Might refer to Vesta, the brightest asteroid, and thought to be the
seventh planet of Hindu mythology. Or perhaps "Worlds in Collision",
Velikovsky's idea that in historical times Venus was ejected by Jupiter
and had several near collisions with Earth.

I haven't run across Theia or Orpheus in any usage that I recall. Might
be a term that a particular writer used and it never caught on, or from
a science fiction source. There is a book, titled something like "The
12th Planet", that if I recall acurately, has 2 bodies collide to form
the asteroids and Luna another independant planet. The names it uses
are from Babylonian mythology. Again, it predates the proto-Luna idea,
although proponants may have updated that idea to fit the theory.

  #7  
Old May 13th 05, 08:43 AM
Andrew Gray
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On 2005-05-12, wrote:

V? Might refer to Vesta, the brightest asteroid, and thought to be the
seventh planet of Hindu mythology. Or perhaps "Worlds in Collision",
Velikovsky's idea that in historical times Venus was ejected by Jupiter
and had several near collisions with Earth.


Oh, god, yes. Velikovsky. Pronounced in such a way as it might sound
like an F, and

I haven't run across Theia or Orpheus in any usage that I recall. Might
be a term that a particular writer used and it never caught on, or from
a science fiction source.


I get the impression Orpheus was more likely to be from sf than Theia.

My entirely unscientific corpus searching in a citation index gives five
hits for Theia as the protoplanet out of thirteen hits on the word; none
for Orpheus as a protoplanet out of fifty-three. Of those five hits,
they're recent - one 2000, three 2001, one 2004. One in Science, one in
Nature, reasonably well-regarded looking papers.

(However, they all have one Halliday AN, from Zurich, as an author. He
probably likes the name)

"This observation is consistent with the Giant Impact model, provided
that the proto-Earth and the smaller impactor planet (named Theia)
formed from an identical mix of components."

"The data are consistent with the proto-Earth and Theia (the impactor)
having Rb/Sr ratios that were not very different from that of present
day Mars."

"...consistent with a precursor planet (Theia) that was even less
volatile element-depleted than the present Earth (Rb/Sr = 0.03)"

"A collision at or before 50 Myr between a near Earth-sized proto-Earth
and a Mars-sized impactor, here named Theia, would not yield chondritic
W for the present day BSE, unless there was also significant subsequent:
accretion."

"Furthermore, tungsten and strontium isotope compositions of lunar
samples provide evidence that the Moon-forming impacting protoplanet
Theia was probably more like Mars, with a volatile-rich, oxidized
mantle."

So at least one guy uses it, but he writes a decent amount and doesn't
seem to be a crank (unless you're a geologist who doesn't believe in the
giant impact theory, I guess g)

There is a book, titled something like "The
12th Planet", that if I recall acurately, has 2 bodies collide to form
the asteroids and Luna another independant planet. The names it uses
are from Babylonian mythology.


Yup, run across those two; a third Babylonian name gets kicked around as
well, occasionally, though I think the theory behind that one is even
shakier.

--
-Andrew Gray

  #8  
Old May 19th 05, 09:26 PM
Hop David
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Henry Spencer wrote:

There has recently been speculation on theoretical grounds that there
might be some small asteroids with orbits well inside Mercury's,


After David Tholen's sighting some suggested that more apoheles are
likely to exist because Earth, Venus or Mercury have a scattering effect
that will occasionally place NEOs in smaller orbits. Is this the
speculation you're referring to?

--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html

  #9  
Old May 24th 05, 10:06 PM
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Henry Spencer wrote:
No, if I recall correctly -- it's been a while -- the hypothetical
"vulcanoids" within Mercury's orbit would be leftovers from the early days
of the solar system, the innermost solid remains of the original solar
nebula. Perturbations from planets can't easily get you into an orbit
like theirs.


How stable would be the orbits of "vulcanoids"? They're packed in close
to several planets and the sun.

Mike Miller

 




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