Re: The Saga Continues

Robert Carnegie wrote:
On Nov 30, 2:55 am, "\(M\)-adman" <g...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Robert Carnegie wrote:
(M)-adman wrote:
What is next? Will the MOON be found to influence The Origin Of
Species?

Tides help life along with getting out of the ocean onto dry land,
and they're the result of the moon's gravity. If God had remembered
to create plants in the water in the bible (wich he doesn't do),
the tides would have helped to push them onto land.

Would you mind explaining further?

I don't have huge knowledge of this, and some speculation is involved,
but certainly /our/ species' evolutionary history, and most animals',
reaches back to exclusive ocean-dwelling forms. (Long before the time
of dinosaurs.) On reflection, the intertidal zone, as we are reminded
to call it, as a habitat, a place to live in its own right, a halfway-
house between sea and land, in a more sensible outlook than just
supposing that the tide washed sea creatures onto the land and left
them to struggle. Having said that, the intertidal zone doesn't
appear heavily populated now, but maybe that's because land-dwellers
have taken over - including predatory birds. Species that don't have
to stay there - to sleep, to lay eggs or give birth. (Although seals
kind of do - well, not in the tide zone, probably. They don't go for
water births? Well, I suppose they couldn't lift the kid out so it
can breathe. Anyway...)

Without the Moon, there still would be some kind of shoreline - the
Sun exerts a significant tidal force - and even weather generates
waves and some degree of washing on the shore, so I don't know
necessary the Moon is. The question of tides came up in a radio
documentary about ways in which the Moon may indeed have been
important to life on the Earth, so if they'd said "It isn't
particularly important" then you'd wonder why the programme was made.
It was the BBC and you'd expect them not to be too speculative, but
even so.

Our relative giant moon (compared to moons of other planets) also has
slowed down the Earth's rotation; Wikipedia reckons that the day was
"about 2 hours" shorter 600 million years ago, and the Moon was
closer. I presume that means bigger tides, which if tides make a
difference, presumably made more of a difference, but apparently there
is some kind of match currently between the speed of a wave out at
sea, the rotation of the Earth, and/or the interval of tides, so we
could be seeing higher than typical right now. Wikipedia also reckons
that the theoretical height of the tide on Earth is 54 centimetres, if
a lot of oversimplifying assumptions are made, and obviously we get a
lot more than 54 cm.

Another argument presented in the same radio show is that since the
Moon appears to have been created from debris scattered by the
collision of the prototype Earth and a body one-tenth its size (Mars
sized) named Thea (afterwards), /and/ the Earth added Thea's iron core
to its own (and the Moon is made mostly of exploded "Earth", and
"Earth" retained quite a lot of Thea) - oh, did you know about this? -
that we ended up with an extra-powerful planetary magnetic field, and
enhanced protection from cosmic rays. I'm not sure if /that/ was a
problem while our ancestors lived in the deep seas, but it's a
thought.

It may sound improbable that the mostly-formed Earth was hit by one
other fairly large planet, but I've heard that in calculated computer
simulations of planet formation, a smaller companion planet often
appears at a Trojan point of a larger planet's orbit, but if the
companion gets too large compared to the other bodies in the
relationship, it leaves the Trojan point, and where do you think it's
going to go... so it may be pretty common in planets of other stars.


Thank you.

--

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