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I have a theory, wat if the astoroid belt in between earth and mars was a planet until recently and that venus,earth and mars all orbited it as moons? In ancient myths and legends they speak of venus, mars and earth as having a kind of battle depicted as gods and godesses. If the planet X was destroyed somehow ( would like a theory on this ) this would explain a sudden end of the last ice age and how the greeks and egyptians spoke of how they could easily see venus and mars with no optical aids. Its interesting how mars is moving away from the earth! The moon is a recent arrival also nothing is mentioned about the moon until 200 BC or so.
Would like some feed back on this subject as it raises questions!
Rob
Firstly there is simply not enough matter in the asteroid belt to make a decent sized planet. For Venus, Mars and Earth to orbit it it would have had to have been huge. In fact there is no where near enough matter to make up a body the size of the moon.
It is not surprising that the Greeks and Romans could see Venus and Mars clearly with out optical aids, you still can. They realised they were different from the stars because they did not remain fixed in relation to each other as stars do (in fact planet comes fron the Greek for wanderer).
The evidence points to the moon having been created by a collision between the proto-Earth and a Mars sized object billions of years ago.