My theory on rocky planet formation

Electro522 said:
And it does exactly that. I had to do some extra research on this because this a difficult question, plus I realized I worded my answer slightly wrong (I should have used "slingshot"). During the early years of our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn settled into to 2:1 resonance orbit, meaning every time Saturn orbited the sun, Jupiter completed two orbits. With the combined strength of Jupiter and Saturn's gravity, they were able to "slingshot" both Neptune and Uranus to the outer parts of our solar system. Some astronomers believe that Neptune actually formed closer to the sun then Uranus, thus it had a more powerful slingshot which threw it into the Kuiper Belt. NASA had done the same thing with the Voyager 2 probe and getting it out to the outer planets. Eventually, Jupiter and Saturn got pulled out of their 2:1 resonance orbit because of Uranus and Neptune and so the "slingshot" stopped, having all of our planets settle into their current orbits.
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And do really believe you can get the momentum of these slingshot movements to disappear? :confused:
 
adalel said:
Protoplanetary disks can be more than a 1000K according to this article.

space.wikia.com/wiki/Protoplanetary_disk

The melting point of iron is 1811K Silica(sand), the primary ingredient of earths crust, is 1700-2000K but keep in mind that these melting points are base on sea level temperatures, the vacuum of space would lower these melting points.
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Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've always been under the impression that very small particles (dust particles) would lose any heat they had rather fast through radiating it away as inferred radiation. So I fail to see how these dust particles could ever maintain enough heat to persist in any kind of molten state.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've always been under the impression that very small particles (dust particles) would lose any heat they had rather fast through radiating it away as inferred radiation. So I fail to see how these dust particles could ever maintain enough heat to persist in any kind of molten state.
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This was the paragraph that I thought would solve the issue and is from the link provided:
Protoplanetary disks around T Tauri stars differ from the discs surrounding the primary components of close binary systems in their size and temperature. Protoplanetary discs have radii up to 1000 astronomical units and are rather cool. Only their innermost parts reach temperatures above 1000 kelvins. They are very often accompanied by jets.
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Disks are cool and only their inner parts get hot. ( Is that "inner" the parts facing (nearest) the protostar. Or are they meaning the core of the disk itself, with the outer layers of dust forming a thermal blanket?)
 
Killjoy, long time no see.

Robittybob, the outward momentum is eventually slowed down by the other planets and their gravity once Uranus and Neptune are far enough away from Jupiter and Saturn to where the "slingshot" has less of an effect. If I remeber correctly, I think they actually discovered Neptune because of Uranus' orbit, so I wouldn't say the momentum is gone completely, but it is far less then when the "slingshot" began.
 
i think you'll find that the term 'hot' means that the particles have a high kinetic energy. i maybe wrong though.
 
Boris2 said:
i think you'll find that the term 'hot' means that the particles have a high kinetic energy. i maybe wrong though.
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Like take some supercooled material at 2 degrees Kelvin and move it at 30,000 Km/hour is it hot or cold?
I think of "hot" as if you were able to hold it and ask what temperature would it be? So it isn't the relative difference in velocity that is heat, even though the kinetic energy could convert to heat.
 
Electro522 said:
Killjoy, long time no see.
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Yeah! I've been laid up with a broken foot and all the problems that go with it.

Robittybob, the outward momentum is eventually slowed down by the other planets and their gravity once Uranus and Neptune are far enough away from Jupiter and Saturn to where the "slingshot" has less of an effect. If I remember correctly, I think they actually discovered Neptune because of Uranus' orbit, so I wouldn't say the momentum is gone completely, but it is far less then when the "slingshot" began.
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Maybe, but I think planetary science still has a long way to go before I'll feel very comfortable with any one theory over another. Nobodies mentioned that Neptune's pole is mostly pointed at the sun, which means sometime in the past something big must have collided with it. Any chance that might have something to do with it's orbit?
 
Boris2 said:
i think you'll find that the term 'hot' means that the particles have a high kinetic energy. i maybe wrong though.
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Yes, you are wrong. For instance an asteroid heading for a planet has very high kinetic energy, but it is not hot until it encounters atmosphere or solid surface. Friction and impact are a good way of converting kinetic energy into heat energy.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
Yeah! I've been laid up with a broken foot and all the problems that go with it.



Maybe, but I think planetary science still has a long way to go before I'll feel very comfortable with any one theory over another. Nobodies mentioned that Neptune's pole is mostly pointed at the sun, which means sometime in the past something big must have collided with it. Any chance that might have something to do with it's orbit?
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It is Uranus that has the extreme tilt. It has something to do with the winds. In my theory (and I haven't thought too much about Uranus for a long time), these strong winds have made the planet rotate this way.
But what drives the winds?
 
Robittybob1 said:
It is Uranus that has the extreme tilt. It has something to do with the winds. In my theory (and I haven't thought too much about Uranus for a long time), these strong winds have made the planet rotate this way.
But what drives the winds?
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Sorry about the planet mix up. I clipped the following from Wikipedia and red colored the part about what is believed to have caused the unusual axial tilt.

One result of this axis orientation is that, on average during the year, the polar regions of Uranus receive a greater energy input from the Sun than its equatorial regions. Nevertheless, Uranus is hotter at its equator than at its poles. The underlying mechanism which causes this is unknown. The reason for Uranus's unusual axial tilt is also not known with certainty, but the usual speculation is that during the formation of the Solar System, an Earth sized protoplanet collided with Uranus, causing the skewed orientation. Uranus's south pole was pointed almost directly at the Sun at the time of Voyager 2's flyby in 1986. The labeling of this pole as "south" uses the definition currently endorsed by the International Astronomical Union, namely that the north pole of a planet or satellite shall be the pole which points above the invariable plane of the Solar System, regardless of the direction the planet is spinning. A different convention is sometimes used, in which a body's north and south poles are defined according to the right-hand rule in relation to the direction of rotation. In terms of this latter coordinate system it was Uranus's north pole which was in sunlight in 1986.
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KilljoyKlown said:
Sorry about the planet mix up. I clipped the following from Wikipedia and red colored the part about what is believed to have caused the unusual axial tilt.

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But you check out my theory for a moment. Find out the cause for the wind, and when they started. If there has been this circulation from day 1 when the planet was forming there is no need for this impact. And remember it is a massive ball of liquid. Is anything going to changed it's rotation? I don't think so.

I think there is a reason the material forming this planet spun and had this angular momentum and that shows up in the tilt and the extreme winds circling the planet today. The winds make the oceans move which then makes the rocky core rotate the same way. Billions of years to make it happen. But it starts with the winds.
 
Robittybob1 said:
But you check out my theory for a moment. Find out the cause for the wind, and when they started. If there has been this circulation from day 1 when the planet was forming there is no need for this impact. And remember it is a massive ball of liquid. Is anything going to changed it's rotation? I don't think so.

I think there is a reason the material forming this planet spun and had this angular momentum and that shows up in the tilt and the extreme winds circling the planet today. The winds make the oceans move which then makes the rocky core rotate the same way. Billions of years to make it happen. But it starts with the winds.
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As to whether the wind could cause the change in the planets axis I can't say for sure, however it doesn't seem very probable. When a planet first forms the planets rotation is a result of the conservation of angular momentum as the dust and gas comes together gravitationally. This spin is always in the plane of the disk that the planets are forming in and planetary winds will flow parallel to the spin. That being the case, please tell me how those winds could end up changing the planets axis? Next if it could happen once, why didn't any other planets have a similar fate?

Anyway, we as a species have a long way to go when it comes to planetary science. Every new planet we discover is still a surprise. So I would say give your theory a number and wait and see what develops.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
As to whether the wind could cause the change in the planets axis I can't say for sure, however it doesn't seem very probable. When a planet first forms the planets rotation is a result of the conservation of angular momentum as the dust and gas comes together gravitationally. This spin is always in the plane of the disk that the planets are forming in and planetary winds will flow parallel to the spin. That being the case, please tell me how those winds could end up changing the planets axis? Next if it could happen once, why didn't any other planets have a similar fate?

Anyway, we as a species have a long way to go when it comes to planetary science. Every new planet we discover is still a surprise. So I would say give your theory a number and wait and see what develops.
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It was 15 years ago I thought the rotation of Uranus could be caused by accumulation of charged particles. I don't see any reason why these particles could not result in winds. Imagine if the solar wind particles are going slow enough at that distance to be accumulated by the gravitational attraction. The ionised particles reform in the atmosphere.

Ok I did read that the net wind circulation of the Earth has an effect on the speed of rotation of the Earth. OK it was fairly minimal but it was measured. Now that might have been 6 years ago so I'm not sure if it could be found again.
Now on the Earth and Venus the wind is powered, I believe, by the Sun so the energy source is external to the planet and depending on the density of the atmosphere and surface friction it would determine the speed of the wind and how much energy can be transferred.
The trees and mountains on Earth go along way to slowing the wind. If the wind wasn't slowed the circulation around the globe would intensify. For I believe the absorption of the incident radiation occurs to higher degree when the wind and radiation are moving in the same direction. (Conservation of energy and momentum preclude the opposite.)

Mercury has virtually no atmosphere so can't really be discussed, and what happens on Mars I don't know; I haven't looked it up.

Jupiter would be the real test case due to its enormous size. I'll get back on that.
 
The deeper winds on Jupiter are prograde (going in the same direction as planet is spinning).
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/272/5263/842.abstract
Abstract
Changes in the speed of the Galileo probe caused by zonal winds created a small but measurable Doppler effect in the probe relay carrier frequency. Analysis of the probe relay link frequency allows direct measurements of the speed of Jupiter's zonal winds beneath the cloud tops. The deep winds were prograde and strong, reaching a sustained 190 to 200 meters per second at an altitude marked by a pressure of 24 bars. The depth and strength of the zonal winds severely constrain dynamic modeling of the deeper layers and begin to rule out many shallow weather theories.
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So if my analysis is correct this too is making the planet power-up. Considering Jupiter is the largest and fastest rotating planet, with a "surface" velocity of 45,300 km/hour it is surprising to think this might be getting faster!
So once again I'd say the winds affects the rotation of a planet.
 
Earth has comparatively little atmosphere compared to Jupiter so the windage effect is always going to be minimal, but with global warming the effects of the wind will be one of the most notable results. Storms etc could get worse.
Extracting energy out of the wind will be one of the better things to do, so that the relative velocity of the wind compared to the Earth's surface is kept to a minimum. This may make the Earth rotate slightly faster but not by much. :)
 
Boris2 said:
heat is a measure of the kinetic energy of a system.
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From that link
Microscopically, the thermal energy is the kinetic energy of a system's constituent particles, which may be atoms, molecules, electrons, or particles in plasmas. It originates from the individually random, or disordered, motion of particles in a large ensemble. The thermal energy is equally partitioned between all available quadratic degrees of freedom of the particles. These degrees of freedom may include pure translational motion in fluids, normal modes of vibrations, such as intermolecular vibrations or crystal lattice vibrations, or rotational states. In general, the availability of any such degrees of freedom is a function of the energy in the system, and therefore depends on the temperature.
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So there is the microscopic KE and the Macroscopic KE plus the additional motion of the whole mass of all the microscopic parts. :)
 
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