posted on Jun, 1 2003 @ 10:38 PM
James Mc Canney (jmccanneyscience), a researcher of Celestial Mechanics and Plasma Physics, was Monday night's guest. Comets are not dirty
snowballs but "electrical vacuum cleaners that are drawing in material, and the big ones can retain material with their gravitational field and
become bigger and bigger," McCanney said, adding that he thinks that most of the planets in our solar system started off as comets. Posted by
tutankamen
Please post links to evidence supporting this. As I stated, and maintain, there is no current scientific evidence to support this theory. It is
unlikely that orbital bodies contain a significant electromagnetic field (the geomag field of earth is generated internally through inductive
interaction between the core and inner mantel), and certainly not strong enough to pick up significant amounts of material in essentially hard vacuum.
Also, this theory would only work if all particles the body passed was of the opposite charge of the body. But, as it did pick up oppositely charged
particles, it would eventually cancel its own charge as it accumulated mass of the opposite charge.
As far as retaining mass due to a gravitational field... well, this only becomes possible when you get to an object of about the size of the moon or
so.... far larger than your average comet.
In fact, McCanney believes the planet Venus is just a few thousand years old, and after it escaped Jupiter's orbit, it tore into the inner solar
system, destroying Mars' atmosphere as it passed by on its way to its current position. "My estimate is there are approximately 1,000 objects that
are planetary size out there," but when they come through our solar system "they will always look like comets," he said. McCanney suspects there
could be at least 10-12 objects that are the size of Jupiter or Saturn and that five of them have come through in the last 10,000 years. The ancients
called them the "lawless ones," he said.
Really?
We know for fact that the earth is around 4.65 billion years old, through radiometric dating (there is a possibility it could be significantly older).
We have NO evidence that any of the major planets are significantly older or younger than this. Indeed, it would difficult to explain why a body that
is significantly younger than the rest of the solar system exists in a stable orbit, well within the plane of the ecliptic, without having seriously
disturbed other neigboring planets. (The only suspected orbital capture in our solar system is Pluto, which is likely a Kupier object, and its orbit
is considerably more eccentric than the rest of the solar system)
As far as the idea of Venus making a close pass to Mars and ripping its atmosphere off... well, that is interesting, I will at least say that.
One of the best theories going on Mars is that around 1 billion years ago, it has approximately 1/3 to 1/2 of earth normal atmospheric pressure (it is
currently 1/100 earth normal). Around 1 billion years in the past, it may have suffered an asteroid impact of a very sizeable "planet killer" at an
oblique angle. The impact shock wave could have "blown" a large percentage of the atmosphere off the planet, and it may also explain the presence of
Phobos and Deimos in orbit, as either large chunks of matel material blown into orbit in the impact, or perhaps pieces of the original impactor
skipping off of mars surface and back into orbit.