We're not Earthlings -- we're colonists from Ceres!

[CharlesChandler]

Hey Folks!

I just got done updating my paper on celestial collisions, in response to Lloyd's criticisms. I have settled on the opinion (for now) stated in the topic title -- the Earth's continental granites were donations from Ceres via the Late Heavy Bombardment. Without dry land and the shallow seas surrounding it, life wouldn't have evolved so quickly, so the LHB was important for us. It also means that we're standing on material that first solidified on Ceres. Here's the text...

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The section on the Titius-Bode Law mentioned the possibility that the asteroid belt between Mars & Jupiter is the debris from a celestial collision, with Ceres as the largest surviving remnant of a planet. The remainder of the debris would have since fallen into the Sun, or impacted other planets & moons, perhaps in what is known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, thought to have occurred 4.1~3.8 billion years ago.

The impacts seem to have remelted the crusts of the Earth, the Moon, and of Mars. The latter two have roughly similar topographies, with highlands that are heavily cratered from the LHB, but also with vast expanses of flood basalts that are sparsely cratered. This means that the "flooding" occurred during the LHB. The mares are believed to have been formed by volcanic megaflows, but it would be an odd coincidence for both the Moon and Mars to undergo the same internal process at roughly the same time, despite their differences. And for this to have occurred by chance, just when both were being subjected to a dramatic external influence, is too many coincidences — it's far more likely that the LHB caused the mares. The thermalization of the impacts would have provided a lot of heat. At the same time, the Sun might have been flaring violently from infalling debris, and thus projecting a lot more heat onto the surfaces of the planets and moons.

http://courseweb.unt.edu/gjones/images/mars0604_3.gif
http://balrogslair.com/acod/wp-content/ ... -sides.jpg

It's then no coincidence that the Earth's crust got remelted at the same time. The only difference was that the remelting was more thorough. Rocks pre-dating the LHB have been found in the highlands on both the Moon and on Mars, but not so on Earth.

If the Earth's crust was totally remelted, why didn't the continents slump more? The continents are made of granite, while the oceanic crust is basalt. Granite is lighter than basalt, so the continents "float" like icebergs in the basaltic sea. But if the continents were completely remelted by the LHB, they should have flowed out over the basalt, leaving a thin layer of granite wrapping all of the way around the world. It's possible that the crust didn't get quite hot enough to become that runny during the LHB.

But this reveals an even more fundamental question — why didn't the granite settle out long before the LHB, when the Earth was first forming? Pretty much all of the models of the Earth assume that when it first condensed, it was completely molten. It immediately began cooling by radiative heat loss (i.e., photons). The molten rock would have been good at conducting heat to the surface, but bad at radiating that heat into space, so it would have taken a long time for a crust to have formed. In the meantime, all of the lighter chemicals had plenty of time to bubble up to the surface. The granite would have quickly found its way to the top, and it would have leveled off into a relatively flat layer on top of the basalt. Later, when the surface temperature dropped below the boiling point of water, the steam in the atmosphere would have condensed, forming the oceans. But if the granite layer had been perfectly flat, the oceans should have covered the entire globe — no dry land. So how did the granite get consolidated into continents?

It's possible that the continental granite didn't get distributed during the molten stage, because the granite simply wasn't present yet — it might have arrived during the LHB. In other words, the continents might be what's left of a huge meteorite. Heat from the impact would have remelted everything, but perhaps not so completely that the granite could pancake all of the way around the globe. Rather, it settled into the original supercontinent.

The continental granites have a volume of 7.58 × 109 km3. This is just 0.69% the volume of the Earth (1.08 × 1012 km3), while being 1/3 the volume of the Moon (2.20 × 1010 km3), and 20 times the volume of Ceres (4.21 × 108 km3). So the impacter would have been small by planetary standards, but larger than any extant asteroid, and big enough for all Hadean life forms to have a really bad day.

In conclusion, it seems that thinking of ourselves as Earthlings is a bit of an oversimplification. The stuff of which we are made originally condensed into Ceres. That all came to an end 4.1 billion years ago. But a big chunk of our former planet found a new host here on Earth. The granite created an island in the middle of what had previously been just one big ocean. The shallow seas around the island provided a breeding ground for new life forms, who were our ancestors. So this is not our first planet (and perhaps it won't be our last).

[seasmith]

Charles wrote:
It's possible that the continental granite didn't get distributed during the molten stage, because the granite simply wasn't present yet — it might have arrived during the LHB. In other words, the continents might be what's left of a huge meteorite. Heat from the impact would have remelted everything, but perhaps not so completely that the granite could pancake all of the way around the globe. Rather, it settled into the original supercontinent.

You do know that 'granites' are not a primary igneous formation like a basalt, right ?

Granites around the world in their amazing varieties are all igneous-metamorphic rocks.
In other words, some early crustal components, mainly silicates if Earth cooled slowly, would rise naturally toward the surface by simple principles of densities and thermo-dynamics.

This primal crust is then broken up and churned under, during your cataclysmic "continents" building episodes and epochs, when mountains disappear beneath the seas and sea-bottoms are stranded atop mountain ranges. ~~[Encounters between solar system bodies are clearly indicated as roiling agents, i think most around here would agree]

The igneous metamorphose of those primal materials will account for the wide range of granites world-wide; however a single Cereian source would not.

Kudos though for being able to come up with all these constantly revising theories on such a broad range of subjects.

[CharlesChandler]

Kudos though for being able to come up with all these constantly revising theories on such a broad range of subjects.

Thanks (I think ). For me, science isn't a position -- it's a process. So it leads to a constantly shifting position, always foraging for more anomalies, and venturing hypotheses to account for them. Indeed, scientific exploration is error-prone, if you want to look at it like that. You don't know what you're going to find until you explore it. The bad news is that it's labor intensive, and sometimes you might feel like you're spending more time exploring blind alleys than making progress. But in order to fully understand the entire problem domain, all of it needs to be explored -- blind alleys and all. The good news is that you get a better understanding, and it's exhilarating when the picture comes into clearer focus.

You do know that 'granites' are not a primary igneous formation like a basalt, right?

Right. What I want to know is: why aren't the granites primary igneous formations? Let's go back to the fundamental dilemma that I'm trying to get my mind around. If the Earth, when it first formed, was entirely molten, and if it cooled slowly, there should have been plenty of time for near-perfect chemical stratification on the basis of density, before the crust started to solidify. Then, the solidification should have locked in the vertical differentiation. As the Earth cooled, we could expect pressure ridges to appear in the crust, due to the thermal expansion coefficient. (The solid crust takes on a fixed circumference, but the underlying matter is cooling, so it's shrinking, and the crust will buckle.) But that isn't going to produce the continental "churn" that you describe.

This primal crust is then broken up and churned under, during your cataclysmic "continents" building episodes and epochs, when mountains disappear beneath the seas and sea-bottoms are stranded atop mountain ranges.

Clearly this happens, but I want to know why, and I don't find continental churn to be an expectation of thermodynamics. I'd expect one layer of granite all of the way around the globe, 14.9 km deep, with a network of pressure ridges, rather than 30% of the Earth's surface being dry land, ~35 km deep. To get the kind of continental churn that we actually observe, I really think that we'd have to assume that the granites didn't bubble up to the surface until substantial cooling had already occurred, and the basalts were already sporting a high viscosity. But that's the part that I don't get. Analogously, do we see chemical differentiation across the surface of frozen lava lakes, where heavier stuff started to solidify first, and then lighter stuff arrived later, creating blobs of distinctly different material? It might not be a 1:1 analogy to the whole Earth, but my point is that given millions of years for the Earth to cool before the crust formed, all of the bubbling should have already occurred.

So what if we walk up to the edge of a mafic lava lake, and we throw a big granite boulder into the middle of it (analogous to my Cereian granite model)? If the granite doesn't get fully remelted, we might still have lateral chemical differentiation, with a granite iceberg floating in a basaltic sea, all of which gets frozen in with subsequent cooling. Now comes the considerations that you raised -- will the granite display igneous-metamorphic properties? If we assume that there won't be any churn within the granite, we won't get such properties. But why would we make that assumption? If we saw a perfectly flat frozen lava lake, with a spherical granite iceberg frozen into it, we'd rightfully assume that the granite had retained its original shape, without any internal churn. But if we see a perfectly flat lava lake with a pancaked inclusion, we know that the pancake went through a lot of metamorphosis, to get from its original shape, which was probably spherical, to its present shape, which is definitely relatively flat.

So I guess that what I'm saying is that the "churn" might have still happened, entirely within the granite, after its arrival.

I have no idea how much more road there is, traveling in this direction -- it might be just another blind alley. But it still has to be explored.

[tekbasse]

CharlesChandler,

J Marvin Herndon proposes that the Solar System formation includes an early explosive event to explain a vast set of findings peculiar to the Sol system (as compared to other systems and what is known of exo-planets). You can read about it in the "Major Developments Related to the Solar System" section of the main page of nuclearplanet.com. He presents a compelling base for early solar system history (after an electric universe z-pinch solar system formation of course), and suggests how naturally formed nuclear reactors aka dynamos (think naturally formed electric batteries ie current producers in EU speak) generate strong magnetic fields in gas giant planets and the Earth. He suggests that the Earth started as a gas giant, but was stripped of much of its atmosphere in the early solar system's post-formation explosion. This could explain the formation of a vast quantity of water, the formation of a lithospheric crust and subsequent formation of oceanic plates during decompression. It's quite fascinating even if it isn't an answer to everything --much fits in the EU paradigm.

cheers and happy hunting,

[CharlesChandler]

He suggests that the Earth started as a gas giant, but was stripped of much of its atmosphere in the early solar system's post-formation explosion.

I didn't see anything on the "explosive event" on his site, at least just skimming it. But is it possible that debris from the break-up of Ceres, falling into the Sun and causing massive flare-ups, would satisfy his requirements for an energy source?

[tekbasse]

He refers to it as a t-tauri event similar to other t-tauri events astronomers have images of. IIRC, in a nutshell, his theory is that Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn were initially gas giants, Mars, Uranus, and Neptune of a lessor gaseous classification. During the t-tauri event, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars were stripped of various layers. Mercury was stripped to the inner-core, Venus to the crust, Earth essentially to the crust with some atmosphere, and Mars lost its atmosphere. Subsequently, the asteroid belt was Mercury's outer mantle, and the lost atmospheres became the Kuiper(sp) belt, and the Oort cloud is essentially Mercury's atmosphere. I'll look for a link where he explains it. A t-tauri event would certainly explain part of why comets and asteroids have an electric aspect..

[tekbasse]

This is apparently the link for the latest revised report: http://nuclearplanet.com/Herndon%20Curr ... 130825.pdf

[CharlesChandler]

BTW, I recently ran across some literature on how the Earth's water is a poor match to the water found in cometary ices, but an excellent match to the ices found in asteroids. Scientists had been liking comets as the source of the Earth's oceans, because they couldn't figure out why the water didn't all boil off when the Earth was still molten, and because they think that comets are dirty snowballs. But now asteroids are the likelier source. Of course, it's a bit hard to imagine how enough asteroids could have impacted the Earth to donate that much water. We can get a sense of how many impacts there would have been, by the cratering on the Moon and on Mars, and it doesn't add up. But if a huge chunk of Ceres donated the granites that make up the continents, it might have also donated the water, where the composition of the impacter was 85% granite and 15% water.

[john666]

http://www.halos.com/

"Etched within Earth's foundation rocks — the granites — are beautiful microspheres of coloration, halos, produced by the radioactive decay of primordial polonium, which is known to have only a fleeting existence.

The following simple analogy will show how these polonium microspheres — or halos — contradict the evolutionary belief that granites formed as hot magma slowly cooled over millions of years. To the contrary, this analogy demonstrates how these halos provide unambiguous evidence of both an almost instantaneous creation of granites and the young age of the earth.

A speck of polonium in molten rock can be compared to an Alka-Seltzer dropped into a glass of water. The beginning of effervescence is equated to the moment that polonium atoms began to emit radiactive particles. In molten rock the traces of those radioactive particles would disappear as quickly as the Alka-Seltzer bubbles in water. But if the water were instantly frozen, the bubbles would be preserved. Likewise, polonium halos could have formed only if the rapidly "effervescing" specks of polonium had been instantly encased in solid rock.

An exceedingly large number of polonium halos are embedded in granites around the world. Just as frozen Alka-Seltzer bubbles would be clear evidence of the quick-freezing of the water, so are these many polonium halos undeniable evidence that a sea of primordial matter quickly "froze" into solid granite. The occurrence of these polonium halos, then, distinctly implies that our earth was formed in a very short time, in complete harmony with the biblical record of creation."

If your hypothesis about "millions of years", is correct, how do you explain then polonium halos in granites?

[CharlesChandler]

If your hypothesis about "millions of years", is correct, how do you explain then polonium halos in granites?

I'm saying that it took millions of years (at least) for the Earth to cool, but that the granites didn't arrive until after the crust had formed. The impact of a huge granite-bearing meteorite would have fused heavy elements such as polonium, without melting. So the polonium halos are fully consistent with my model.

[john666]

If your hypothesis about "millions of years", is correct, how do you explain then polonium halos in granites?

I'm saying that it took millions of years (at least) for the Earth to cool, but that the granites didn't arrive until after the crust had formed. The impact of a huge granite-bearing meteorite would have fused heavy elements such as polonium, without melting. So the polonium halos are fully consistent with my model.

Half Dome, Yosemite

This structure doesn't look like a fractured part of an meteorite, but as something that is an organic outgrowth of the whole mountain range.

The entire Yosemite National Park looks nothing like an impact zone.

Also any impact would have created enormous temperatures, and therefore quite possibly, melting between the meteorite and the crust.

[CharlesChandler]

Also any impact would have created enormous temperatures, and therefore quite possibly, melting between the meteorite and the crust.

You're right. Also, a lot of metamorphosis would have occurred, to get from a spherical impacter to the pancaked continents we see today. So I should probably back off of the position that the meteorite didn't melt -- rather, it didn't melt enough to spread out over the entire globe, but it did melt enough to pancake into a relatively flat primordial supercontinent. In that process, spherical polonium halos would have gotten smeared into ellipsoids.

So I'd like to propose another explanation. I subscribe to Mike Fischer's "Shock Dynamics" model, in which Pangaea was broken up into the present continents by the impact of a meteorite between East Africa and Madagascar. Perhaps the shock is what fused the polonium. So the granites had already solidified, but were then subjected to an enormous shock wave, which would have fused heavy elements inside the granite, without melting it.

[Norman]

@CharlesChandler,
I´m not so sure about the "Ceres Colonists"

The Kuiper Belt is a circumstellar disk in the outskirts of the Solar System, which IMO indicates this belt the first to be formed out from the Sun. (Presolar Sphere) Have you considered this?

Likewise: The Solar System is an integrated part of the Milky Way rotation, orbiting in the circumstellar disk of the galaxy. Have you considered the Solar System to "once upon a time" have been formatted in the Milky Way center?

Well I have (according to the electromagnetic principles): Once, the huge presolar glowing sphere of gas and particles was formatted in the galactic center, assembled via electromagnetic activity. When gaining weight, this glowing and rotating sphere was slung centrifugally out from the center via the galactic bars and out in the galactic arm.

From this glowing and rotating sphere, planets of gas and matter were very early in the tranportation out from the Milky Way center, dispersed and later on, the moons were dispersed from their mother planets. The Kuiper Belt must then have been the first (debris or planetary) which dispersed from the (presolar) Sun, hence it´s location in the Solar System outskirts.

Do you follow me in this?

[Grey Cloud]

Why do people take 'Pangaea' as a given?

[CharlesChandler]

Have you considered the Solar System to "once upon a time" have been formatted in the Milky Way center?

Yes, but perhaps not in the same way as you. An inventory of galaxies, near & far, showed that in the early Universe, there were many more peculiar galaxies than there are today, and far fewer spirals. So I think that peculiars evolve into ellipticals, then into lenticulars, and ultimately, into spirals. The transition from the asymmetry of a peculiar into an elliptical, IMO, is the simple consequence of an implosion -- it doesn't matter how irregular the shape -- all shapes have a centroid, and if the shape implodes, the resulting explosion will be spherical. So the irregularity of the shape that imploded is not preserved after the first implosion, and I think that ellipticals represent the 2nd stage in the evolution. Subsequent implosion/explosion cycles result in more and more spin within the galaxy, elongating the aspect ratio from a sphere into an ellipsoid, and ultimately, into a spiral. I don't know what induces the rotation within the galaxies, but they tend to be aligned with each other, in a ring around an extra-galactic void. So perhaps there is an extra-galactic magnetic field that induces the rotation. Anyway, in a galactic implosion, the heat will vaporize all of the matter, and a new batch of stars will form as the exploding plasma cools back down. Thus I would agree that our solar system was formed in the galactic center -- at least in the sense that at one time, all of the matter in our galaxy was considerably more compact, and much hotter. But I don't think of the galactic center as a star factory, if that's what you meant.

Why do people take 'Pangaea' as a given?

I haven't studied it much, but there are similarities in rock composition, and in the fossil record, that only make sense if the present continents were all once part of a single super-continent. What is the evidence against?