[meteorite-list] fire flies or flying fires

[Sterling K. Webb]

Hi,


    Ring systems (former ones, anyway) have been proposed for the Earth.

    Go to archives or your own Inbox if you keep as much stuff as I do, and find
a two part post by Graham Christensen of "The Formation of Tektites from a
Terrestrial Ring Arc By J. Hayawardena" on March 27 of this year (2005).

    John O'Keefe postulated a ring system for the Eocene (35 million years ago)
that went into orbital decay (forming tektites with each breakup).
Hayawardena's ideas are more elaborate.

    O'Keefe was inspired to his idea by the phenomenon of the Chant Trace of
1913 which appears to have been the sub-orbital decay of many small bodies in a
ring around the entire planet, creating one of the largest and most unusual
meteor displays of all time.  It actually happened, but is largely unexplained.

    I posted a long description of the Chant Trace event on March 26, 2005, and
Graham (it was new to him!) posted the Hayawardena piece (it was new to me!) the
next day!

    Basically, anything orbiting the Earth inside the Moon's orbit is long-term
unstable because the Moon perturbs inner objects to increase their eccentricity
without limit until they smack into... the Moon!

    This is why all the gigantic lava-flowed impact basins are on the side of
the Moon that faces the Earth and there's so few on the far side.  Most of those
ancient huge impactors were probably in orbit around the Earth back in its wild
and woolly youth!

    No picture of the Earth taken by any spacecraft near and far away in any
wavelength of light or radar shows any traces of an extended dust ring, which is
why I kind of doubt any exists.

    But I do like the thought of a stroll down the beach of an Eocene night by
the brighter than moonlight glow of The Rings!  Even if they are imaginary...


Sterling K. Webb
----------------------------------------------------

Chris Peterson wrote:

> I doubt there is a stable solution for a ring system in a binary planet
> system like the Earth/Moon, unless possibly they are very close to the
> Earth. But if they are close to the Earth, they would show up by interacting
> with geosynchronous satellites. AFAIK there is no difference in
> meteorite/micrometeorite impact risk for geosynchronous satellites versus
> those in other orbits.
>
> Not sure what connection you are suggesting between a ring system and debris
> collecting at Lagrangian points. Those seem unrelated to me.
>
> Chris
>
> *****************************************
> Chris L Peterson
> Cloudbait Observatory
> http://www.cloudbait.com
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dawn & Gerald Flaherty" <grf2 at verizon.net>
> To: <Meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com>
> Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 6:28 PM
> Subject: [meteorite-list] fire flies or flying fires
>
> > List,
> > I once asked the List if the Earth could have as yet undetected
> > FAINT[obviously faint enough to have as yet evaded detection] debris
> > rings.
> > I don't mean to beat a dead horse here but, I'll ask the list again to
> > consider this possibility given the various optical phenomena [Kordylewski
> > Clouds, Lagrangian Points,] yet fully explained and the difficulties
> > observing potential rings due to Solar interference for one.
> > By way of a poor analogy, Flying Gnats "glow" bright when their angle to
> > the
> > sun and our eye are "fortunate". At other times of the day you'll swallow
> > or
> > breathe them before you ever see them. Swallows dart around feasting on
> > these tiny critters all day long as they make flight adjustments to
> > highlight their prey.
> > Points of observation are everything.
> > Hope I don't raise anyone's ire. Just love to speculate for fun and
> > profit!!
> > Jerry