Thermonuclear explosions: yes, electrical discharges: not really, at least not in the EU sense, where there would be a potential between the impacter and the impactee that would do something. An explosion creates a lot of high velocity ions, and IMO, these get pinched into the spider ejecta that we see on the Moon. Such ion streams could be called electric currents of sorts, but that isn't in the EU model. And I'm not talking about any sort of pre-existing electric fields that do anything.Lloyd wrote:You've stated in a few places that high velocity impacts produce thermonuclear explosions, which involve electrical discharges.
The fusion would occur simply because of the extreme pressures and temperatures at the point of collision. A small, high-velocity impacter might get annihilated, while a large, slow-moving impacter might simply merge with the impactee, though at the point of collision, some heavy elements might have been fused.Lloyd wrote:Have you determined how strong the discharges would need to be or what other factors are involved to fuse radioactive elements in impacts?
I couldn't really follow the entire line of reasoning, so I can't say.Lloyd wrote:Does Walter Brown's explanation above have anything potentially correct?
Since I'm estimating the age of the Earth (and everything else in the solar system) to be 378 million years, it would have been after that. But no, I don't have a specific number. Mars and the Moon had already formed crusts by the time the LHB occurred. But I haven't developed a method of estimating how long that would take.Lloyd wrote:When do you regard it as most likely that the bombardment occurred?
I didn't find anything either, in a quick search, but for cratered impacts, I wouldn't really expect much. The extreme pressures & temperatures occur at the interface between the impacter and the impactee. If the impacter gets annihilated in the process, everything subjected to the extreme pressure & temperature will get dispersed. I actually think that heavy elements will not be found unless the impacter persists. The high pressures & temperatures need to be created, such that heavy elements are fused. But then they need to be cooled, while still under pressure. The reason is that radioactive elements are unstable at high temperatures. So you're not going to see much in the way of heavy elements at ground zero of a nuclear explosion -- the elements might have been fused, but shortly thereafter, they got split back apart in high energy collisions. The only way for such fragile atoms to persist is if the pressure necessary to fuse them was still present, but the temperatures at which they are unstable were removed before the pressure relaxed.Lloyd wrote:I looked online for radioactivity connected with impact craters, but didn't find much.
That's in the article called Remelted Crusts. Ceres is thought to be as much as 50% water.Lloyd wrote:Have you written anywhere else on how impacts delivered water to the Earth?