Re: planets

I think you have it in a nutshell.  Planetary collisions don't
generally result in a call to your friendly State Farm representative.
They tend more towards destruction of the two bodies involved; and
would probably send both careening off into very interesting orbits,
if not into space.

It wasn't considered a really viable theory when I studied astronomy
(less than 10 years ago) for several reasons: there's no geological
evidence for a large chunk being ripped out of the Earth (such would
be a pretty damned big hole, and plate techtonics now accounts for the
Pacific (the usual stomping waters for such theories)); Earth isn't
big enough to absorb the shock of a planet sized collision in one
piece; our orbit is too nice and circular to have been the aftermath
of such a collision.

On Mon, 20 Dec 1999, Ed Heil wrote:

>(Moving even more off topic...)
>
>When I was a kid and into astronomy more than I am now, it was never
>a widely held theory that the moon was the result of a collision with
>another planet ripping a chunk out of the earth.  Is that widely
>believed now or was it just a pet theory of the makers of this show
>because it's, like, really dramatic?
>
>(ObConlang: Does your conlang have a verb which specifically
>describes massive asteroid impacts that rip a chunk off a planet and
>make it into a moon?  Why or why not?)
OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT!!!!!

Padraic.

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