![]() ![]() But there was a lot that ended up in some kind of elliptical orbit. ![]() Some probably was moving so fast that it escaped, Some certainly went into orbits that didn't have enough energy and so were small skinny ellipses and the matter fell back to Earth. So when (and if) the grand collision happened, there was a huge amount of matter that was ejected up into space. But for an object that is several hundred thousand km from Earth, there is a quite a wide range of possible elliptical orbits. Those orbits will be elliptical, and it is possible that the ellipse is skinny and "eccentric" enough for the two bodies to collide when they are closest to each other. If you put two objects in space, and give them a velocity relative to each other, then provided that velocity is less than the escape velocity (at their relative distance) the two objects will orbit each other. ![]() There isn't a "Goldilocks speed" for orbit. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |