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Originally Posted by alatar
Or was it that they knew nothing of the cycling of water? And, without the evidence of big buckets rising to the heavens or the appearance of a large sprinkling can or garden hose, they just figured that all of the water must have already been up there, and periodically God or the gods opened windows and let it pour though. Not much more mysterious than that.
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That's a rather clever explanation. Plausible too.
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Originally Posted by alatar
My uneducated guess is that it has to do with the togography and spin of the planet. More recent craters are more 'jaggy - rough,' and spew a bunch of particulate matter into the atmosphere. The Mars impact is smooth. Also, an impact with an object the size of the planet (or planetoid) Pluto surely would make Mars wobble on its axis, which it no longer does. Guess that 3.9 billion years lets you recover from such violence.
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According to catastrophists, only a couple thousand years (or even less) is required for a planet's rotation and revolution to stabilize, because of how plasma fields and magnetic fields of the other bodies (relatively) near the planet function. For example, Venus is recorded by many ancient cultures as having been THE COMET per excellence, and now is a relatively stable planet (not a stable atmosphere mind you - that takes longer).