It was in the news this week that Theia is believed to have originated in the inner Solar System. Theia was a planet, about the size of Mars, that once collided with earth and shattered into pieces. The pieces continued in orbit around the sun, alongside the earth, until they merged together by their mutual gravity to form the moon.
Let's review this posting about my hypothesis that there is a connection between Theia and Mercury. More has been added to it.
There is a saying about "putting two and two together". Why don't we see if we can apply it today?
It is widely believed that a planetary object once collided with earth. The fragments of this object collected back together by gravity to form the moon. The object has been named "Theia". There is also believed to be parts of Theia embedded in earth's mantle.
There is reason to believe that the moon formed from such a collision. First, the moon lacks a large iron core like the planets have. Iron is as far as the ordinary fusion process goes, in the star that preceded the sun that exploded in a supernova. This is why iron is so abundant in the inner Solar System. It is the most abundant element on earth by mass. We know that the moon is made of rock, lacking a large iron core, because it is 1/64 the volume of the earth but only 1/81 the mass of the earth. The moon also has practically no magnetic field, which is created by an iron core.
Another reason for believing that the moon formed from fragments is how it's surface gravity varies from place to place. This actually caused the first astronauts that landed on the moon to miss their intended landing site by several km.
My geology theory expands on this concept of Theia to explain the continents as part of the planetary object that remained on earth, instead of being hurtled back into space to form the moon. An abbreviated version of the geology theory, on this blog "Geology Theory With Satellite Imagery And Maps", March 2024.
But how could such a mass of rock like Theia have formed in the Solar System without an iron core? This would be completely unlike the rest of the inner Solar System. Or is what remains of Theia, including an iron core, still out there somewhere?
Now let's go to another mystery in the inner Solar System, that of the planet Mercury. The smallest and closest planet to the sun has the opposite mystery to the missing iron core of the moon. The iron core of Mercury occupies a much higher proportion of the planet's cross section than that of earth. Mercury is sometimes referred to as the "Iron Planet". Mercury's rocky mantle and crust takes up a much lower proportion of it's cross section than that of earth.
The following diagram represents the cross section of the earth. The inner red circle is the iron core and the outer blue circle is the rocky mantle and crust.
Something else that is interesting is that Mercury has undergone a tremendous impact in it's past. There is an impact crater, known as Caloris, that is one-third of the diameter of the planet. The impact was so great that it distorted the terrain on the diametrically opposite side of the planet. The crater is said to be from relatively recently in the planet's history, because it doesn't contain as many craters as the terrain outside the crater, but this could be due to a factor like lava emerging from the crater and possibly the crater is from the impact with earth.
I think this deserves some consideration because it is just "putting two and two together".
THE OUTER PLANETS
With the connection between Theia and Mercury, let's now have a look at the possibility of a similar connection in the outer Solar System. There are two mysteries in the outer Solar System, and I wonder if there could be a connection between them caused by an impact resembling that of Theia.
The first mystery is Uranus. This is the third largest planet, after Jupiter and Saturn. The other planets have their rotational axis fairly close to perpendicular to their plane of revolution around the sun. The earth's axis has a considerable tilt of 23.5 degrees. This is what causes the seasons. But the axis of Uranus has an extreme tilt of nearly 98 degrees.
It has long been presumed that the planet must have been "knocked on it's side" by some kind of collision. What I think happened is that there was a collision, and the added mass unbalanced the planet's rotation. To regain stability, the planet shifted on it's axis so that one of the poles was centered on the added mass. Since the tilt of the axis is more than 90 degrees, there must have been at least two separate impacts and axial shifts. This is very similar to what I proposed in my geology theory of the earth, as referenced above.
The second mystery is Neptune and Pluto. Neptune is the next planet after Uranus. The orbits of Neptune and Pluto, around the sun, are in a resonance of 3:2. Pluto orbits the sun twice for each three orbits of Neptune. The two are also connected in that the orbit of Pluto crosses that of Neptune. This means that, for a time, Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune. The general conclusion is that Pluto was once a moon of Neptune.
The obvious conclusion is that a planet-sized object, something like Theia in the inner Solar System, approached from further out in space. It's gravity transferred some of it's orbital energy to Pluto, which was then a moon of Neptune. The higher the orbit of an object the greater it's orbital energy. This broke Pluto away from Neptune's gravity, although it continued in an orbit around the sun that was coordinated with Neptune.
The object's loss of some orbital energy caused it to fall inward, closer to the sun, where it collided with Uranus, probably breaking into at least two pieces first.
This is very similar to the scenario that I proposed for the inner Solar System and both are just "putting two and two together".
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