Leading Theory of Solar System's Formation Just Disproven (forbes.com) 143
StartsWithABang writes: In 2005, scientists put forth the Nice Model to explain the configuration of the Solar System's planets. It was thought that the outer planets, Jupiter in particular, migrated through the inner Solar System, and were then pulled back out by the presence of the outer giants, causing the late heavy bombardment of the terrestrial planets as it crossed the asteroid belt. But not only are extra gas giants that have since been ejected required to explain the outer worlds, but the migration would have ejected the inner, terrestrial worlds, indicating that the rocky planets finished forming after the gas giants were already in place. R.I.P., Nice Model: 2005-2015.
frisyt (Score:5, Funny)
No doubt the actual article says something completely different, but I can't be arsed to read it.
Re:frisyt (Score:5, Funny)
No doubt the actual article says something completely different, but I can't be arsed to read it.
No, the actual article also just says "frisyt". Surprised me too.
Play nice! (Score:2)
tldr: It appears the 2005 explanation for the formation of our little solar system isn't completely dead;
it merely requires an additional gas giant or some other tweaking to explain the existence of the four inner rocky worlds, including earth.
It's still fascinating how advanced we are as a life form to begin to question the origin of everything.
Re:Play nice! (Score:5, Insightful)
The five senses we humans possess are those which allowed us to adapt to our environment and live in it; there is no reason for me to believe they are sufficient to explain our universe.
That is, if we are smart enough in the first place, which is very, very doubtful.
I would add to Socrates' famous quotation, "All I know is I know nothing," the phrase, "and I can't even be sure of that."
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The five senses we humans possess are those which allowed us to adapt to our environment and live in it; there is no reason for me to believe they are sufficient to explain our universe.
Very eloquently said.
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We're making a pretty good fist of it so far. There's no reason to suspect that the senses we have are not sufficient to explain the Universe and the evidence of our progress suggests that they probably are.
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Come now, we've been questioning the origin of everything since we could talk. What do you think "religion" is all about?
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Well, strictly speaking religion is a bit more about where we go to then where we came from ;D
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I'm a Buddhist, not a very good Buddhist, but one regardless. I'm going to die. I'm okay with that. Someday? My atoms will be the material that makes up a star. That is my reincarnation.
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Your molecules were once in a star, but they most likely won't ever be part of a star again since the sun isn't massive enough for a supernova.
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I'm gonna go with believing Brian Cox unless you've some sort of greater expertise?
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I doubt that Brian Cox thinks our sun will go supernova. You should check your sources again.
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The earth won't be part of that nebula though.
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Who's to say the ants have not already figured out the origins of the universe? They just lack opposable thumbs and don't care to tell us. Mayhap they've already tried to tell us or they keep it to themselves as a collective knowledge store amongst their individual groups?
Or, I could just be a little high.
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It's still fascinating how advanced we are as a life form to begin to question the origin of everything.
I'd love to agree on how amazing our advancement is but our inability to deal with real existential threats is anything but advanced.
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Or perhaps another passing star?
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IMHO, the work done in 2005 is unlikely 100% accurate or 100% inaccurate.
It did too well in some of the developmental models of the Solar System's formation to be completely discounted.
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At least the writer didn't title it "Nice Model Not So Nice After All".
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Dr. Velikovsky, you really should sign up for a named account.
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Jupiter has 90% of all non-Sun mass in th
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And? (Score:2)
So a model gets discarded because it won't work. Nothing to see here.
The proposition of a new model will make a better slashdot article.
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Of course there's something to see here. If you never hear that this model has been disproven then people can go on to throw it out as plausible later.
A theory being disproven - particularly one that was highly regarded - is very much newsworthy.
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"So a model gets discarded because it won't work. Nothing to see here."
Fortunately, this model is in a discipline which has not gone political. We can make changes to it without holding any Maoist show trials where researchers get called "deniers."
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
"So a model gets discarded because it won't work. Nothing to see here."
Fortunately, this model is in a discipline which has not gone political. We can make changes to it without holding any Maoist show trials where researchers get called "deniers."
I don't know about that. The status of Pluto seems/ed to be pretty political.
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Of course you'd say that, Pluto Denier!
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The status of Pluto seems/ed to be pretty political.
It is political, but it isn't really science. The status of Pluto amounts to classification for jargon purposes, and has no impact on the science of what Pluto is and its significance. It just amounts to what wording scientists need to use when discussing groups of solar system things in science literature. Not all classification schemes in science have the same significance in meaning, and many come down to just convenience.
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I don't know about that. The status of Pluto seems/ed to be pretty political.
Part of the problem is that star scientists voted to reclassify Pluto without involving planet scientists in the decision. Why the world should listen to them however, I have never understood.
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Because clearly someone who can't even manage to make an account is more of an expert than actual planetary scientists:
http://www.space.com/12710-plu... [space.com]
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Researchers are rarely called "deniers". That particular epithet applies to those who disregard the science because it makes them emotionally uncomfortable or might cut into their profits or something.
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Soo... This proves or disproves the Bible? (Score:5, Funny)
Can someone sum it up in a more tabloid-click-bait-like form for me?
"You won't believe how Solar system ACTUALLY formed..." or some such thing.
Re:Soo... This proves or disproves the Bible? (Score:5, Funny)
"A bunch of straight, old, white professors thought the solar system formed this way, and then a blind, black, transgender, muslim girl proved them wrong. You won't believe their reaction!"
Now I get it! (Score:2)
Thanks.
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How much more clickbait can you get than "StartsWithABang writes:" ?
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I may well pay more attention to it's submissions now, instead of binning them on seeing the attribution.
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Because 1% chance means quite unlikely.
Unless we literally get a time machine working, its unlikely that we'll be able to show EXACTLY what happened. All we can do is model it, and anything that has a very tiny chance of happening is generally thrown out unless all other potential avenues are exhausted. Otherwise, each time we say "yeah, that 1% course is possible, lets stick with that" - we're wrong 99% of the time.
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So... if you walk up to a one hundred sided die, and the face of the die shows 31. Your position is that means the die is lying because there's only a 1% chance of that happening? ... interesting.
Re: "Less than 1% chance" (Score:2)
No, the dice can be directly observed, so this is not a good example. A more appropriate example would be you guessing that the dice was 31 without observing it. So it is reasonable to belive there's a high probability that you're wrong.
Interesting cosmic pinball (Score:2)
The "cosmic pinball" of the larger planets ejecting other planets from the solar system is fascinating. If such ejections are common in different star systems, it might explain the startling number of planets and planetoids that are _not_ in orbits around stars being discovered as orbital telescopes improve. Most of these planets were too cool, and too small, to be detected until quite recently, The advent of infrared telescopes, and of extremely stable orbital telescopes to detect very small, non-luminesce
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The mass of everything else in the solar system doesn't approach the mass of the sun. Interstellar planets could never have enough mass to account for dark matter, which is supposed to be 73% of the universe by mass.
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I've suggested that if they're common, they might explain the "dark matter" problem of cosmology:namely, a reservoir of matter around galaxies that is impossible to detect by normal means, but doesn't require any exotic, unverified forms of matter to explain.
Sorry, dark matter explains three observations: galactic rotation rates, the balance of matter in the early universe (as observed in the CMBR), and gravitational lensing where there is no visible matter. And it explains the first two of those in a way that matches quantitatively.
We know (as much as we know anything in science) that most of the matter in the early universe was not made from electrons and protons, sorry. Whatever its nature may be, most of the matter in the universe doesn't interact with li
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This was a viable proposition in the late 1970s - as the "missing mass problem was going from "are our measurements correct" to "our measurements and our theories don't add up" - resulting in several surveys looking for evidence of cold, lumpy matter. I
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> MACHO didn't find anything like enough matter
I must admit that I'm also not thoroughly convinced about the amounts of matter they need to find. The cosmology of the expanding universe is _extremely_ vulnerable to small measurement errors. Even numbers like the Hubble Constant are still being refined, and the gravitational analyses and behavioral analyses of galaxies billions of years old and billions of lightyears distant is vulnerable to many distortions and misanalyses. There comes a point in the ded
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IIRC, there have been a few found, or possibly found. (Free planets are quite hard to see, and you can't get repeated observations.)
The real problem is that "dark matter", whatever it may be, is non-baryonic. I.e., it doesn't contain protons. And electrons are so light that you can't plausibly make it out of combinations of leptons (e.g. an electron bound to a tau-positron).
That said, I've never heard it explicitly stated that it must be non-quarkish matter, so perhaps it's made of quarks in some stable
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Science is a great thing, but God trickles out knowledge to us bit by bit to help us grow as his children. Unfortunately some people think Science is the be-all-end-all and ignore Him. That is why we have earthquakes, AIDS, and terrorists.
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The "Moon": A Ridiculous Liberal Myth (Score:5, Funny)
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
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The flaw in your scenario is that it would require liberals to use technology.
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before 1950. That is when it was initially launched.
OK. But I was taught the Nazis launched it at the end of WWII. And it rotates to keep one face toward the Earth so we can't see their base on the other side.
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You actually believe that people have launched satellites? I hope you at least have a crossbow in your desk drawer.
If a tree falls over in the forrest (Score:2)
And there's nobody there to hear it
Will there be a slashdot post about it?
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models and hypotheses being tested by the scientific method. So why doesn't this skepticism and rigor extend to climate science?
It does. The willfully-ignorant Conservatives just keep denying reality.
Answer: the leftists are too heavily invested politically to allow the scientific method to proceed untainted.
Hahaha, no...That's the wingnut "explanation." None of their bizarre claims regarding people outside their cult are true.
Why is it that the fantasy-role-playing RWNJs keep pretending that it's the tricksy left that's anti-science, when we can all see that it's the Republican lunatics who chose superstition, and rejected science. It's not the left who keep coming out as bigots and blaming their superstitions for their failure as huma
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To be fair, the left are also science deniers whenever it suits their political agenda. Start talking about inherent differences between populations of people and you'll soon find out. But they don't usually have a lot of money invested in their bias, so they're more flexible. (Slightly.)
Most of humanity of every stripe is unwilling to change it's beliefs just because of evidence. It needs a strong political or religious (i.e. emotional) motivation. I have hypotheses as to why, but very little in the w
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Unfortunately, that model doesn't work. And at many distances from the sun ices are stable enough to create a core to build things around. Interestingly Jupiter's orbit is around the place where water ice becomes solid enough to form such a core. This might be taken as an argument that Jupiter formed in position, and never moved, which in turn would imply that the same was true for the other giant planets.
Please note that this is not a complete model, but only an argument that would need to be countered
And the age of the sun is? (Score:4, Insightful)
How does this affect or is affected by our estimates of the age of the Sun and Solar System?
As far as I understand, the best guide we have of the age of the Solar System is rocks on Earth used to estimate the age of Earth.
How much extra time would be required for this supposed possibility of the inner planets forming after the gas giants sweeping in and back out?
What tests could be done with rocks from Callisto or Ganymede to constrain the age of the Solar System?
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Fair enough question.
The answer is : not in the slightest.
Your knowledge is incomplete - it is a LONG way from the state of the art in the 1960s, and since then we've acquired a lot more knowledge.
Once radiometric dating had reached a reasonable degree of accuracy - a few percent, inste
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This Planetary Society blog entry [planetary.org] by their Senior Editor does a pretty good job of explaining how the chemistry of a primordial rock can tell you the conditions under which it condensed, and zircon U-Pb dating can give you a pretty good idea of the age. This gives astronomers a clear picture of what the primordial system was like.
exoplanet searches found nothing like our system (Score:2)
2005 Theory was not a nice model (Score:1)
The only reason that theory was forwarded was because, at the time, detection of large gas giant planets close to stars in other solar systems were the only good observation we had of planets around other solar systems. So since we could only detect large planets whose orbits created wobbles in remote stars the scientists at the time thought, "We this is pretty common so maybe all solar systems have gas giants orbiting close to their star at some point in their lifetimes." But as with most cosmology, the
Cue David Caruso (Score:2)
Complex Theory can it also... (Score:1)
TFS seriously misstates TFA (Score:2)
This is incorrect. What marched through the inner solar system was a series of small-number resonances (1:2, 2:3, 2:5, etc) with the orbits of (proto-)Jupiter and (proto-)Saturn, as the planets moved by considerably smaller amounts.
The migration of those resonant orbits disturbed the orbits of smaller bodies, which then interact (collide) with other bodies and amongst themselves, resulting in accretion or ejection.
Both J