Sunday, September 4, 2022

"By the end of 100 million years after the initial formation of the solar system, we've already had the full-fledged formation of all the major planets."-Roger Fu

The Solar System is 4.56 Billion years old. Life on Earth started at least 3.7 Billion years ago. So that 0.86 billion years had a lot going on in it. So much that if you leave it just to gravity to form and alter the planets, there isn't enough time. 860 million years is a long time, but every Late-Heavy-Bombardment object, including surviving planets, was formed then. Thea, the impactor that blew off Mercury's crust, Heles, the two impactors that shattered Vesta, the Saturn moon-object that was destroyed to make the rings, and the thing that hit it; all these things came and went. A force other than Gravity must be in play. Magnetism is a good suspect.
  • Slide at 5:20, just like currents in an ocean, the gravity of Sol, and magnetic field of Sol, pull in debris until the solar wind can oppose the pull. But then rather than scatter the debris, it is concentrated along magnetic field lines, where the debris is able to accrete faster by its own gravity and magnetism.
  • Slide at 13:30, so if all this is true, how do you test it? 
  • At 19:30, just because it is awesome, the speaker shows us a new kind of microscope. One that observes magnetism to the nano-meter scale.
  • At 25:10 he starts over for the outer solar-system. Explaining the differences for the more water rich particles outside Jupiter. Regardless of where Jupiter's orbit happened to be at that time.
So the spoiler is, yes, it does appear that magnetism had a lot to do with the speed at which the proto-planetary disk made planets. However, the implications are that there is some reason why the gas and ice-giants formed in the outer, not inner system, and that was not mentioned. Also, it's implicit that planetesimals had early inclined orbits. That's interesting, but left hanging. 

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