h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Written 21/04/2007
Has anyone given any thought to the fact that the great canyons on Mars appear to look exactly like a grazing meteor strike. (From a photo seen on ~{!.~}Sky at Night' program in UK some months ago, but can be found by typing Mars into Search and selecting entries that show images.) I have not included any images as they may be copyrighted.

This would explain a lot of things about the planet.

1. The lack of water. It was extruded into space by the meteor(s), and the remaining water now forms part of the atmosphere and ice caps. If you look at the northern side of the canyon you can see where water has rushed in down the side, eroding it extensively in one place.
We~{!/~}re discovering that the sea, and lakes here on earth, can hold vast quantities of Carbon dioxide, (see articles on consolidating CO2 into the sea, and lakes leaking CO2, killing people round them in Africa (National Geographic Articles))

2. The lack of atmosphere, it was also blown into space by the impact.

3. The resulting rock and debris mostly fell back to the planet forming all the small pock marks that cover the southern part of the planet, notice that there are far fewer pock marks over the top half of the planet (from looking at the map-of-mars found on the internet under Mars exploration).

4. When we send satellites to Mars, a lot of them don~{!/~}t make it. They are probably colliding with debris that still circles the planet, but is to small for us to detect from earth.
Look at the photos returned from the landers, they show a surface covered in scattered jagged rock, jagged rock doesn~{!/~}t occur under water, it~{!/~}s smoothed pebbles, this is some of the debris torn out from the graze, the smaller stuff that landed and only slightly buried or just lay on the surface and the winds have exposed it.

5. Where did this grazing meteor come from? Possibly from the fifth planet (asteroid belt) when it was destroyed, this is probably the source of the moons, and a large part of it was probably swallowed by Jupiter.
Is the red spot a storm created by a large fragment hitting Jupiter and plunging to depths that are still reacting to the effects?

Has anyone tried to work out when the asteroids were a planet by taking all of them and moving them backwards, including those that are in irregular orbits around the sun, till they all converge within a position that would equate to a planet?
Other than the star seen at the time of Jesus~{!/~} birth, are there any records of bright events that might point to the collision and destruction of this planet in man~{!/~}s history, or are we looking at something that happen prior to mankind?

I'm just an interested observer applying logic to what I see and hear, but would like others opinions or ideas about the feasibility of this having occurred.

I've posted this to the Mars exploration team some time ago, and also to Sky at Night. I originally posted this under alternate writing as I was new to h2g2.
I~{!/~}ve also posted this at A413876.

I believe that the theory that the asteroids originated from the destruction of a planet has been disproved. Simulations of the formation of solar systems show that you always get an asteroid belt when there is a planet as big as Jupiter in the system. Its gravity and resonance effects prevents the planetesimals from joining up to form a bigger planet.