Mars impacting Jupiter

[Marcus MacGregor]

I have looked at the topography of Mars and have come to the conclusion that it was formed primarily by a cataclysmic event with Jupiter.

I made a video to show basically what I am suggesting.

 

 

Any thoughts?

[JCP]

So... how did Mars move from the orbit of Jupiter to where it is today? That is a distance of nearly 4 AU that it has to cover in an astonishingly short amount of time!

 

I would expect Mars to either become a moon of Jupiter, or just simply gobbled up.

[Marcus MacGregor]

Excellent point. The simple answer is that this happened a long time ago. The timeframe I am focusing on right now is the Late Heavy Bombardment period, 3.8 Billion years ago.

This gives an annual decay rate of Mars's orbit of 145 meters, which I can walk in a few minutes (some people can do it in seconds but I'm not that fit)

This seems like a reasonable number, since it is well below the amount of chaos expected in an orbit.

[Moontanman]

In your video you seem to be suggesting some quite improbable events, can you give us a written description of exactly what you are suggesting? I once read of a idea that asserted that Mars was once the moon of a large terrestrial planet that orbited where Mars is now, somehow (the mechanism was unclear) the primary planet was destroyed and most of the material was ejected from the solar system (the rest became the asteriods) and Mars went into independent orbit around the sun. Your video seems to suggest Mars got close enough to Jupiter to have it's atmosphere stripped away, i would think this would result in the complete destruction of Mars and the resulting debris being added to Jupiter.

[JCP]

Excellent point. The simple answer is that this happened a long time ago. The timeframe I am focusing on right now is the Late Heavy Bombardment period, 3.8 Billion years ago.

This gives an annual decay rate of Mars's orbit of 145 meters, which I can walk in a few minutes (some people can do it in seconds but I'm not that fit)

This seems like a reasonable number, since it is well below the amount of chaos expected in an orbit.

 

But how would it get away from Jupiter's gigantic gravitational field?

[Airbrush]

How could Mars migrate from the vicinity of Jupiter, through the asteroid belt, to where it is today?

Edited June 4, 2011 by Airbrush

[Ophiolite]

Perhaps you missed my more detailed response to your concept and request to explain why it wouldn't work when we discussed the point on another forum. For your convenience, here are my concerns. I await your response with interest.

 

1. Mars could only be captured by Jupiter if a third body were involved. What was this third body.

2. There is no plausible mechanism by which Mars could be captured, then released by Jupiter. If you believe there is please show the maths of the process.

2. You state that once captured, Jupiter begins to "bend and warp" the planet, creating the Highlands and Lowlands. Please explain how this "bending and warping" creates a lowland area with a thin crust and relatively few craters and a highland area with a thick crust and many craters. Further explain how this "bending and warping" caused residual magnetism to be found only in the Highlands.

3. You state "as the little planet passes into the shadow of the giant planet, its surface and atmosphere have become a turbulent mess". Your implication is that passage into the shadow is responsible for this turbulent mess. Since the planet will be passing in and out of shadow in a period of days this statement is ambiguous at best.

4. Demonstrate mathematically that the distance at which L1 enters the body of Mars is greater than the Roche limit.

5. Why will this situation, supposing for a moment that it can actually occur, "carve a giant crater into its surface"? Where is this giant crater on Mars today?

6. Explain how "thousands" of asteroids can now "hover in the no-man's land between the two planets".

7. Then, miraculously it seems, Mars moves away from Jupiter and the asteroids stop hovering! Really, if you had even a passing grasp of orbital mechanics you would not make such assinine statements. If you believe I am mistaken show me the maths - in simplified and approximate form if you wish - that demonstrates I am wrong.

8. You state that the majority of these asteroids return to Mars, but a proportion of them go on to form the asteroid belt. Please explain how you reconcile an age for the asteroids that is greater than the age of Mars.

9. The sound quality of your video, coupled with your nasal congestion make it diffcult to make out some sections. You appear to say that some of the asteroids are not the familiar irons and stones, but are made of "air and water". Certainly you say that as they hit they will cause "high velocity air to rush from the Highlands to the Lowlands". Please explain how air was retained in low mass asteroid.

10. Explain how the impact of asteroids would cause the "formation of massive volcanoes". Well over one hundred impact structures are known on the Earth. None of them caused any vulcanism.

 

Any one of these ten points is sufficient to invalidate your speculation. Together they render it simply wrong.

[Marcus MacGregor]

Those ten points were addressed in the other forum. Since we have an active discussion there I will focus on the other people here.

 

 

Mars was able to get away from Jupiter gravitational field since it has the momentum gained by falling into Jupiter's field.

This is much like comets are able to escape the Sun's even larger gravity well, there is no (very,very little) drag to slow them down.

[Marcus MacGregor]

This is an odd news report from today...

 

 

New solar system formation models indicate that Jupiter's foray robbed Mars of mass

June 5, 2011

 

article

 

Planetary scientists have long wondered why Mars is only about half the size and one-tenth the mass of Earth. As next-door neighbors in the inner solar system, probably formed about the same time, why isn't Mars more like Earth and Venus in size and mass? A paper published in the journal Nature this week provides the first cohesive explanation and, by doing so, reveals an unexpected twist in the early lives of Jupiter and Saturn as well.

 

Dr. Kevin Walsh, a research scientist at Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®), led an international team performing simulations of the early solar system, demonstrating how an infant Jupiter may have migrated to within 1.5 astronomical units (AU, the distance from the Sun to the Earth) of the Sun, stripping a lot of material from the region and essentially starving Mars of formation materials.

 

"If Jupiter had moved inwards from its birthplace down to 1.5 AU from the Sun, and then turned around when Saturn formed as other models suggest, eventually migrating outwards towards its current location, it would have truncated the distribution of solids in the inner solar system at about 1 AU and explained the small mass of Mars," says Walsh. "The problem was whether the inward and outward migration of Jupiter through the 2 to 4 AU region could be compatible with the existence of the asteroid belt today, in this same region. So, we started to do a huge number of simulations.

 

"The result was fantastic," says Walsh. "Our simulations not only showed that the migration of Jupiter was consistent with the existence of the asteroid belt, but also explained properties of the belt never understood before."

 

The asteroid belt is populated with two very different types of rubble, very dry bodies as well as water-rich orbs similar to comets. Walsh and collaborators showed that the passage of Jupiter depleted and then re-populated the asteroid belt region with inner-belt bodies originating between 1 and 3 AU as well as outer-belt bodies originating between and beyond the giant planets, producing the significant compositional differences existing today across the belt.

 

The collaborators call their simulation the "Grand Tack Scenario," from the abrupt change in the motion of Jupiter at 1.5 AU, like that of a sailboat tacking around a buoy. The migration of the gas giants is also supported by observations of many extra-solar planets found in widely varying ranges from their parent stars, implying migrations of planets elsewhere in universe.

 

More information: "A Low Mass for Mars from Jupiter's Early Gas-Driven Migration," Nature, June 5, 2011.