Ice Age Theory?

Question

I was recently talking to my Dad and said this: My theory on the Ice Age (or any Ice Age) is that an object hit the moon and made the Earth wobble, ever so slightly. This caused tides to mess up and eventually the planet froze. He backed this up with mars. Mars always wobbles because there is no major moon.

I'm not sure, tho. Any ideas?

Answer 1

i think it's because of volcanoes...their exhaust contribute to the cooling of the earth's surface..
my evidence: after a year of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, temperatures worldwide has decreased dramatically...they prevent ultraviolet rays coming down to earth...
..also, my teacher told me that it would cause another ice age if volcanoes in the world erupt occasionally

Answer 2

Some recent results from drilling and analyzing core samples from some of the world's oldest glaciers have convinced some scientists that we face a similar 'ice age' prospect in the not too distant future. The melting of the polar ice caps could bring more fresh water into the Atlantic Ocean and thus have an effect on the Gulf Stream, an important part of what's become known as 'The Great Conveyor Belt' which gives the northern regions of the world a temperate climate.

Answer 3

The ice ages that immediately preceded our modern period, were not the first ice ages. So, what caused the previous ones? Can't blame the moon on all of them.

Also, if an object big enough to do what you say hit the moon, we would see the results. The moon has no atmosphere and such a relatively modern crater would show obvious signs of its happening, in the form of ejecta all over the surrounding terrain.

Craters Copernicus and Tycho show ejecta "rays" that are easily visible with good binoculars, but they are known to be a few billion years old, though younger than most of the moon's. craters. A huge crater just a few million years old would be as obvious as a plook on an adolescent's nose.

Answer 4

Uh, I hate to break it to you, but the earth IS wobbling. It's just very, very slow. But it definitely oscillates, like a spinning top. That is why the north pole has changed through history.

As for ice ages being caused by asteroids, it is possible. The last asteroid (that struck the yucatan peninsula) has been credited with causing a major ice age as the atmosphere became clouded with dust and other material. This blocked out the sun for hundreds of years.

Answer 5

No truth to it whatever. No object striking the moon would have any signficant effect on the earth. The causes of the Ice Ages are obscure, but almost certainly have to do with small changes in the earth's orbit around the sun (mostly caused by perturbations by Jupiter) and changes in the atmospheric level of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Answer 6

Your Dad needs to go back to flipping burgers at Micky Dees, or whatever else he does for a living. He obviously doesn't have a clue about geology. I heard a plausible theory about the creation of the Himalaya causing a change in the Jet Stream, and causing the formation of carbonates to remove carbon from the atmosphere, thereby reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The truth be told, geoscientists are at a loss to explain the causes of glaciation during the Pleistocene.

Answer 7

there is abundant evidence of many previous ice ages which have occurred or made themselves felt to varying degrees over very long periods of time.. As such there is probably no one reason which can explain all of them.
If fact as you read about paleoclimates you get the distinct impression that they are probably the result of a number of variables all comming togather, interacting with one another to produce ice ages.
These include alot of the answers listed by others, rotational wobbles of the earth, variations in c02, volcanism, meteorites etc etc.
The natural world is a complicated place.

Answer 8

If the comment were to hit it to a derastic point the tides would change a little. if it got to close to the earth then the tides would be higher if they got to low they would be lower. But this wouldn't effect the temperature much.

Answer 9

I personally have never heard of the "moon" theory as a cause for an Ice Age.

Here is an exerpt from a wikepedia articl (source 1)

The cause of ice ages remains controversial for both the large-scale ice age periods and the smaller ebb and flow of glacial/interglacial periods within an ice age. The general consensus is that it is a combination of several important factors: atmospheric composition (the relative amounts of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, and various other gases and particulates in the atmosphere), changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun known as Milankovitch cycles (and possibly the Sun's orbit around the galaxy), the motion of tectonic plates resulting in changes in the relative location and amount of continental and oceanic crust on the Earth's surface, variations in solar output, the orbital dynamics of the Earth-Moon system, the impact of relatively large meteorites, and eruptions of supervolcanoes.

Some of these factors are causally related to each other, for example ice ages may be initiated by changes in Earth's atmosphere (especially the proportion of greenhouse gases) and and certainly cause variations in it (for example by changing the rate at which weathering removes CO2).

Discussions of causes are complicated by the fact that scientists often give more weight to explanations based on their specialism, e.g. climatologists emphasise changes in the Earth's atmosphere and geologists emphasise the positions of the continents.

I am not really sure what you mean by "major" moons, but according to wikipedia it has two moons(thought to have been captured asteriods - Source 2)

Mars has two tiny natural moons, Phobos and Deimos, which orbit very close to the planet and are thought to be captured asteroids.[28]

Both satellites were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall, and are named after the characters Phobos (panic/fear) and Deimos (terror/dread) who, in Greek mythology, accompanied their father Ares, god of war, into battle. Ares was known as Mars to the Romans.[29]

From the surface of Mars, the motions of Phobos and Deimos appear very different from that of our own moon. Phobos rises in the west, sets in the east, and rises again in just 11 hours, while Deimos, being only just outside synchronous orbit, rises as expected in the east but very slowly. Despite its 30 hour orbit, it takes 2.7 days to set in the west as it slowly falls behind the rotation of Mars, and as long again to rise.[30]

Because Phobos' orbit is below synchronous altitude, the tidal forces are lowering its orbit. Left to its own devices, it will either crash into Mars' surface or break up into a ring in about 50 million years.