Scientists Reveal the Close Relationship of the Planet Mars to Earth
Mars may be 225 million km from Earth, but scientists have discovered a connection between these two distant worlds.
Researchers at Sydney University discovered a 2.4 million year old giant whirlpool cycle in our planet’s deep ocean, which has been going on for more than 40 million years.
This intense underwater circulation is related to the gravitational interaction between Mars and Earth, so the Red Planet pulls our planet closer to the Sun every few million years. The synergy between the two planets also has quite an impact on the climate on Earth. Increased solar energy and warmer weather were found to appear during the cycle.
The research https://www.atrbpnkabserang.com/ team drilled 370 holes deep in oceans around the world to analyze sediments on the sea floor. The samples show cycles of weakening and strengthening, indicating strong circulation occurring below depth.
The Moon’s Gravitational
Lead author Dr Adriana Dutkiewicz said she and her team were surprised to find signs of sediment cycles, marking the first such evidence found in geological data.
“There is only one way to explain them: they are related to the interaction cycle of Mars and Earth orbiting the Sun,” he said as quoted by the Daily Mail.
This interaction between two planets is called ‘resonance’, which is when a pair of orbiting objects attract each other using the force of gravitational attraction, like in a game of tug of war.
Previous research assumed that Jupiter and Saturn were born because of this movement. Jupiter and Saturn circle the Sun three times during the cycle of the ringed planet.
The Moon’s gravitational pull causes ocean tides, but the new study is the first to reveal another planet impacts Earth. For our planet, this means periods of higher incoming solar radiation and a warmer climate over a 2.4 million year cycle.
The researchers found that the warm cycle correlated with increased occurrence of cracks in deep ocean records, associated with stronger deep ocean circulation.
And scientists determined that whirlpools were an important component of previous ocean warming. It is possible that this could partially mitigate the ocean stagnation that some predict will occur once the weakened AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) drives the Gulf Stream and maintains a temperate climate in Europe.
“We know there are at least two separate mechanisms that contribute to strong deep water mixing in the ocean. The AMOC is one of them, but deep ocean eddies appear to play an important role in warm climates to maintain ocean ventilation,” said study co-author Professor Dietmar Mülle.
Of course, this will not have the same effect as AMOC in terms of transporting water masses from low latitudes to high latitudes and vice versa.
“These eddies are like giant whirlpools and often reach the seabed of the abyss, resulting in seafloor erosion and large accumulations of sediment called contourites, similar to snowdrifts,” he said.
“Our 65 million years of deep ocean data show that warmer oceans have stronger deep circulation,” said Dutkiewicz.
Ancient Black Holes Can Shake the Earth and Change the Distance to the Sun
A group of scientists has discovered that some ancient black holes could change the Earth’s orbit, and change the Earth’s distance to the Sun.
A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) estimates that a mass of swirling matter, called a primordial black hole (PBH), flies past our Solar System at least once a decade. PBH movements are said to be able to disturb the Earth and Moon.
PBH, which formed shortly after the Big Bang 12.8 billion years ago, is the size of a microbe, but has the density of an asteroid that can cause Earth’s orbit to wobble.
PBH was proposed in 1947 by astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and his PhD student Bernard Carr. The two argue that in the first moments of the Big Bang, ‘viscous’ regions of extra mass may have formed in the universe and turned into black holes when they collapsed.
However, primordial black holes have not been detected in the universe. The new study is based on the theory that the universe is full of PBHs, meaning these objects must pass through our cosmic neighborhood.
The researchers calculated how close the PBH would be to a planet or Moon in our Solar System to change its movement.
The study used simulations featuring all eight planets, about 300 natural satellites of planets such as the Moon, more than 1.3 million asteroids and nearly 4,000 comets.
The team observed that if an asteroid with a mass were only two astronomical units from the Sun, the orbits of the planet and the Moon would be shaken by several meters. However, the researchers note that the shaking will not destroy our planet.
They have now developed a method to measure these gravitational shocks, in an effort to collect the first real evidence that proves the long-theorized dark matter.
Physicists have long calculated that about 85% of all the matter in the universe is dark matter, but none of this large amount has ever been detected.
Essentially, the researchers’ plan in this study is to measure the gravitational jolts that change Earth’s distance from the Moon, as well as many other well-known orbits in our Solar System to identify the small but dense dark matter that is passing through us.