Was Earth a Migratory Planet? 257
astroengine writes "Why our planet isn't a "snowball Earth" — a dilemma called the 'faint young sun paradox' — has foxed solar and planetary scientists for decades. Since the Earth's formation, a planet covered in ice should have stifled any kind of greenhouse effect, preventing our atmosphere from warming up and maintaining water in a liquid state. Now, David Minton of Purdue University has come up with a novel solution that, by his own admission, straddles science fact and fiction. Perhaps Earth evolved closer to the Sun and through some gravitational effect, it was pushed to a higher orbit as the Sun grew hotter. But watch out, if this is true, planetary chaos awaits."
On the upside though (Score:4, Interesting)
If this is the case, and the "chaos" that awaits is us migrating into a higher orbit, then whoopee, there goes us having to worry about the greenhouse effect... Oh wait... this isn't just another excuse not to curb our burning of fossil fuels is it?
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If this is the case, and the "chaos" that awaits is us migrating into a higher orbit, then whoopee, there goes us having to worry about the greenhouse effect... Oh wait... this isn't just another excuse not to curb our burning of fossil fuels is it?
How many billions of years are you planning to live?
Re:On the upside though (Score:5, Funny)
How many billions of years are you planning to live?
Ideally as many as I can.
I of course plan to get fashionably mad into my second billion, but the recover after a bit of time in some choice facility. By that time though, I should have enough money to pay for absolutely anything, I deposited six dollars into a compound interest savings plan a week ago Tuesday.
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Hey, I want to see that planet go pop, so keep moisturizing me!
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Not true, the sun gets about 1% brighter every million years so if we move away slowly then maybe that counteracts the increase in light output.
There's a theory out there that believes as the sun loses mass the planets move away slowly, so perhaps by the time the sun is a red giant, we would be far enough away to not get toasted.
Re:On the upside though (Score:5, Insightful)
That would make perfect sense that as the sun loses mass the planets drift further away, but the problem is that the size of the sun is driven not only by the mass, but the available fuel driving the fusion reaction inside it. The radius of the sun is maintained by the amount of energy being released in its core through fusion which pushes against the force of gravity pulling the sun together. Certain elements fuse releasing a lot of energy, others fuse releasing only a little energy - yet others fuse and take in energy from their surroundings. The tipping point is Fe (Iron), anything lighter releases energy when it is fused, anything heavier absorbs energy. While sun has converted about 100 earth masses into energy over the 4.5 billion years it has been here, it is still fusing mainly Hydrogen (lots of energy output), meaning that by the time it reaches red giant phase in about another 5.5 billion years, it will have used up a bit over another 100. The problem is that it has around 330,000 times as much as the Earth. It is losing mass through fusion, but not nearly enough to increase the orbital radius of the planets by the time it reaches the red giant phase.
Re:On the upside though (Score:4, Insightful)
Also
the sun gets about 1% brighter every million
is wrong. The sun is getting brighter at the rate of 10% every billion [wikipedia.org] years.
Short and Long [wikipedia.org] scales aside, a billion years is at minimum 1,000 million (or a million million if you use the long scale) - both of which are orders of magnitue different to what you claim.
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Also, CO2 is not a poison.
Fairly stupid response (Score:5, Informative)
A substance that, when introduced into or absorbed by a living organism, causes death or injury, esp. one that kills by rapid action.
*breaths in*
That was just a bunch of CO2 I sucked in right there.
Even your argument that "everything is a poison in large quantities" is stupid, because it's not the CO2 harming you if you go in the garage and turn on the car - it's the fact you are not getting oxygen. The CO2 itself did not hurt you.
Plants also disagree with you. When you've made a plant frown how much lower can you go?
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I think there's a difference between carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide.
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, CO will kill you, CO2 just prevents you from living.
CO2 is toxic but only in very high concentration. And in general you will suffer from suffocation rather than "classic" poisoning. CO2 was the cause of many deaths in mining and wineries where the heavy gas could accumulate in closed low placed areas (like mine shafts and wine cellars), with people discovering too late that they're getting dizzy and fell unconscious from a lack of O2. Mainly, though, the death is due to blood being saturated by CO2, meaning that the CO2 produced by the body cannot be transported out.
CO is a completely different beast, and actually toxic in the classic sense. It prevents O2 from being transported into the cells by bonding to the same receptors that usually carry O2, which makes it a LOT more dangerous. If you want a bad analogy, think of it as the difference of you not getting any food compared to you not being able to flush your toilet. While the latter sure is unpleasant, you can usually survive it much longer.
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:5, Interesting)
Even your argument that "everything is a poison in large quantities" is stupid, because it's not the CO2 harming you if you go in the garage and turn on the car - it's the fact you are not getting oxygen. The CO2 itself did not hurt you.
Actually, it's not CO2 nor lack of oxygen that kills in this situation, but rather CO. As I understand it, hemoglobin bonds preferentially to CO over O2. Once a red blood cell has absorbed CO, it doesn't want to let go even when exposed to O2. This means that one can effectively suffocate even when there's plenty of O2 available to breathe.
This is why CO is sometimes used on meat. It keeps the meat bright red and healthy-looking so it will look nice on display in the grocery store. Without it, I think meat would tend more toward purple.
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:5, Informative)
That's not true. It's not merely displacement of oxygen that can harm you; CO2 also drives blood pH down and results in acidosis.
Related: The increased acidification of the oceans due to CO2 is one of those things that's often overlooked when people start talking about CO2 emissions and Global Warming and all that.
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:4, Informative)
I think you mean the neutralization of the ocean as the water is going from slightly basic to slightly less basic. It isn't acidification until you cross neutral.
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:4, Funny)
I thought the prevailing opinion was that basic was bad, (all those gotos) so removing some of the basic (and replacing it with something more structured) , would be good
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:5, Funny)
Its all a matter of procedure really.
Afterall, there are so many objects in the C.
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't acidification until you cross neutral.
Sure it is, just like water going from hot steam to slightly less hot steam is still "cooling". It's all just based on concentration of H+, with "neutral" being a given concentration in pure water. "Acidification" just means that concentration is increasing.
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:4, Informative)
H2CO3(aq) -> H+(aq) + HCO3-(aq)
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The real problem with the top article is that it is idiotic quite outside of any consideratio
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A substance that, when introduced into or absorbed by a living organism, causes death or injury, esp. one that kills by rapid action.
Plants also disagree with you. When you've made a plant frown how much lower can you go?
And then, of course, there are the side effects on making the plants sad. They don't fight off the Zombies very well. . . . .
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You need to set up a bottling system on your car. If it's making CO2, you can make a tidy profit bottling it with a compressor and selling it.
Man Stabbed. Death Caused By Anemia. (Score:5, Informative)
Your post is neither less stupid than the GP nor informative.
Re: Sucking
It was also just a bunch of CO2 you blew out.
Re: Your ridiculous claims.
*Everything* that kills you works by disrupting something your body needs to do to live. You might as well say paralyzing venoms don't kill you, it's the lack of oxygen because your lungs aren't working. Does that mean venom isn't poison? No.
Re: Car scenario
The CO2 in your scenario doesn't kill you. The CO does that. CO2 CAN kill you, though. Maybe you've heard of hypercapnia [wikipedia.org]. (Note the URL, too.)
Re: Plants
Just because something is not poison to ONE organism does not mean it is not a poison.
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Even your argument that "everything is a poison in large quantities" is stupid, because it's not the CO2 harming you if you go in the garage and turn on the car - it's the fact you are not getting oxygen. The CO2 itself did not hurt you.
So cyanide is not a poison?
Re:Fairly stupid response (Score:5, Informative)
So cyanide is not a poison?
Not in small enough quantities. Cyanide(s) have been used in the treatment of certain cancers, tuberculosis and even leprosy.
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A substance that, when introduced into or absorbed by a living organism, causes death or injury, esp. one that kills by rapid action.
So.. a bullet qualifies as a poison?
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:On the upside though (Score:4, Informative)
This was one of the most horrible events in Earths history, causing mass death and killing off nearly all life on this planet.
Let's bow for a minute of silent prayer to all the anaerobic victims of the Great Oxygenation Event [wikipedia.org]
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But it makes beer so much more enjoyable... I'd rather have fizzy beer than the planet. And most men would agree.
Re:On the upside though (Score:5, Funny)
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/how-beer-saved-the-world/ [topdocumentaryfilms.com]
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That documentary had so many leaps and assumptions that it was hard to follow. Basically, it showed itself as so bias that the worship of beer seemed more important then facts; undermining the very fabricate of truth it tried to create. It makes such a leap that if it wasn't for beer, civilized society would of never been created, but the impossibility of knowing that is really never mentioned. There are more then just one thing that started civilization moving, declaring it all to revolve around beer is ri
Re:On the upside though (Score:4, Funny)
"It makes such a leap that if it wasn't for beer, civilized society would of never been created, but the impossibility of knowing that is really never mentioned. "
Agreed, it's preposterous.
Everyone knows that civilized society came about when Whiskey and Gin was invented. And yes I count a good brandy in there as well.
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We won't curb our fossil fuel use any way...
We will when we run out.
Re:On the upside though (Score:5, Funny)
Both Mantle and Marrow start with 'M'.
Think about it.
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Not sure if my sarcasm detector is broken, but when you go popping a bunch of holes in your body, pay close attention to your marrow's inability to manufacture enough new blood to keep up with gravity's demand of placing your blood all over the floor.
I think my sarcasm detector is busted, though I'm gonna post the above anyway since I put a fair amount of thought into it...
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From my end that was either superbly done, or it hasn't occurred to you that you can bleed out even when your blood has to go against gravity to exit your body.
I honestly can't tell.
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I think you missed it. I believe he was referring to the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory [wikipedia.org], which is generally discredited (and, thus, his silly example where both Mantle and Marrow start with 'M').
Of course, if you have to explain it, it isn't funny.
Re:On the upside though (Score:4, Funny)
Let's see - the Mantle is a hard shell around a liquid core. Marrow is a rich edible substance scraped from inside bones that has a solid or semi-solid consistency but softens when heated (cooked)...
I just had a horrifying thought - excuse me, I need to check the ingredients list on my bag of "M&M's" again...
Re:On the upside though (Score:5, Informative)
"We won't curb our fossil fuel use any way... there's no viable alternative"
That is a completely full of ridiculousness statement.
There is no viable alternative, By what measure, that there is already 80,000 stations selling hydrogen on every street corner for $1.22 a gallon? That you dont already have your home covered in solar?
Fools make such statements. Solar is a highly viable alternative to home energy, Even as far north as Copper harbor, MI there are off the grid homes and even state buildings that have a 5KW solar install that works even on cloudy days (that is easy to do BTW) As for cars, electric storage is coming about, and if you paid for it you could have one built that will go 300 miles on a single charge. bio-diesel, switchgrass, there are a ton of other sources of fuel for use in an Internal Combustion engine if you MUST stick with that old outdated technology.
Will it do 0-60 in 2.4 seconds and take up 3 lanes of traffic and carry 80 people? No, the canyonero gigantor truck people will have to suffer. Will it make a small 4 seater? yes it will. Even a small 4 seater 4X4 truck if you really need one because you live miles away from roads. The technology is there already, it's just most amercians are too stupid to understand it. They think they NEED 300HP and to carry 7 passengers + 40 cu FT of cargo all the time.
You dont. Just like you dont need to have 60 light bulbs in your home burning with 120Watts of light in each of them. Be realistic and suddenly alternatives start popping up everywhere.
Hell you can run a internal Combustion engine off of WOOD! Google it for some education.
Will it require americans to stop being idiots and actually learn things about daily life? yes. And if that is what you are talking about, people being required to have a solid basic education about most everything like they did in the 1800's, then that is a good thing.
none of the caravans crossing the United states, waited for AAA to change their wagon wheel.
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yeah we have all this great technology but can the average person afford it? no, they cant.
we have solar here in australia. the govt provides a rebate which kind of makes it seem attractive, but the truth is that the panels will often need replacing before you've broken even on the cost.
as far as cars go, many people buy second hand cars because that's all they can afford. I suppose if people buying new cars start targetting more efficient / hybrid / greener cars then eventually the situation will change.
bu
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You can actually push the gas price to 5$, BUT this money has to go into the alternatives. If you just jack up the price, then yes, nothing will happen. Except that people who already have little will have even less. Because, as you identified correctly, they can neither take the (nonexistent) bus nor afford a cleaner car.
But if you, as the government, slap a 3 bucks tax on every gallon of fuel sold in the US, you can very easily use that money to either establish a bus system worth the name or (and this is
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There is no viable alternative, By what measure, that there is already 80,000 stations selling hydrogen on every street corner for $1.22 a gallon?
What are you talking about, where are these 80,000 hydrogen stations? $1.22 a gallon? GALLON? Where are you getting these ridiculous numbers and units? Where can I buy a Hydrogen car right now? Maybe your thinking of Iceland but even there they do not have 80k stations nor do they sell H2 by the "gallon".
That you dont already have your home covered in solar?
So you
Earth is migratory (Score:3, Funny)
Earth is migratory
In fact, Earth received a Blue-green card as early as 3.5 billion years ago after passing a solar naturalization test.
Funny pages (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Funny pages (Score:4, Insightful)
It makes for fantastic science if you then go on to investigate and describe the miracle. "Oh, wow! How did that happen?"
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Hey, "a wizard did it" is basically the foundation of intelligent de... ok, you're right, good punchline but lousy science.
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Hey, "a wizard did it" is basically the foundation of intelligent de... ok, you're right, good punchline but lousy science.
The Greeks were cynical about the Deus ex Machina even in entertainment. It's a total wash for science.
Conclusions... (Score:5, Funny)
Q.E.D.
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It is the consensus of 99% of climatologists that the earth isn't a snowball and therefore it is a fact that the earth has slowly moved into a higher orbit at exactly the same rate that the sun has warmed so as to maintain a climate on earth appropriate for life. The more we fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and thus heat the earth, the further the earth will move away from the sun so as to maintain an optimum climate. These "inconvenient truths" prove that there is an intelligent designer of the universe.
Q.E.D.
Dude, if you can get a creationist to accept enough science to admit that anthropogenic global warming is real, that miracle itself is enough to prove the existence of God.
Re:Conclusions... (Score:4, Insightful)
In the game of interstellar billiards quite unusual things can happens to planets over time. Slowly moving to higher orbits is not one of them. Interacting with other high gravity masses is, whether it's a object passing through the solar system upon it's own intergalactic trajectory causing a direct change or that object impacting other high gravity masses and causing an indirect change or usual orbits of high gravity masses within a system.
For decades science has avoided catastrophic based planetary orbits, it makes for messy science but over millions of years in a much more interactive galaxy and universe than originally thought, much to the fear of us tiny rock in space dwellers, catastrophic orbital patterns are all too common.
Catastrophic orbits of course imply major life extinguishing impacts, that's were the catastrophe part comes in and of course that's why science doesn't like to think about them too much.
Although it allows the hypothesis of much simpler and more logically planetary development models and those planets out of sequence being treated as just the result of catastrophic interactions, it leaves those scientist with such a gut wrenching sense of impermanence that emotion over rules logic and far more stable convoluted models are preferred.
Re:Conclusions... (Score:5, Funny)
Book Secondi 3:12
Lo, for the baking of the divine meal
Let it be done that the goliath meatball[1]
Be moved upon the table[2]
At such distance that the woodfire oven[3]
Provides a strong heat source to allow for the Maillard reaction
To properly crustify the goliath meatball
And then let it be moved
To a sufficient distance, where it may
Yet leave the inside full of tenderness
Like the twin meatballs upon the bosom of a mother
His Noodly Appendage shall make such adjustments
Necessary to make it so.
Ramen
[1] the goliath meatball being our planet.
[2] the table, sometimes mistranslated as "the firmament", is of course, the fabric of spacetime
[3] there is some disagreement among scholars about this translation, but we know from context that this is the sun
Clearly, from analysis of scripture, we can determine that the Master of the Heavenly Forkful moves or planet into a lower or higher orbit to ensure that it cooks properly.
Mod up (Score:2)
Wish I had mod points for you. Maybe if I make a Sprinkled Parmesan sacrifice to His Noodlyness, I'll get some....
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Okay, so the fact that there was an intelligent designer and the fact that the Earth was intelligently designed are only correlations, not causation.
Suppose I were rich and you had a clue.
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Correlation does not equal causation.
Correlation does not equal causation.
Correlation does not equal causation.
Wow - same thing three times in a row!
But is it correlation or causation?
Re:Conclusions... (Score:5, Insightful)
These "inconvenient truths" prove that there is an intelligent designer of the universe.
Of course they do. But who is the intelligent designer? There are quite a few candidates so far. And there's also Me. I'll give you 73 virgins in paradise and point to point fiber. In return, you just have to donate a small portion of your savings to My Bank Account.
You have hit the nail on the head. Religion is a carrot & stick approach to behavior modification, with the clever twist that they want real behavior modification in the here-and-now so your imaginary soul will get the imaginary carrot instead of the imaginary stick in your imaginary afterlife.
And when we scoff, they offer up Pascal's wager, which is like a stock broker asking you to give real money for stock in an imaginary company - think how rich you'll be if it turns out that the company actually exists!
Or, since the emphasis is usually on the stick rather than the carrot, it's like a protection racket that asks you for real money to prevent some imaginary thugs from burning down your imaginary soul's imaginary restaurant in your imaginary afterlife.
Sweet scam. If my current gig doesn't work out, I'm going to start a religion.
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He's a fraud.
I'll give you 74 virgins
74 virgins for all eternity? If they stay virgins, you're probably in Hell. Otherwise... even if you just bonk one per quadrillion years, you run out before you've put a scratch in eternity.
Lurid offer, but meaningless if you pause to think about it. Once per quadrillion years is like offering you a chance to be a Slashdotter for all eternity.
My religion, OTOH, offers you one skilled courtesan. Or gigolo - my Heaven offers something for everyone.
Or dominatrix...
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The god that is love. The god that does not promise sex slaves in paradise
Or course not. He only offers meaningful stuff, like streets paved with gold.
And eternal torture, for people who don't join the club.
If only every god could be so enlightened.
Old idea, no new insight (Score:2)
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I guess Discovery's standards are continuing to fall.
Last time I went to the site I saw articles on things like alien abduction.
What about the Theia impact theory? (Score:2)
Doesn't it suggest that the Earth was heated up a lot at the time? That could have jumpstarted the greenhouse engine.
Could have altered its orbit, too, probably.
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It was pulled into a larger orbit by swallows. Swallows.
Re:What about the Theia impact theory? (Score:5, Funny)
It was pulled into a larger orbit by swallows. Swallows.
African or European?
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Wouldn't a giant impact change its orbit? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Wouldn't a giant impact change its orbit? Kind of like this [wikipedia.org]...
The moon-creating impact was my first thought also. But I can imagine that it may also have heated things up a bit on its own, all without significant chaneg of orbit.
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The giant impact lunar origin theory got a little less likely just recently. The original article in Nature Geoscience is behind a paywall, but you can read a summary at http://www.space.com/15035-moon-formation-theory-challenged.html [space.com].
Basically, titanium isotope signatures from Earth and lunar samples are identical. For the giant impact theory to be correct, the impactor would have had to have the same titanium isotope mix as Earth, which seems unlikely if it originated elsewhere/when in the solar system's
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Why the Giant Impactor Theory assumes a different isotope mix for the impactor?
From what I understand, they had to have rocks brought back from the Moon to actually measure their isotope mix, so my guess is that we don't accurately know the isotope mix of anything besides the Earth and the Moon. How do we know it isn't the same mix everywhere in the solar system?
Disclaimer: I'm clueless about all this, I'm only asking questions.
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Well, yeah... (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps (Score:2)
There are a lot of "maybe"s out there when it comes to these science theories and discoveries, but adding a "watch out" for planetary chaos at the end is so drama-llamas. I'm not going to worry, because even if it came about, wtf can I (or anyone) do about it? Gotta live out what we got in the here and now while doing our best to observe the future--rationally, not Mayan-Calendarly.
It's not that novel (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:It's not that novel (Score:5, Informative)
Are you suggesting (Score:3)
it was brought here by a European Swallow?
The Inside Scoop (Score:5, Informative)
So about five years ago my graduate school advisor and I wrote what was my very first peer-reviewed paper, which was on the subject of the Faint Young Sun Paradox. The paradox goes something like this: The early Sun was fainter than it is today, so all things being equal the Earth should have spend the first half of its life frozen over. Geologists tell us it wasn't, so something wasn't equal. What was it? We investigated the idea that the Sun may have been slightly more massive (something like 2-7% more massive), and that it had to lose most of that excess mass over a few billion years, which is at odds with measurements of mass loss of Sun-like stars. So we published it, and I went on to do other things in grad school, mostly involving trying to figure out the early impact bombardment history of the solar system, which we think may have been influenced by an early period of migration of the gas giant planets.
Fast forward to a few months ago, and a fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute (the place they run the Hubble from) contacted me to ask if I'd like to give a talk about my old mass-losing Sun paper at a workshop that was planned to bring together astrophysicists, geologists, climate scientists, and planetary dynamicists to talk about the Faint Young Sun problem. They wanted me to also talk about planet migration and how that might fit in to the problem. Sure, why not? Revisiting the problem would be fun! The thing is, I've just started a new faculty job, and part of my job is helping get a new planetary science group built up at Purdue, so I've been extremely busy. And, well, I procrastinated. Big time. There was always some pressing thing to do that took time away from getting ready for the workshop. So the next thing I know, it's a few days before the meeting and I still haven't really thought about the faint Sun in about five years. So I dust off my old files, start futzing around with a talk, and the next thing I know I'm on a plane to Baltimore.
Late the night before the workshop is about to start, I'm racking my brain trying to come up with something new to say. You see, I've been thinking about early solar system history, and planet formation. Migration is a big deal in those early days. It's easy to get planets to move around in young solar systems. But the Faint Young Sun problem is a problem for the Earth's mid-life, not it's adolescence. Then I remembered a paper I really liked that came out a couple of years ago by Jaques Laskar and Mickaël Gastineau. They showed that our own solar system could potentially destabilize after a few billion years of seeming-stability due to Mercury's proximity to a chaotic region. It's described briefly here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability_of_the_Solar_System#Laskar_.26_Gastineau [wikipedia.org]
What if something like that had happened *already?* So I futzed around with an N-body gravitational dynamics code remotely from my hotel room, in my pajamas, playing around with plausible initial solar systems where Earth stared just a tad closer to the Sun, but close enough to solve the problem of being frozen over, and Venus started out as two separate planets and then went unstable after many billions of years, scattering Earth to its present location in the process. And, when I checke
Re:The Inside Scoop (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot needs a moderation code for Awesome.
Thank you, sir!
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Re:The Inside Scoop (Score:5, Interesting)
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Double plus good post (Score:2)
Thanks
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With all the "bad", this post is one of those things that remind me why I've been lurking around here for so many years.
Thanks
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I always thought it was the solar wind. Sun gets hotter, wind blows stronger. Slowly, over perhaps a billion years, it will alter Earth's orbit.
It should buy me a little time when the Sun starts dying, as the wind slacks off. Earth should then start falling closer.
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I'm terribly sorry, Professor Minton, but didn't the early Earth had far greater volcanic activity, a thinner crust, a hotter mantle, faster plate tectonics, and meteors constantly hitting it?
Re:The Inside Scoop (Score:5, Informative)
Now as to the question of meteor bombardment: that was the topic of the last 1/3 of my talk at the workshop, but was not mentioned in TFA. I am on a paper coming out in a couple of weeks that is showing that the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment persisted on the Earth all throughout the Archean, rather than ending abruptly at the end of the Hadean, as was thought from looking at lunar samples. The bombardment rate, while much higher than present-day, was not so high as to likely have had any major direct effect on the climate over geologically interesting timescales (say an impact creating a 1000 km wide basin occurring every 200-500 million year during the Archean). However, there may have been indirect effects of impact bombardment that have yet to be explored, and we find that it is an interesting coincidence that bombardment rate pretty much drops off completely by the early Proterozoic, just as Earth began to show signs of having some oxygen in the atmosphere, and the first real evidence for any kind of major glaciation events (the Huronian snowball). Could somewhat elevated impact bombardment rate be a controlling factor in the warm and anoxic Archean? I don't know the answer to that, but were studying it.
What (Score:2)
That makes no sense. Early in Earth's life it was a molten ball of lava because it was just forming and it had a heavy atmosphere since volcanoes spit out green house gasses like crazy.
As far as I knew early in Earth's life it was extremely hot, as even after life starting it was far far hotter then now and far too hot to have snow/ice.
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Yes, that's the paradox: the early Earth was warmer than it "should" have been, given what we (think we) know about solar output, greenhouse gases, etc. at the time.
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yeah don't volcanos have massive gas output?
We are a "snowball Earth", but life changed that (Score:2)
We have been a "snowball Earth", but life changed that some 2-3 billion years ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryogenian [wikipedia.org]
Without life, Earth would probably have remained a snowball Earth.
What is the problem?
I am quite skeptical about this (Score:5, Interesting)
Chaos theory when gravitation is involved is not so chaotic as one could expect: the KAM theorem tells us that multi-body systems governed by gravitation law have intrinsic stability regions.
Re:I am quite skeptical about this (Score:4, Insightful)
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O.M.G. you are a genius!
PRAY FOR MORE OIL! God will provide my brothers!
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Believe what you want, as long as you don't try to shove it someone else's throat and that includes kids at school, who am I to say that your bearded imaginary friend on his fluffy cloud isn't as great a buddy as my friend Harvey over here?
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In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
And as an afterthought, He created the sun.
And the moon to rule the night, though for some reason it spends half its time in the daytime sky.
The problem I have with a lot of people is I don't try to shove my belief in god on them
Remind us who brought this nonsense up?
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I'm not an astrophysicist, but I'll respond to the part about the amount of energy 'to push the Earth away'. It's all about conservation of momentum. If one planet moves closer to the sun, something else has to move out. Big Jupiter might move in a little by pulling a small planet like earth or Mars out a lot. No energy is 'lost'. One might even argue that energy is not even used, just passed around. To give a relatively simple example of how the motions of the planets are more complicated than the s