Chapter 10: The Moon

Let's start with a look at Pluto, the most distant planet in the solar system. It has a large elliptical orbit inclined about 17 degrees to the plane of the solar system. Since its rotational axis is also inclined almost sideways, Pluto is believed to be of a different origin than the other planets. The second farthest from the Sun is Neptune which has an unique moon called Triton. It is unique in that it revolves around its planet in the opposite direction of all the other moons in the solar system.

Since Pluto and Triton have many features in common, it is thought that are of common origin somewhere in the outskirts of or beyond the solar system that wandered in, and eventually Pluto became a planet and Triton a satellite of Neptune.

The next planet in is Uranus, which carries obvious evidence of a large asteroid collision. Unlike Pluto, there is no doubt that Uranus belongs to the solar system, yet its rotational axis is inclined 98 degrees, so it is rotating almost on its side, and its moon is also revolving on this tilted axis. In addition, its magnetic axis is inclined 60 degrees from its rotational axis and directed 30 degrees away from its center.

Currently its thought that these features must be traces of a great collision with an astronomical body entering the solar system. To lend further credence to this, there is a huge scratch-like mark on Miranda, one of Uranus' moons.

As can be seen, there is clear evidence of unknown astronomical bodies intruding into the solar system.

Perhaps it was one of these objects that suddenly slowed down the Earth's rotation at the end of the Cretaceous. Perhaps the same object knocked over Uranus, scratched Miranda, and put the brakes on Earth.

If so, where is that object now? Did it disappear into the far reaches of the solar system? Not at all! The offender is right by us, still shining its romantic light upon us.

Yes, it's none other than our own satellite, the Moon. The Moon is a large satellite in relation to the Earth, and its origin has been one of the biggest mysteries of the solar system. Of the many theories the most reasonable one is the "capture theory," where the Moon is seen as an extra-solar object captured by the gravity of the Earth.

In addition, the angular motion of the Earth and the Moon is larger than that of the other planets, because the Moon had robbed the Earth of its high rotational energy when it settled into orbit. As it did, it must have brought with it many smaller objects, and these eventually fell onto the Earth. Among them was the giant asteroid that hit the Earth at the end of the Cretaceous. In fact, a meteorite crater called Shiva was recently found in India, with a diameter of 600km and dating back 65 million years. This shows that it was just the one asteroid impact at that period. It is believed that the meteorite that formed Shiva was about 40km and produced much more energy on impact than the one that hit the Yucatan peninsula. It is most unlikely that there would several such huge impacts occurring by coincidence; there must have been a solar system-level occurrence, such as the capture of the Moon.

The dinosaurs had already been declining in numbers due to the sudden change in gravity when they were finished off by the asteroid impact.

I have been explaining how the most probable reason for the gravity change was the decrease in the Earth's rotational speed. However, scientists studying data from the Pioneer 10 and 11 NASA planetary probes recently revealed a surprising finding. These probes are approaching the edge of the solar system, and it seems that they are slowing down. After studying all possible reasons they came to the conclusion that some unknown force was acting upon these probes. If this can be proved, then the law of gravity has to be looked at. And the possibility of change in the gravitational constant would suddenly become very real. In any case, in the current 1 gee world, we can't imagine such gigantic creatures as the dinosaurs could ever have existed. Even dinosaur researchers didn't believe that these huge sauropods could have walked on land and therefore had long thought that they lived in marshy water.

Can you imagine a world where pterosaurs as big as airplanes flapping their wings across the sky and creatures as large as Godzilla roaming about the land?

Translated by Rie Ishida