CompuServe Messages

Hi, Kameron, (If anyone else receives this message, please repost for Kameron and let me know that my software is still wonky). I have been thinking about your catastrophe model. The one with an object 10 solar masses about 2 AU away. It won't explain the formation of continents. The tidal force of the sun right now is too weak to form continents, right. Using inverse cube law (applicable to tidal forces), the tidal strength of your object is only 1.25 times the current tidal force of the sun. No rock will splinter with that! The monopole part, which changes orbits, would be (for your object) 2.5 times the current pull of the sun. The earth would change orbits drastically, but not the earth's shape. Similar analysis shows that almost any object more than a few earth diameters away could not change the shape of the earth in any significant fashion, and close collisions would drastically change the orbit.