[meteorite-list] 2003 EL61, IN PERSON

From: MexicoDoug <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed Sep 20 07:59:14 2006
Message-ID: <003001c6dcac$04aa67c0$f0cd5ec8_at_0019110394>

Alternate title of this post for the interested:
How 2 Molecules Initiated the Solar System, Simple Assumptions behind the
Accretion Disk by a "Layman", The Folly of the "Orbit Clearing" Criterion,
and IAU Disconnect from the Genesis Starting with the Pre-Solar Nebula
(opinion), and why Jupiter is so Special by Random Occurrence

Hello Sterling,

Glad to see you back on the planet debate and not being Brown's deputy cyber
sleuth!

This time I really enjoyed your comments, and agree heartily with you and
your critical comment summing up the damaging attitude in some astronomy
circles & quoting you:

'"NOW, we know it all." It's only been 14 years since we found the first
"TNO." Again, largely due to a substantial improvement in the technology. We
are just now having our eyes opened wider, again. I don't the process is
over. I think it's just starting.'

No math from me this time since I think these are stochastic collision
processes and not definite closed form solutions, so they need completely
different statistic mechanics type approach.

Let me add my "spin" on your post, from a layman's point of view who is too
lazy to study what's really beyond this. You commented: "IAU dump Mercury
from the Honor Roll of Planets and assign it to Brian Marsden's care, if
that happens...The Nine, no, Eight, no, SEVEN planets of The Solar System!"

I'd naively say if we must take this route it might be worthwhile
considering SIX planets after dumping Mercury and Mars. It is pretty clear
to me from a clean dynamical view that it be want to get prissy on the
planets, that something in the dynamical formation favors pairs, i.e., twins
of planets in a stable configuration. So you get the Venus/Earth pair, then
the Jupiter/Saturn pair, and finally the Uranus/Neptune pair.
Venus is 81% Earth's mass
Jupiter is 330% Saturn's mass
Uranus is 82% Neptune's mass

I won't talk further about the "pairs" as I am not sure I can back it with
standard science. Continuing, the inner planet should be smaller since it
has less of a ring to clear out. That fails with Jupiter.

Jupiter is an anomaly, but in statistical problems this is not really at
issue since it just happened in a continuum of possibilities. Mars and all
the asteroids in the main belt, and possibly including Terra's original Moon
impactor probably would have been another planetary pair, between Earth and
Jupiter, that principally all got eaten by Jupiter because of a few chance
occurrences a few billion years ago that just as well could have left a
planet in the asteroid belt - a classic science fiction type scenario that
you go in a time machine and toss one small meteoroid out 4.4 billion years
ago and the Solar System, like a universe of dominos falls out in a
different way. Really - this could lead up to one chance collision in that
zone that sent more material to Jupiter. I think logic works here a little:
If everything formed out of the presolar nebula - why the Dickens is Jupiter
so big? It was all a relatively uniform nebula supposedly and then
something happened to make Jupiter snowball. No preconceptions allowed!
Probably a simple accident and no fancy proto-photosphere radius crazy
explanation. That leaves Mars an asteroid as much as Ceres. If this is
hard to believe, just look at Sterling's logic of "clearing orbits" which is
currently in vogue. Mar's got a much bigger hunk than earth yet is a
shrimpy size. Totally out of wack! All that material in that little space
around the Sun that purportedly made Venus and Earth, and then you need to
go all the way to Jupiter to find anything of significant mass? As a layman
on this issue, here's where I think the current folks in IAU voting for the
"forever and ever solution" Jay Pasachoff so melancholically stated have
fallen flat on their faces. Grinding out big models and complex mathematics
doesn't even serve up doo-doo if you don't start from first principles - and
I think this is part of what is lacking in the current planet problem and at
the heart of the annoyance of the whole thing.

So truly, Mars and Ceres are the best candidates to be dwarf planets based
on a simple density argument. Mars should be, for argument sake 82% the
size of Ceres and they should both be quite a lot larger than Earth from a
Aristotelian harmony in prediction.

The fact that Ceres was named a dwarf planet, but Mars not, can only mean to
me that a bright Mars in Earth's sky makes it a planet. If Ceres were twice
the size (but smaller than Pluto), it would be a Planet no matter how much
rubble circulated with it. How could one possibly say no, with Jupiter in
its shadow, a monster by random processes, calling the gravitational shots?

So we get to Pluto. Too small, in orbital resonance, too inclined, not
clearing it's zone (BS), too cold, too far, whatever chance variable you
like. Really we need to again go back to first principals for the layman.
It's round, its accreted, its in a stable orbit, and it probably has some
sort of differentiation - but no one really knows exactly what (We will
check that with New Horizons, though, so what's the haste, oh, right Mike
Brown et al need to name their objects so screw it Pluto's not a planet, now
we don't have to deal with the nature of the Solar System before we
recognize the new discoveries).

Let's go back to the formation of the Solar System from it's postulated
pre-solar nebula. First, review what happened according to popular belief
backed up from direct observations of other stellar nurseries around the
galaxy. There was a dark cloud of matter. Something disturbed it and drops
coalesced like rain...in space...and gravitational attraction made sure a
gravitational storm was to come. Wherever this seeding first occurred in
the nebula, that tiny imperfection, those two molecules that first stuck
together - they determined the center of the Sun and everything we
know...that's where gravitational condensation first took off.

A huge gaseous proto-Sun was formed that was less dense than the lightest
super giant. Slowly at first it formed a nicely gravitational spherical
bubble, first enlarging until it reached the threshold to recede faster
than it grew. That's natural, as mass would grow as a cube,
but...attraction only as a square. The compression began. As more and more
coalesced, the gravity became stronger and stronger, and matter from the
center to Neptune or thereabout heated up greatly and started spinning as it
contracted. Then we are to believe with probability, the spinning got
faster and faster as it shrunk more and more. Suddenly the pressure was so
great and the radiating energy not enough that nuclear fusion 'ignited' as
things got so dizzying that this spin oddly created a plane and perhaps spit
material out of the system through the spin axis. The centrifugal force of
spin so great that some mass stayed along the equatorial arc and that formed
what we call the accretion disk.

Just a few questions I can think barely a drop in the bucket for a
beginning...the less altered material in the outer reaches is spinning and
revolving as a result, is condensed, of course not as heated, and not having
as much orbital energy from this centrifugal event as distance increases.
Was it spinning with the core of the Sun? Yes most probably. Being further
out it was a little cooler. But the fact that it is somewhat disk or
doughnut shaped goes a long way in proving that it was part of the dizzying
formation. Some things out of plane? Fine! What's the big deal? Why does
a planet have to have been brought in line? Why does the definition need to
be re-written - planets can only be produced by the Sun's waistline? Why do
we want to insist on that? How do we know they weren't in plane before,
anyway? With such weaker attractions to the Sun the interbody interactions
are greater out there. Collisions occurred, accretion occurred. How else
could such big "planets" be found out there. It was real and it happened.

Remember Mars now. Mars didn't clean out its orbit by itself. Jupiter took
most of it. Just as it took most from "Ceres", and play havoc in that
neighborhood.

In spite of all that, Mars formed and it's there. Ceres formed and its
there. They are round and they go around the Sun within a tolerance, even.
Pluto is no different. The oddball in the Solar system isn't Pluto, it's
not Mars, not Earth, it's Jupiter who chance snowballed to a 7 AU radial
sucking ability. An alien coming from afar would pick up on this right
away. The rest are a bunch of Christmas ornaments decorating Jupiter as it
goes around the Sun. Including Pluto, and Eris (we are told is nicely
round). What kind of argument could possibly discriminate against Pluto,
Mercury, Mars...oh I see...someone has decided that round things going round
the Sun are no big deal. To be a "Planet" you need to have experienced
reached X's arbitrary centrifugal force...the Solar System bodies that
didn't are a different race of rocks. A discriminated race by the IAU
because the revolve far away and they are darker worlds. Yeah - they
associate with comets, is the common wisdom. Haven't we found enough NEO's
to realize how foolish this discrimination by association is? Because in
some Artist's conception they weren't illuminated as white hot as the dinner
plate model of the accretion disk...How pathetic of an interpretation...at
best a theoretical rewriting unnecessary, redefinition reprocessing
revisionist idea on what a planet is.

Gravity-Rounded and revolving. Asteroid? No, that's a fragment of
something bigger. Planets have 100% crust, which can be an atmosphere to
include the gas giants in the category, until someone goes and touches down
on the solid parts..

Best wishes, Doug

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sterling K. Webb" <sterling_k_webb_at_sbcglobal.net>
To: "Meteorite List" <meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Cc: "E.P. Grondine" <epgrondine_at_yahoo.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 2:41 AM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] 2003 EL61, IN PERSON


Hi, Larry, EP, List,


    What Larry is talking about is what's called the
"rollover point."

    There are more big pieces than giant pieces, more
little pieces than big pieces, more tiny pieces than
little pieces, etc. It's the "Power Law."

    For those that love a little math (but not much), it's
dN/dD ~ D^(-q). In pure theory, q is 3. If you make
D (diameter) ten times bigger, then N (number) is 10^3
or 1000 times bigger. A 100-meter ball has the volume
of 1000 10-meter balls.

    If the mass is evenly distributed in every size range,
then for every 100-meter ball, there ought to 1000 10-meter
balls. But there's a hitch. When you get down to really
tiny sizes, the "numbers" become gigantic, unrealistic.

    So the "law" fails for small sizes by predicting too
damn many. It also fails for the really big sizes because,
like Larry says, they are so good at gobbling up smaller
stuff and smashing up the rest. In addition, the presence
of large objects strongly affects the orbits of little stuff,
pumping them up in eccentricity and inclination until
they're ejected. So, it fails at both ends: not so many
small pieces, fewer medium pieces, and fewer but bigger
pieces at the top end -- that's what occurs in reality.
How do we correct for it?

    Well, the "turnover point" is the size where the numbers
of little pieces go down dramatically because of the
"demolition derby" and ejection. You just don't apply
the "power law" down there. You chop the curve off.
To correct on the big end, you change the coefficient "q"
to steepen the curve, which makes fewer but bigger pieces.
There's even a formula that relates the two factors. Way
back when (for me, the 1960's), somebody whose name
I can't remember now, elegantly proved that in an accreted
disc of objects, the correct coefficient was 3.5 instead of
3.0 if you had selected the "rollover point" by his formula.
And, it seems to work most places where accretion has
run its course completely (the local neighborhood). It
doesn't work for the Asteroid Belt; it never accreted.

    The folks that theorize that the Kuiper Belt is "mass-poor"
say that for the Kuiper Belt, the correct coefficient is 4.0, or
maybe 4.5 (because that produces a depleted Kuiper Belt
with no tiny little pieces and a very limited number of big
ones, just like their theory predicts -- what a coincidence!)
They are saying that the Kuiper Belt is "over-accreted."

    The X-ray occultation result, however, can be matched
to various "power law" curves and it fits best with much
lower "q" coefficients with a lower "rollover point." This,
if true (I'm being so diplomatic here, since I obviously
think it is), suggests that the Kuiper Belt is instead actually
incompletely accreted, which is just what logic of geometry
suggests (as in my "ballroom" analogy).

    The problem is also compounded with another: should
these "extended disc" objects be considered part of the
Kuiper Belt accretion zone (completely accreted or not),
or are they a first glimpse of something totally new and
only partially discovered? As I said, the inner edge of
an Outer Outer System? Does our Sun have a "warped"
disc system?

    For thousands of years, up until 1781, the solar system
ended at Saturn. The thought of looking for more of it
never occured to anybody. When Herschel discovered
Uranus, he wasn't looking for planets. It happened entirely
because of a techological advance: the telescope. In 150
more years, the solar system stretched all the way to Pluto.
After that excitement, planet hunting became a joke again.
Why do human beings always settle back and say, "NOW,
we know it all." It's only been 14 years since we found the
first "TNO." Again, largely due to a substantial improvement
in the technology. We are just now having our eyes opened
wider, again. I don't the process is over. I think it's just
starting.

    One can be sure that if anybody finds something beyond
Neptune that's bigger than Mercury, the whole planet debate
will boil up like crazy. I have no doubt the dynamicists will
demand that the IAU dump Mercury from the Honor Roll of
Planets and assign it to Brian Marsden's care, if that happens...
The Nine, no, Eight, no, SEVEN planets of The Solar System!


Sterling K. Webb
Received on Wed 20 Sep 2006 07:57:56 AM PDT