Moons of Saturn

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by brantc</i>
<br />Purely hypothetical. If the was a moon around Saturn that was growing due to plasma deposition, how big would it have to be to escape Saturn? How long would it take? I dont know what you could use for starting numbers as far as amount of plasma deposited per year...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">A moon's orbit is independent of its own mass. Growing in mass would never lead to escape. What is the purpose of your question? -|Tom|-

I was wondering if its possible that the Earth used to be a moon of a larger planet like Saturn or Jupiter or the 5th planet. I was thinking it might be possible that a moon might grow and move outward.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by brantc</i>
<br />I was wondering if its possible that the Earth used to be a moon of a larger planet like Saturn or Jupiter or the 5th planet. I was thinking it might be possible that a moon might grow and move outward.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The natural moons of the gas giant planets are low-density ices all the way through. Earth has the density of rock at its surface and goes up in density in its interior, with lots of iron and uranium in its core.

The fission origin hypothesis makes more sense. See metaresearch.org/solar%20system/origins/...nal-solar-system.asp

In this fission model, Earth is not a gaseous planet because it does not have enough mass to hold light gases such as hydrogen and helium, which quickly escape into space, leaving only heavier elements to form the planet. But Earth is otherwise roughly of solar composition. By contrast, the moons of the gas giant planets fissioned from those planets rather than from the Sun, and therefore lack heavy elements. -|Tom|-

TVF, I think if you did the math you would see hydrogen and helium cannot excape from Earth's gravity. I might have did the math wrong so if you happen to do the math can you explain why these elements can get out of the atmosphere? Don't they have to be accelerated?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jim</i>
<br />TVF, I think if you did the math you would see hydrogen and helium cannot escape from Earth's gravity. I might have done the math wrong so if you happen to do the math can you explain why these elements can get out of the atmosphere? Don't they have to be accelerated?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">I don't know what "math" you are referring to. But Earth is observed to have a hydrogen tail. So hydrogen is definitely escaping on an on-going basis. I presume that, because the tail is pointed away from the Sun (as for comets), solar radiation pressure and the solar wind are the accelerating mechanisms you speak of. -|Tom|-

The Earth is in the solar wind which is protons-is it not? The protons are what hydrogen is,right? The stuff you are refering to is stuff from the sun and not from Earth. The math is the speed temperature of particles. Hydrogen at the surface of Earth has a speed of ~4,000m/s or whatever the math says. The excape velocity is a bit more than that so how do you propose the hydrogen excapes? I know it is a mistake to ask this but I'm asking anyway.