The Universe Today

Winter has passed (mostly) into Spring, soooo,
Welcome to the Spring edition of Scifi Horizons!!!
In this extended edition we will wrap up the speculations on the formation of the Solar System!
Enjoy!!!
As always, it is the goal of this site to challenge the prevailing theories,
and to provide thought provoking alternatives. To base conclusions not on equations,
but on what is really out there. What really can be observed and measured.
I believe that these current articles, and the earlier ones on the formation of the galaxy,
and the Universe, will do just that. See what you think.

The Universe Today Challenge for Astronomers and Astrophysicists
Hi kids! Just saw the piece “Swallowed by a Black Hole” and I have a couple of comments I’d like you to consider. These comments are in response to the spectacular central galaxy in the Perseus Cluster that was displayed near the end of the piece.
First, the viewer was shown a visual view of this galaxy, which was extraordinary. In all my years of perusing such photographs, I’ve never encountered this one. Amazing stuff and well worth seeing!
While I was studying the photograph I noted that there was one, or possibly two major ejections of material from the supermassive black hole. The first and more energetic one formed an outer halo of “rays” that had obviously escaped the gravity of the supermassive black hole, and were now well on their way to forming clouds of stars (like the greater and lesser ones visible in the southern hemisphere); and then there was a second burst of material which had formed an inner halo of rays and these inner rays or jets were obviously falling back into the SMBH. That inner star burst of rays did also have one very curious quality-all of those various jets were falling back towards the SMBH in the same direction. Interesting that, eh? Keep it in mind, we’ll be coming back to it shortly.
Then the view proceeded to the radio “photograph” of the same region. There was a huge, bubble shaped region on the “upper” side of the SMBH that was canted slightly left from top center, and another, nearly identical bubble on the opposite side canted slightly right from bottom center. It was explained to the viewer that these were two galaxy sized bubbles of intense heat being blown by the SMBH. These two bubbling cauldrons of heat and radiation kept star formation from taking place (this last sentence is unquestionably correct).
These two galaxy sized bubbles met at the SMBH, and a torrent of nebular material was flowing into the SMBH in between them (from the right and the left sides of the screen as seen by the viewer). And the immense heat and radiation generated by all this material as it entered the event horizon was blowing the bubbles.
That’s about it, right? Or at least close to it, in layman’s terms.
Well, allow me to offer a different interpretation.
What were are actually seeing here are the crescent shaped “gravity” bow waves that both precede and follow the SMBH and its attendant matter through intergalactic space (exactly as described in this and previous issues of The Universe Today). I maintain that these two regions are created by these “gravity” waves and that they do not allow material of any sort to approach from the “front” or the “back” of the object in question. Instead, the incoming material, especially dust, gases, and smaller objects, is forced to enter from the “sides” of the object, and this is how accretion occurs. Which means that these so-called “bubbles” are the interior regions of the twin gravity waves. The reason that heat accumulates in these regions is because the inflow of material from the sides is so great that the heat and radiation can’t escape from those two directions, and are therefore trapped between the two “gravity” waves and so are forced to “pool” in the two bubble shaped regions and then radiate off more slowly.
The most important thing we are seeing here (other than proof for everything I’ve been pushing in this series of articles) is, not only can we see an outline of the crescent shaped “gravity” bow waves (which actually appear to be more hemispherical in the photo) clearly depicted in the radio “photograph,” but we can go a step further and, by using both photographs, we can also determine the direction of travel for this galaxy. Evidence present in both photographs indicates the SMBH is moving towards the “top” of the screen, in a direction just slightly left of center. If you are willing to consider that what you are seeing here are actually the ‘fore’ and ‘aft’ gravity bow waves generated by the SMBH and its attendant matter, then the radio “photograph” clearly indicates this orientation. Further proof of this can be found in the visual photograph that shows the inner jets or rays of material falling back in the same direction on both the “right” and “left” sides of the galaxy. (They curl back and downwards, like the petals of a flower, and their “tips” point towards the bottom of the screen.) You know the math on this as well as I do (you know it a lot better than I do) and so you know why this is happening. The “rays” lose speed as they shoot outward, as the SMBH tries to pull them back, just as they also lose “forward” momentum as they move away from the object, once again, due mostly to gravity and the velocity of the SMBH as it moves through intergalactic space. (As long as the jets are close to the object they are moving forward with it, but when they get far enough away and gravity starts to drag them back they began to lose their forward momentum, and this makes them appear to curl backwards, away from the direction of travel. Which is not surprising when you consider that the object has moved out from underneath them in the interim.)
So, my friends, there you have it! For the first time in the history of Humankind we can map the path of another galaxy through space, and do so with a high degree of confidence! Kewl, huh?
Once the rest of you fine folks understand the implications of this, then we can really make it hap’n Cap’n! Locate the Sun’s fore and aft “gravity” bow waves and we can determine our precise direction of travel in galactic space. Then we can apply the same methods used to locate the Sun’s bow waves on the nearest large stars, using what we have learned to calculate those star trajectories, as well. Over time and with refinements it is possible that this method could even be applied to smaller and/or more distant objects.
Just one thing, though-if you decide that you’d rather dispute the claims made here, don’t send this site a series of mathematical equations and say this proves you’re right. Because I’ll just pull out the two aforementioned photographs, plus some more from the rings of Saturn, and then we’ll look at some photographs of asteroids, and afterwards I’ll say that the weight of visually verifiable evidence clearly shows that I’m right. So, to forestall such an impasse, it is requested that any answer which you give must not only have an intellectual, but also a physical, counterpart that demonstrates, supports, and/or proves your argument, and which can also be replicated by any scientist, anywhere in the world. (Fair enough?)
Work it through, check out the articles in this issue so you can see where I’m at on this whole “gravity” bow wave thing, and see what you come up with! Prove TUT wrong on this one, if you can!

(Oh yeah, and one other thing-if your response to this is flippant, nonsensical, or half-baked, then don’t bother sending it. I’m very serious about this. I’ve laid my cards on the table-well, some of them. Now, let’s see yours.)
We’re Back! Scifi Horizons/The Universe Today is back on the air!

We’ll continue with the line of inquiry we were pursuing before my hard drive crash. The next article in the series is Order in the Solar Court. By now, I guess that some of you are seeing why I didn’t do this as one unified theory of solar system formation. The entire article would have run in excess of thirty pages. By breaking it down into smaller, more digestible bites, it’s easier for you to understand and integrate all the pieces. I still have to reconstitute the article on the magnetic field, and there will be at least one or two more articles before I do the one on planetary formation (although the Order in the Solar Court piece will show the lines I’m thinking along).
From this point onward, anything you see in these following articles that contradicts the original piece on the Globe of Dust, you should consider that new information to supersede whatever was stated in the original article. (I’ll have to go back and rewrite that article again once we’re finished here.)
I’ve gotten some very interesting and rewarding feedback from these series of articles. One even noted how I was doing all this for free. Well, it is my belief that knowledge should be free to all, and you are free to discuss and debate anything you see here, with my blessing. However, all original content that you see here does fall under the original Scifi Horizons copyright. So, it’s free for you to read and to contemplate, discuss and disseminate, but not to reprint or any of that other blah, blah stuff.
Besides, who says it’s for free? I’m still waiting for my Nobel Prize.

The article on the magnetic field is now online! Rather than simply reconstituting the original article I employed an entirely new approach. The new piece is now only half as long, but I believe it is much more informative. See what you think! You’ll find it near the end of this current issue. The title of the article is, “Magnetic Planetality.”

The Article on Planetary Formation is now online! It is the last article in this extended issue of The Universe Today. The summer issue of Scifi Horizons will be out at the end of July or the beginning of August, 2013. See you then!

Where It All Came From

I first sat down to write this article in Sept. of ’12. Roughly a third of the way through the phone rang-it was a homebound friend of mine who needed me to give him a ride to the grocery store. I did, of course, but the upshot was that I completely lost my train of thought, and so was forced to start over. I mulled it around for the next six weeks, then I sat down to write the article again, from the start, and just as I was well into it, the phone rang. Guess who? As I’m writing this, the phone is ringing again (for real).
However, there was a certain benefit to the interruption of my thought processes, that being that I had more time to consider the subject, and to realize the larger implications of what I had stumbled upon. It literally gave me time to think it all through, and see the whole picture. I present that portrait to you now. There are a number of holes in it, which I will duly make note of, but, that aside, I believe this presents the most comprehensive model of the formation of the solar system to date. It takes into account all the variables that have been puzzling scientists for the last couple of centuries, and (in most cases) gives rational explanations for them which can be illustrated using visual astronomy (in other words, by taking what is known, and then looking at the photographs that have been made, thousands, even millions of them, and seeing the same patterns repeated over and over again). All you have to do is ignore the given explanations and let the universe tell the story. Then, the truth becomes self-evident. Voila!
Between five and one half and six billion years ago, a denser patch of dust formed in the spot our sun now occupies. Other dense patches of dust were forming, or already formed, four and one half light years away, and eight light years away (the Alpha Centauri quad system and Sirius, respectively). Gravity immediately went to work and began to draw in more dust, and to compact it together. More and more was drawn in, and, because of heat and pressure, the dust patch at the center of the nebula cloud began to fuse into molten gobs of rock and metal. The growing size of the mass, plus its magnetic field, now caused it to begin to rotate. Variations in the objects gravity field caused it to have points where gravity was greater, and other points where the gravity field was weaker. As the mass rotated, the dust in a center line around it was caught up in this gravity field and began to move with the mass as it turned. The variations in the gravity field caused this captured dust to periodically speed up and slow down, and, in time, this began to form other, smaller masses, orbiting the original object. And all the while the central mass is pulling in more dust, pulling it into one huge globe, possibly as large as a light year across, and slowly drawing all that dust inward. By now, the motion of the central object, and the smaller objects that it has spawned, is being communicated to the entire cloud, causing it to slowly begin to rotate, too. (It is difficult to imagine just how much dust our solar system pulled in at this time. I believe it is possible that we pulled in nebula material from as far away as two light years. And while that seems like and enormous amount of mass, just think how much must have went into the blue super giant Sirius, only eight light years away. It must have pulled material from as far out as six light years, which, of course, ultimately limited the growth of our own system, and the quad star Alpha Centauri System located a little over four light years away from us.)
For more than a billion years the proto solar system drew in that dust, drew it into one huge, slowly rotating, slowly compressing globe. Eventually space around outer parts of this globe became relatively empty, there was little or no nebula dust left. Our own solar system, or Sirius, or Alpha Centauri had consumed it all. In fact, all that remained were tenuous streamers of dust, being pulled from the closest point of the nebula that spawned us. This was because the rotation of the globe of dust had variations in it’s gravity as well (for all the aforementioned reasons plus the size of the globe itself and it’s rotation) and it also had a central plane upon which it’s gravity was focused, just like the objects within. That last is why the globe of dust was pulling one tendril of dust from the nebula, rather than a huge, sheet like cloud reaching out towards it, as it would have been if gravity had been equally distributed throughout the globe.

And always gravity drew the dust in closer, tighter, until it brushed together, creating friction, heat, and static electricity. The mass in the center of the solar system was a huge gas giant by now, with a planet sized core of molten rock and metal. And it was growing ever larger. The smaller objects it had spawned were all now planet sized objects as well, and all of them were surrounded by clouds of gases (mostly hydrogen, but whatever else they could grab, or create, too). So, a huge central gas giant was surrounded by a series of smaller gas giants; that’s what the early solar system looked like. And still gravity pulled the dust ever inward, and the rotating globe of dust with the gas giants at its center grew ever hotter, and massive charges of static electricity arced through it. Meanwhile, further out, beyond the realm of the gas giants, additional dense patches of dust started to form. These formed in roughly a globe shape pattern around the outer reaches of the solar system. Like an earthbound reef, they form a loosely knit shield around the inner solar system. Because of where and how they are formed, these moon sized and smaller, and larger (much larger) objects, most of which were then also miniature gas giants, formed in a simpatico type of orbit that they maintain to this very day. (Which works out very nicely for us-we wouldn’t want one of those rocky or ice bound moons or moonlets to come hurling through the inner solar system every couple of centuries now, would we?)
The rotating globe of dust continued to draw in upon itself. From a light year, to half a light year, to a quarter of a light year, to smaller still, and as it did the heat and pressure continue to build within, and static electric charges grew to immense proportions. The central gas giant and the multitude of smaller progeny it spawned continued to draw in more mass, also. The heat and pressure were so great that all throughout the globe of dust small patches of dust were compressed and fused into molten rock; this occurred on a scale ranging from tiny pebbles and grains of sand to immense, mountain sized objects. All that heat and pressure had another effect too; it began to “cook” the central gas giant, and its smaller companions. Temperatures in these objects, which were already boiling at the core, where the planetary balls of molten rock and metal were constantly roiling, now rapidly begin to rise in the clouds of gases that surrounded them, and they, along with the entire globe of dust, became very, very hot.
It is important to note at this point that the majority of gas being drawn in by our proto sun and gas giant proto planets is mostly hydrogen. This is the main component our sun burns, and it is also one of the two components of water. Water, which is found on this planet, and may have also been found on Mars, and traces of which have been found on Mercury and the Moon, and, of course, is also found on all of those moons in the inner and outer solar system that are covered in ice. Somehow, during this “cooking” process, and let me stress, I’m not yet clear on the particulars, oxygen was created, and, along with all that hydrogen, formed the necessary ingredients needed to create water, not only on earth, but all over the solar system (which is one of the reasons we can tell that it was equally hot everywhere, otherwise, only the inner planets and moons would have water, or ice). It may even be possible that, with all the electricity, and all the chemical reactions going on, that some of the earliest forms of life may have begun taking shape within the globe of dust at this time. Whether life formed then or later, independently in the clouds of the various gas giants, or within the globe of dust itself, can only be confirmed with additional, and much more detailed, information from the inner and outer planets.
At this point somebody is going to say, “Yeah, guy, but what about the outer gas giants? I don’t see any oceans around them.” And they would be right, of course. Well, after due consideration, I have concluded that because of their chemical composition, the outer gas giants Jupiter and Saturn were unable to transform from the gas giant phase into water covered planets. (When we finally dropped a probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere, it turned out that it was ten times drier than predicted. Scientists explained this by saying that we had simply hit a “dry” area in the clouds.) Also, as to those moons that formed without any trace of water, I would postulate that they formed in what were essentially “dry” areas, regions within the globe of dust that lacked the gases needed to create water. (This would explain the presence of gas giants located in orbits very close to their parent suns, where scientists “know” that they shouldn’t be found.)
By now, the central gas giant, the proto sun that is giving birth to an entire solar system, has become immensely hot. From the core outward, the heat is rising, hotter and hotter, and meanwhile, more dust, more mass, therefore more weight, and thus more gravity, is still piling on. Water forms on this central gas giant, too, but it forms high in the clouds. During this period there are thunder storms, and cloud formations brimming with water, existing below the cloud tops of the proto sun’s atmosphere. At a certain moment, the heat, the mass, the pressure from the tightly bound, rotating globe of dust, all combine and WHOOSH the gas giant implodes upon itself, and a star is born. This miniature nova remnant expands around the sun, and, as it does, it takes away a large amount of the dust remaining in the inner solar system. This process continues until the compressing cloud of dust expands into the outermost portions of the solar system.
With all the dust removed from the inner solar system, the worlds began to cool down rapidly. This is most likely the point when water condensed on the Earth, Mars, Venus, and even little Mercury. Somehow or other (and I’m not completely clear on this), as they cooled the gases in the miniature gas giants, now the inner planets, combined and formed water. A great deal of the various gases which cloaked the inner planets was consumed in this process, but enough of their atmosphere was left over so that water could condense into liquid on the surface. (Without a sufficiently thick atmosphere, this could not have happened.) The super-heated, roiling cloud of dust blown into the outer solar system was gobbled up by all the moons and moonlets forming there, and whatever was left over was claimed by some planet, moon, comet, or asteroid, or eventually fell into the sun. Once those moons and moonlets in the outer reaches of the solar system gobbled up all of the remaining dust and thereafter cooled, the ones which had an atmosphere and liquid water immediately froze over. That is the reason we find ice covered moons and moonlets in the outer solar system.
And there you have it! The Solar System is born! Within less than a billion years the globe of dust will thin out, until visually, at least, it seems to disappear completely. But it is still there (countless micro meteorites burn up in our atmosphere each day, adding tons of material to the weight of our planet yearly). The reason we know that the globe of dust is still there, and still pressing inward, is because that there is a region of space near the sun where temperatures soar to levels far beyond those found even in the very heart of our star. The super heated region of space that surrounds our sun is only a pale remnant of the heat wave that once encompassed the entire globe of dust.
I know how difficult this subject can be, and I’ve had to boil a lot of things down into highly condensed versions to get this into a semi readable article. I hope that it is semi understandable, as well.
That’s it, then. Guess I’d better answer the phone.

 

The Asteroids

The Earth was created by asteroids, at first just a few, then more, then gravity kicks in, they really start piling on, and suddenly, the Earth is born!
The Age of the Dinosaurs was ended by an enormous asteroid strike just off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. We know this because of the famous boundary below which you find dinosaurs, and above which you don’t. A famous boundary that is rich in iridium, an element that is rare on Earth.
(For anybody who missed it, if the Earth was made by a massive accretion of asteroids, then iridium would be the most common element on the planet. It is not. Ergo, the Earth was not built by asteroids.)
Ceres and Vespa, the two largest asteroids in the Belt, are perhaps the best examples of this fallacy. Both are large (Ceres is large enough so that gravity has already “rounded” it) and so should be steadily accumulating new material. But, while they show evidence of a number of strikes, there seems to be no creditable accretion, even after four and one half billion years. Since, according to scientific models, the Earth and the other planets and moons formed in little over half a billion years, that certainly seems like a long time to go with nothing to show for it.
Allow me to offer a prediction about what scientists will find when our probe reaches Ceres. They will find an ancient object, left over from the creation of the solar system. This object will be mostly iron, possibly coated with a layer of ice, and an outermost layer of rock and dust. (There may also be a very tiny amount of gold, as well as a few radioactive elements, located at or near the core.) Taking into account however many additional asteroid strikes Ceres has suffered since its creation, the object will otherwise be pristine. It will be exactly what it is-a base model for moon and planetary creation. A blank or a broken mold-simply a failed attempt at building a moon or a planet. (Jupiter and Mars are to blame for this state of affairs, but more on that later.)
After the dust was blown out of the inner solar system, objects rapidly cooled. So, globs of molten hot rock and metal congealed, and became asteroids. Most of the asteroids that were in the paths of the planets and moons were soon swept up and consumed. This is the “great bombardment” that has puzzled scientists for so long. Because there was no planet in the region we refer to as the Asteroid Belt, there was nothing to gobble them up. That is why the Asteroid Belt exists, even to this very day. The scientific value inherent in its existence is that it shows us just how crowded the tracks the planets now follow once were, after the inner solar system cooled.
It is worth pointing out here that the number of hits on Earth, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and possibly Venus, do not bear out the number of asteroids in the Belt. There could be upwards of millions, or even billions of asteroids out there, but no where near that many struck the Earth. (Remember the iridium thingie?) It seems possible then, that many of the asteroids currently occupying the Belt may have been pushed there by the planets. After all, it is the one place in the solar system where asteroids can be out of the way of everything else.
What then, is the ultimate purpose of the Asteroid Belt? Nothing! The Belt is simply just there; merely a debris strewn leftover from the creation of the solar system. So, if you are waiting for the Asteroid Belt to build some new moons or planets, well-don’t hold your breath.
And, as to all those stars the scientists have found that have huge belts of asteroids that extend outward from the star to the edge of their solar systems-if there are not planetary sized masses already existing within those belts, then there never will be. Those solar systems lacked the mass, as well as the gases, required to build “rocky” planets or gas giants (remember, basic elements, as well as amounts of dust, are not going to be equally distributed throughout a nebula-some areas will have more, while others areas will have substantially less). So those stars contain “dead” solar systems. They have no planet now, and they never will.

(Postscript: Some of you who have been playing along on the home version will note that I have contradicted myself with the publishing of the previous article, The Asteroids. I will now officially retract the statement I made in an earlier edition of TUT to the effect of “the Asteroid Belt is even now busily attempting to build a planet.” I was wrong. It is not. I had accepted the model of planetary formation that had been handed to me by the scientific community, and I was trying to build upon it. Since it was flawed, so were my conclusions. As you can tell, I’ve adopted a new mode of thinking. I stand by everything else that I’ve said in The Universe Today series of articles.)

WOW!
Okay, I’ve had an epiphany. Don’t worry, I’m not freaking out, I REALLY have had an epiphany; one of epic proportions. Since the publication of the above articles I have spent the intervening time pacing back and forth, back and forth, and I’ve done it for so long now that my legs and the bottoms of my feet are sore. During this time I only ate three or four real meals, resorting instead to tossing a frozen waffle in the toaster oven and eating it like a cookie when it came out, or having half a bowl of cereal, or some soup-that has been my diet for the last few days. During the process of conceiving this theory I actually created new pathways in my brain, to the point that the top of my head literally hurts right now. When the whole thing came together, it actually felt for a moment like I was about to enter a new state of being. (I know, still sounds a little crazy, but trust me, kids, it’s not.)
The problem is that if I write it out as one piece, the article would simply contain too much information for you to assimilate at one time (wouldn’t want you translating to a higher state of being if you did, right?). So, to this end I have decided to break down the information into two distinct sections. The first section, the one which follows, will deal with some basic concepts that are central to this new theory of the formation of the solar system. These are important concepts, and each one should be understood individually before moving on to the main theory. I will be adding these smaller articles, alone, or in groups, over the new few days, after which I will publish the full theory of the formation of the solar system.
This is real science, kids, and it’s going to turn the current cosmology upside down. Hold on, this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Einstein’s Proof
Albert Einstein theorized in his famous Theory of Relativity that objects of sufficient mass would warp space/time. Basically, even if a cell phone, for instance, was tossed out into the solar system, because it had mass, and a small amount of gravity, it would warp reality slightly. The way Einstein visualized this was to ask you to imagine a blanket on a bed. If the bed is smoothed over, the blanket lies flat. However, if you set down lead balls of varying weights on the blanket, then it becomes deformed. The depressions created in the blanket by those lead weights correspond to what mass and gravity are doing to space, except that they are doing it in three dimensions, rather than just one.
Using a battery of highly technical instruments, scientists have travelled to the far ends of the Earth, seeking effects only visible during total eclipses, in attempts to bolster this claim. And all the while, the most tangible evidence for the confirmation of this theory has been right in front of (and behind) them, and fully realized models are floating around out there in our solar system, with a multitude of cameras and sensors currently pointing at them, ready to be studied.
For more on this, first, we need to return to the rings of Saturn.
Anyone who has looked at a picture of Saturn has noted that, rather than being one ring, there are actually a number of major and easily discernible rings snuggled up against each other, with some glaring gaps in the system near the outer edges. As to how this state of affairs came to be, and what it means, that will be discussed later. For now, we must turn our focus to the hundreds of smaller ringlets that actually make up each section of these rings.
Within these ringlets, scientists have found something a bit puzzling. Clumps of ice and rock and dust that would first form then grow for a while, only to be eventually broken up by Saturn’s gravity. Scientists theorized that this happened because variations in Saturn’s gravity field (which, like the planet, is always rotating) alternately speeds up and slows down matter in the rings, first building and then destroying these clumps. The problem was not how these clumps were formed, but, instead, the effect they seemed to be having on the ringlet they formed in. Just to the front, and just behind, each of these various clumps, scientists saw what appeared to be a crescent shaped bow wave. They couldn’t explain this bow wave. Gravity seemed to be pushing matter in the wave in front of the clump, and to be pulling matter along in the wave that followed. This was a great mystery to them.
Allow me to offer to attempt to do that now. The bow waves that precede and follow these clumps are actually visual representations of the warping of space/time; detectable and measureable warps in the fabric of reality. Apparently, these clumps of material, barely large enough to even be called proto-moons, are still dense enough, and have enough mass, to noticeably warp space/time in the area around them. Even better, we have the video to prove it. Additional study of the bow waves in the rings of Saturn should give us a better idea of the minimum amount of mass that is required to create such a profound and intriguing manifestation of this principle.
Another equally important field of study presents itself here: Why does this warping of space and time only become visible in the direct line of travel? Why do we not see a three hundred and sixty degree ring? If we could physically stop the rotation of Saturn and its rings, would these bow waves disappear, or would they simply be replaced with a more circular wave? There is much to be learned from the rings of Saturn.
(Before we go any further, I want to be completely clear on this. Scientists maintain that the bow waves are created by gravity, while I’m saying they are a physical manifestation of the mass of the object distorting normal space time. The actual gravity field of these clumps, or any larger object, extends far beyond these bow waves.)
Hey, that’s great then, right? We know we already have one or two active probes in the Saturn system, and now we know what too look for, so let’s get to it! Kewl! However, if you recall, I did mention something about evidence a bit closer to home. Well, let’s bring things closer to home.
As the Earth/Moon system twirls around the sun like two ballroom dancers, this couple is preceded by a group of asteroids called the Apollo Asteroids, and followed by another group known as the Trojan Asteroids. Just as with the clumps of rock, ice, and dust in the Saturn system, our bow wave, which, in reality, is the warping of time and space caused by the Earth (not the Earth and Moon-Earth is much bigger) is once again being visually manifested. Both groups, the Apollo and Trojan asteroids, which are about two to three million miles away, are being respectively pushed and pulled by the Earth’s warping of space/time.
But maybe that still isn’t close enough for you? Okay, then, let’s bring it all the way home.
We are taught in grade school that the Moon controls the tides, and this is quite true. It really does this, and has since the formation of the seas (more on this later). There’s just one thing, though, one nagging little problem that has kept scientists guessing. According to the way gravity works, high tide should occur directly beneath the Moon, and also take place at the same time on the opposite side of the Earth-which would then place the low tides on each horizon, of course. The thing that confounds scientists is that the reality is just the opposite. Low tide takes place at the spot roughly “beneath” the Moon (and on the opposite side of the world, too), while high tides occur on the east and west horizons. (In case you aren’t clear, the Earth is literally rotating under the tides. They move with the Moon, not the Earth.)
How can this reversal of the laws of gravity be? Simple. Remember the Apollo and Trojan Asteroids, the ones that are somewhere between two and three million miles out in front of and behind us? Well, if we apply the same basic principles to the Moon, taking into account that it is one tenth the size of the Earth, and slightly less dense, then we add in the distance between the Earth and the Moon, which is roughly two hundred and forty thousand miles, or one tenth of the distance between the Earth and the Apollo and Trojan asteroids, suddenly the answer becomes crystal clear. Just as both sets of asteroids are riding our bow wave, the Earth is currently perched upon the boundary of the Moon’s tiny bow wave. That’s right; we’re hanging just on the edge of where the Moon’s mass warps space/time. We appear to spend most of our time riding off to the side of the main wave; in the region which invisibly connects the front and back sections of the waves that we see in Saturn’s Rings (although twice a month we should pass through the middle of the Moon’s front and back bow waves; extreme high and low tides each month may mark these two events). And yet, even at the sides, where there is no visible bow wave, this warping of space/time is so strong that it overcomes the weaker gravity of the Moon and physically pushes the tides to the eastern and western horizons of whatever hemisphere of the Earth the Moon is currently facing. And, because our ancestors never, in all of human history, reported a sudden and profound change in the tides (remember, we are talking worldwide here and we’re talking tides, not water level) we can also be certain that the Moon’s “bow wave” has been affecting the tides in this manner since the beginning of recorded history.
How’s that for close?
Einstein was right-any object of sufficient weight and mass will warp space/time. The great thing is that you don’t need a degree in mathematics to see his proof demonstrated. All you need is a sunny day at the beach.

Order in the Solar Court

How and when the planets formed has been hotly debated over the years. We have been amazed by the CGI results of some of these speculations-planets rolling around the solar system like bowling balls, careening and smashing into one another with wild abandon. Science shows have delighted in giving us detail light explanations of how this will occur, and backing up such random musings with dazzling CGI vistas of our entire planet in turmoil. And while this may play well, it has very little to do with the basic reality that confronts us. So, as we delve into the order in which the planets formed, we will attempt to also dispense with a few of the more spectacular modern myths that have been fostered on the public during the last score of years.
Since the best place to start is usually the beginning, we might as well open there-
Seven or eight billion years ago the region that all the stars in our local group occupy was a vast, sheet like nebula, which, although it stretched many light years across, was still probably less than a kilometer thick at its densest points. The super massive black hole that spins at the center of our galaxy, and turns the entire galaxy with it, had then, and still has now, stronger and weaker areas of gravity, just like every other object in the universe. This alternately led to first the dust and gases, and later the solar systems that they spawned, to sometimes move faster and sometimes move slower. (Ultimately, it was these inconsistencies that merged the dust and gases together to create the multitude of stars and planets that now inhabit our galaxy.) This speeding up and slowing down caused ripples to appear the in vast, flat nebular cloud. In accordion like fashion the sprawling cloud of dust and gas began to fold in upon itself, to become denser, more opaque. Eventually, the vast, sheet like nebula began to resemble a towering thunderhead, and all that dust, and those gases, contained within, were pressed together, and heated to incredible temperatures by titanic surges of static electricity washing over them. Within the heart of the nebula, at the most dense points, objects began to form, thick and tightly woven balls of gas and dust. Sculpted by gravity, both theirs, and the weight of the mass of all that dust and gas that made up the nebula in which they resided, these objects formed gradually, over time. (For more on this, check out the first article in this current issue.)
(Which brings us to our first popular fallacy-stars, or clusters of stars, are created either by supernovae or by solar winds from supergiant stars. While both of the aforementioned do occasionally play a part in stellar creation, they are neither the sole reason for, nor even a necessary element of, such a process. As we have already noted, it is most often humble gravity that is responsible for the creation of new solar systems. Although, I will admit, the reality just doesn’t look half as exciting in a video.)
In the center of what would be our solar system, one of these masses formed, the proto-star that we would one day know as Sol, our sun. It sat there, perhaps for millions of years, accumulating mass, and rotating, and growing to an incredible size. Over time, a second mass began to form, very close into the first. Smaller than the sun, but made up of the same basic mixture of gases, this smaller gas giant started to grow, too. (This really isn’t that unusual. Most star systems are actually binary systems, consisting of a large star, and often, but not always, also a smaller companion; although occasionally both stars are of similar size. Some star systems, much like our closest neighbor, Alpha Centauri, even consist of four or more stars.) As the smaller proto-star continued to grow, mainly through the acquisition of gases, it too started to rotate. Over time, this led to the formation of hundreds, or even thousands, of rings, which looked very much like the rings of Saturn, but with one major difference. This debris in these rings was made up of handfuls of particles of rock and metal, cemented together by high intensity waves of static electric discharge. Over time they began to form moons and moonlets around the tiny proto star. This smaller gas giant, which we know today as Jupiter, was well on the way to becoming a star itself when something unexpected happened.
(Now we come to three more fallacies-first that the planets only began to take shape after the sun was fully formed and functional, second that all moons in orbit around all the planets are captures, and third that all the planets came into being either in or somewhere near their present orbits. As to that last bit, even though I’ve run this simulation in my head over and over again, I still can’t get the planets to form in their current locations. More on this in a moment.)
A change was definitely occurring. Maybe it was because of all that heat, part of it caused by the proto sun and part by the scraping together of all those trillions and trillions of particles of dust, but some of that furnace blast must also have been created by those titanic sheets of static electricity, as they sizzled through folds of the globe of dust. Perhaps too, so much time had passed that new chemicals had been compounded, through physical mixing and/or being influenced by all the aforementioned effects that were present in the early solar system. But no matter what was responsible for the change, the effect was remarkable. A new element had formed in the midst of the globe of dust, and this element would eventually come to dominate virtually the entire solar system.
Saturn, which has a chemical content quite unlike most of the other bodies in the solar system, could have been formed during this transition phase. (This is just the first point at which Saturn could have formed. There are still two more to come. While it is worth mentioning here, this is probably the least likely point for Saturn’s formation.)
Now, just like Jupiter, the Sun, while still a gas giant, had, because of stronger and weaker points in its field of gravity, and because of its rotation, also spawned rings of metal and stone. But unlike Jupiter, the rings around our proto-sun did not number in the hundreds, or even the thousands, but instead were somewhere upwards of a million or more. (Keep in mind that, at this time, the Sun was still a big ball of hot, but not incandescent, gases, and that, despite the number of these rings, they may not have extended out any further than the orbit of Mercury. And within this astronomically tiny space all but a handful of moons, and perhaps one planet, formed.) As more dust and gas were drawn into the inner solar system, and either directly into the Sun, or into the million or more rings, Jupiter gradually moved further out, away from the gas giant Sun. That change which was mentioned previously, which was the introduction of water into the mix, now created a radically new pattern of planet and moon formation. While some moons and moonlets had already formed and moved out past Jupiter, now, the majority of moons and moonlets being created were surrounded not only by an envelope of gas, but also by one of water and/or ice, as well. It was at this time that two icy, massive gas giants, Uranus and Neptune, were born. As these two immense planets formed, Jupiter was once again obliged to move outward, from somewhere between the orbits of Earth and Venus, to a point between Mars and the Asteroid Belt. (As to Jupiter’s exact location during the aforementioned events, I can’t be certain. Those are only rough estimates.) As incredible as it may sound, it seems not only possible, but perhaps even likely that both Uranus and Neptune formed at, or near, the same time. That two bodies of such impressive size could form in such a relatively small area, and do so without seriously impeding one another, seems almost unbelievable, and yet what we see in the rings of Saturn indicates that this is a distinct possibility. The two icy gas giants formed near the Sun, then managed to spin up a few satellites, using exactly the same process that the Sun had used to create them, and when they were done both of these massive worlds then migrated outward, and assumed orbits beyond Jupiter. And yet, how can this be? We know from the rings of Saturn that moons have formed inside the rings, and then left gaps when they moved out of them, into “higher” orbits. The amazing this is that, not only did these new moons manage to leave the rings without colliding with any of the other moons orbiting Saturn, they also accomplished this feat without destroying the rings in the process. (I’m still working on the nuts and bolts of this last bit, but I know that the space time distortion ring, the one discussed in the previous article, “Einstein’s Proof,” is directly related to this conundrum.) Apparently, once a moon, or in this case a planet, reaches a certain size, it is able to migrate outward past everything that should be in its way, and then settle into a stable orbit. That this has happened in the rings of Saturn, and on more than one occasion, is generally acknowledged by the majority of the scientific community. It is the how of it that is still open to question.
(Which leads us to two of my favorite fallacies-that the planets spent the early ages of the solar system smashing into and obliterating one another, and that the formula for water is virtually the same all over the solar system so comets must have bombarded everything. As to the first, the rings of Saturn give lie to the smash and bash theory-I mean, the one tiny moon which scientists found that had been smashed and reassembled definitely showed the damage. And it did so in a way that no other moon or planet in the solar system has yet exhibited. So, we are then forced to conclude that if a planet or moon actually did smash into your world, the world would not perfectly reshape itself, despite all scientific yearnings to the contrary. And, as to water, the region in which the planets were forming was relatively small, and all the elements within it were heavily concentrated, so then it is not surprising that, except for any local flavoring provided by the body upon which it condensed, the recipe for water is pretty much the same across the whole solar system. It should be-most all the water in the solar system formed in the same place.)
Shortly after the appearance of water, it seems that most of the available gases in the solar system had been either exhausted or else converted into heavier elements. At this point, the rocky planets began to take shape. Most of the ice moons of the inner and outer solar system came into being at this time. This is also when the major inner planets formed.
First among these was the Earth. The reason we know this is because not only did the Earth get enough material to sustain its own creation, but also accumulated so much that it was able to spin up our Moon. Once the Earth/Moon system became large enough, it too migrated outward, forcing Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, and all those smaller moons and moonlets that had already moved out beyond the gas giants, to move out again. Ultimately, though, all the aforementioned celestial bodies pinned the Earth in, and kept it from moving any further out into the solar system. As confusing as this may seem, this really is a property of gravity, or possibly a result of the interaction between gravity and dark energy/matter, but either way, the Earth/Moon system, while it was able to move away from the Sun, did not migrate out any further, as had the gas giants, and the smaller moons and moonlets. Even as Earth settled into its orbit, other smaller bodies, moons and moonlets buried in gaseous envelopes, were moving out past our planet and the gas giants, on their way to the outer reaches of the solar system.
The next inner planet to take shape was Venus, which may have begun forming even as the Earth was spinning up the Moon. While Venus did manage to attain a size comparable to the Earth, there was apparently insufficient mass left over for it to create its own moon. Like the Earth/Moon system, Venus moved out, away from the Sun, and every major and minor body in the solar system moved with it.
At some point during this process, Saturn may have begun to form, either just sunward of Jupiter, or else in the spot it currently occupies in the solar lineup, if not actually the same physical spot in space. (Remember, Saturn probably got moved around a bit while the inner planets were forming and moving into their orbits.) The reason for Saturn forming at this point would be interactions between Jupiter and Uranus and Neptune and this creation scenario would also help to explain Saturn’s unusual chemical content. This would mean too that Saturn, alone of all the planets, did actually form somewhere near the orbit it currently follows.
After Venus formed, then came Mars, which was small enough to move out past Venus and the Earth, but large enough not to get past Jupiter and the outer planets and moons. By now there was so much mass pressing inward, so many moons and planets, that when tiny Mercury formed it moved outward, beyond the edges of the Sun’s rings, and then it stopped.
And here, finally, is the last spot where Saturn may have formed. In this scenario Saturn forms in close to the Sun, when most of the material in the Sun’s rings has already been used. The gas giant picks up whatever odd gases are left over, and has not only enough ice, but also enough solid material forming in rings around it to spin up the moon Titan, and some other smaller companions. Once it reaches a certain size, Saturn breaks the Sun’s grip, migrates past the inner planets, then past Jupiter, and finally settles into its current orbit.
(Now we can confront the most spectacular and oft repeated fallacy of them all-that when (and if) the Sun actually does one day swell up into a red giant star, it will consume the Earth and all the rest of the inner planets during its fiery expansion. As we have seen, the more likely outcome is that the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets, will all simply move farther out into new, more distant orbits when the Sun starts to grow larger.)
A short time later, universally speaking, the Sun bursts into life, and all the ice floating around in the Sun’s rings is thrown into the outer solar system. The debris left over from all those failed attempts at moon or planet creation, from the tiniest pebbles to mountain sized pieces of rock, including whatever nascent planets or moons were currently forming (Ceres comes to mind), begins to migrate outwards. Most of this material ends up in the Asteroid Belt, pinned between the Sun and the inner planets on the one side, and Jupiter and the outer gas giants on the other.
So, what lesson can we draw from all of this?
Gravity, although an insentient force of nature, appears to crave harmony, and is constantly striving to achieve it.
(Okay, I admit, this scenario is not half as spectacular as all those planets smashing into each other, but, given the available evidence, it does seem much more likely. While I’d love to see this concept play out in a computer simulation, the truth is that we simply don’t have any software sophisticated enough to run it. If computer code can’t create a simulation of Saturn’s Rings that allows for moons to form and then progress into higher orbits, and do this without destroying the entire ring system and a couple of other moons along the way, then the simulation isn’t nearly as all inclusive as it would have to be to accurately recreate such motions. And until scientists are finally willing to drop the calculator and start using the standard issue Mark I eyeball to further their investigations of the universe, this sad state of affairs will continue.)

Fun with Science

Want to try a couple of simple (very simple) science experiments? It’s really very easy, just wait and see!
The indoor sport of Basketball is becoming very common around the world, so by this point most folks know what a basketball is, and may even own or have access to one themselves. And, our first science experiment will require one grade A basketball, inflated to its normal capacity.
Once you have the basketball, the next thing you need is a smooth, flat surface. Place the basketball on this surface, and when it is secure, then sit on it. Carefully, of course, because you don’t want to hurt or damage yourself doing this little experiment. (Best rule of thumb is, use your imagination in lieu of any hospital stays.)
Now that you’re sitting on the basketball, you’ll note that the bottom of the ball, the part that is in contact with the smooth, flat surface, is looking a bit flatter-as is the top of the ball, the part that you happen to be sitting on at the moment. And the middle of the ball, the centerline or the waist, seems noticeably rounder, fatter.
This shape is called oblate. Virtually every star, planet, and moon that we know of is shaped this way. All classical Greek beliefs aside, the celestial spheres are not perfectly round. They are oblate.
There is a reason for this state of affairs, and that will be discussed in the final article in this current series, the one on planetary formation. For now, though, the important thing to understand is that it exists.
The second experiment is just as simple, though we’ll use it to explain some very complex concepts.
For this experiment you’ll need a strong piece of string or rope, and a weight of some sort that can be securely fashioned to one end of the aforementioned string or rope.
Start by letting out the rope with the weighted end until you are only holding onto the opposite end of the rope. Make sure you have a firm grip. Then, hold your arm up over your head and began to whirl the rope round and around. (Keep in mind the precautions advised in the previous experiment and just use your imagination instead.) At first, depending on how much weight you have tied to the end of the rope, either one of two things will occur-if it is a light weight, then it will spin around your head at somewhere between a fifteen to forty-five degree angle above you-or if it is a heavier weight it will spin at a lower angle, more level with your head.
Now, start to spin the rope faster (make sure you have a firm grip). If you can spin the weighted rope fast enough, at a certain point, it will began to spin in a flat trajectory, and the rope will form a right angle where it parts with your grip.
Planets and moons are much the same way as the weight on the end of the rope. They are travelling as fast as they can, trying desperately to escape their parent suns, but their star’s gravity, and the mass of the other planets in the system, keep them from escaping (even so, the Moon moves a centimeter or two further away from us each year). This also holds true for stars-the stars in our galaxy stack their gravity wells together like mounds of soap bubbles or sea foam. And though all of these stars are trying to escape the galaxy, the gravity wells of all the other stars around them pull and press inwards, while dark e/m pushes in from the outside, and this is, ultimately, what holds galaxies together. Despite this immense amount of pressure, stars are going so fast that, just like planets, they try to get as far away from the center point as possible. So globe shaped galaxies can spin out into flattened spirals, and the planets of our solar system all tend to orbit along an invisible plane. An orbit formed around the most oblate part of our Sun, the middle. Which equates to the point furthest away from the central object. You know, that waist or the more fattened part of the basketball we were discussing in the first experiment.
Maybe gravity not only seeks harmony, but enforces it.
Okay, so now we know why all the major planets tend to rest on the same plane, rather than orbiting the Sun in any and every direction, like electrons orbiting atoms. And we also know why the pinwheel that is our spiral galaxy doesn’t shed all of its attendant stars as it spins. You can sleep better tonight knowing that the Earth or the Sun isn’t suddenly going to go tumbling off into the cosmos (I know I do). All of this thanks to a couple of very easy experiments.
Science-easier than it looks.

Magnetic Planetality

When it comes to the Earth’s magnetic field there are a number of things most scientists will agree upon-that it exists, and that it performs functions vital to the continuance of life on Earth-but that is about as far as the scientific community is willing to go. Everything else is speculation.
Despite their best efforts, scientist still cannot conduct precise scans of the core of our planet. We know more about the surfaces of planets and moons millions, or even billions, of miles away, than we know about the core of our own world, only some few thousand miles below us. What we do know is that the magnetic field which surrounds this planet, and protects all life here from the lethal radiations of the sun, is somehow generated by the inner core of the Earth, what we’re not sure about is exactly how this is accomplished.
Current theory suggests that the innermost portion of the Earth is a huge ball of iron (possibly molten) that is spinning so fast that it is generating its own magnetic field. This theory, or one similar to it, has been in vogue since the topic was first given serious consideration. Using observational astronomy alone I will offer a new explanation for the existence of the Earth’s magnetic field, based on what is actually out there, not what my ten little fingers tell me might be out there.
(It should be noted here that I’m not going to attempt to explain the origin of the magnetic field in this article. Instead, this article will concentrate on what generates the Earth’s magnetic field and why it has continued to function long after the magnetic fields of the rest of the inner planets have collapsed. As to the details of how the current state of affairs came into being, I refer you to the article which will soon follow this one, the piece on Planetary Formation.)
To begin with, let’s go to the Asteroid Belt. Here, we find the four and one half billion year old leftovers of planetary formation. Though there are asteroids of virtually every imaginable shape, they can be broken down into three basic types: Boulders and Mountains (formed mostly of nickel/iron, although some are made of stone), rock piles (both great and small), and elongated, or “potato shaped,” cylinders of nickel/iron, often many miles long. Each one of these common types of asteroids played a vital role in forming all the planets, moons, and moonlets in our solar system. And though they are only smashed and broken leftovers, if we piece them together using our knowledge of what is going on in the rings of Saturn, then their various shapes suddenly make sense.
What lies at the core of our planet? What is the engine that motivates our world and maintains all the conditions that are prerequisites to life on Earth? What?
Floating weightless in the core of the Earth, and spinning so fast that the human eye would perceive it as just a blur, is a magnetized, potato shaped asteroid of nickel/iron, which is x number of miles long. (X is the variable here-since we can’t measure the inner core accurately, we have no idea just how long the asteroid actually might be.) This madly spinning asteroid, although weightless because it is at the very core of our planet, is surrounded, swimming, in a pool of magnetic, superheated liquid metal. As to the specific contents of this pool, suffice it to say, if there are any significant sources of iridium to be found on the Earth, then they will be found here, at the core, possibly coexisting with a few metals and even stone that are so dense that they have never been thrust up onto the surface of our world. It should also be noted that radioactive materials, being for the most part quite dense, should be found here in liquid form, as well.
This “heart” of the inner core is encapsulated by what scientist acknowledge as the “inner core.” It is a casing formed of nickel/iron, copper, and many other ferrous metals, that is perhaps as large as or larger than the moon or planet wanna be, Ceres. This outer surface of the inner core, while very dense, doesn’t appear to be molten. According to accepted scientific theory, the reason that, even though it is very, very hot down there, the outer surface of the core remains solid is because of the enormous amount of pressure being exerted upon it by the weight of all the mass above it. (In other words, everything you see around you, and everything else between here and the core of the Earth.) But that is only half of the story, because, as previously noted in the piece on the globe of dust, billions of years ago, while the Earth was just beginning to form, the surface of the core was flash fried by successive waves of titanic static electric discharges. These immense waves of energy may have contributed somewhat to the hard outer, and inner, shell of the Earth’s core.
At this point some of you fine folks will be saying, “Wait a minute! What you’re describing is just a big electric motor!” To which I would respond, “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. The inner core of the Earth is a massive, planetary sized electric motor. Hence, it is the source, and the motivating force, of the Earth’s magnetic field.”
(If scientists wish to gain real, working knowledge of the Earth’s core, they need to focus their efforts on Ceres, and send more comprehensive probes, or even a human presence, to that tiny world. If you have been playing along on the home version of this little exercise, then you already know why this should be done. Although ancient and long dead, Ceres could reveal a great deal to us, not only about the core of the Earth, but the core of every other moon and planet in our solar system.)
Okay, so we’ve accounted for two of the three most common asteroid types in the belt now. Potato shaped nickel/iron asteroids first, the ‘magnetized iron bar’ at the center of the Earth, then the boulders and mountains of the same substance, which formed the outer shell of the core. That only leave us with the piles of rock. Rock is created when iron ore is heated to a high enough temperature for the rock and iron to separate. A recent television program claimed this process led to the formation of the crust, or surface, of the Earth. If this is true then it leads us to an inevitable conclusion-a great many, but not all, of the rock piles in the Asteroid Belt were once part of the crust of a failed moon or planet. Sometime between five and four and half billion years ago, these aspiring moons or planets formed in one of the million plus rings stretching out and away from the Sun, and then, for whatever reason (and there are multitudes) they later broke up again.
All right, so now we have some idea of why we have such a powerful magnetic field. Because we have an asteroid sized bar of magnetized iron whirling away at the core, surrounded by a flash fried casing of ferrous metal and stone. Without it, the surface of the Earth would be just as dead and lifeless as that of Mercury, Venus, and possibly even Mars. Why is it, then, that we are so special? That our magnetic field, and along with it all life on our planet, thrives, while these other rocky worlds, which are virtually the same age as our own, exhibit little or no magnetic field, and their outer surfaces appear to be totally devoid of life?
The answer to that question is as simple, and yet as elegant, as the Universe itself.
The Moon and the Tides are responsible for the continued existence of the Earth’s powerful magnetic field, and are therefore the benefactors to all life on the surface of the Earth. Without the interaction between these two key elements, our world would be as barren and lifeless as the face of Mars. (If any life did exist on the Earth under those conditions, it would most likely be microbial, and would live far beneath the surface of the planet.)
Four times each day the tides rise and fall at virtually every point on the planet. Twice each day those higher tides roll across the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Ocean basins. And twice each day a lower volume of water follows the higher one, with a period of only a little over six hours between the higher and the lower volume of water. As you may imagine, this leads to a certain level of stress being applied to the sea floor, and the crust beneath, which is first being pushed down, then bobbing back up again, every six hours. And this constant sinking and rising is taking place on seventy percent of the surface of the planet every day.
No wonder the crust of the Earth is only twenty miles thick. Imagine how much heat and kinetic energy must be generated by this endless rolling of the crust. Of course it’s hot down there, at the core. Very, very hot-and that is why the magnetized nickel/iron asteroid at the heart of our planet keeps spinning merrily away.
So now we know why we have a magnetic field, and how it is maintained, but there is another external factor that needs to be taken into account here-one which will not only demonstrate the usefulness of our magnetic field, but also illuminate a less obvious source from which it draws energy.
One of the major functions of the magnetic field is to fend off massive bursts of destructive energy tossed at us by our Sun. Our magnetic field catches these bursts of energy and bleeds most of them off into space, but it does transfer some of them into the Earth, as well. Guess where that energy ends up? Yes, you’re right, that magnetized asteroid at the heart of our planet becomes the beneficiary of all that excess energy, too.
And so the process continues, eon after eon-next to the Sun, this is the closest we can come to a true perpetual motion machine. As prosaic as it may seem to be, the heart of our world is also the source of all life on Earth, and the Sun and the Moon and the Tides work in cosmic harmony together to protect and maintain it.

Planetary Formation

If you’ve made it this far then this is it, the Holy Grail. Here is where it all comes together.
For this article we will first revisit (for one last time) the rings of Saturn, and use the actual model of planetary formation that is taking place there as you read this article, and then compare and contrast it to what occurred during the formation of the early solar system.
Ready? Then, let’s go!
In the rings of Saturn we see numerous moons in various stages of formation. Some of these moons are just elongated asteroids of rock, and ice, and dust, many miles long, that have a crescent shaped bow wave that both proceeds and follows them along in their orbits. One “end” or “pole” of these asteroids is always pointed towards Saturn, while the opposite one points directly outward into space. The frontal wave that precedes these asteroids catches incoming material and it slips down along the crescent then around it and so approaches the asteroid from the side, rather than head on. This is what accounts for the rod like shape of these curious bodies. Other bodies in the rings are much larger and have more familiar oblate shapes; actual moons and moonlets. Where the largest of these objects form there are distinct gaps in the rings. If the larger moons and moonlets are very, very lucky, they will gain enough speed to escape the inner ring system, and move into a “higher” orbit with all the other moons that already inhabit the Saturn system. If not, then they will eventually be smashed to pieces by Saturn’s gravity, and a gap in the rings will suddenly be refilled. Considering that Saturn’s rings still exist four and one half billion years after the formation of the solar system, and that if they weren’t being constantly replenished that they would have dissipated long ago, we must conclude that this is an ongoing process that has been constantly repeating itself for the last few billion years, and will continue to do so not only for the foreseeable future, but long after Humankind is just a memory.
It is a slow process, taking millions, and sometimes tens of millions of years to complete. And after all that effort to build one of these icy moons, within the passage of just a few million more years, that same moon has been ground back down into just another ring of rock, and ice, and dust. Then, it starts all over again.
The rings of Saturn have great value to us, because they demonstrate the true (no guessing) model of planetary formation. This is not some mathematical construct we’re seeing, what is going on in space just a few billion kilometers away from us is the real thing, the precise way in which all moons (and ultimately planets) are formed.
But there are startling contrasts between the early solar system and the rings of Saturn, and these contrasts are what has led to so much confusion in the scientific community. This bemusement created a flurry of theories on solar and planetary formation, all of which calculated what must have happened, rather than taking into account the reams of space photographs that have been taken by high powered telescopes during the last century. To many of these scientists, the only photographs of any value were those which proved, or at least gave credence, to their theories. This state of mind eventually gave way to the current narrative, the “accepted” theory on planetary formation-you know the one-where planets and moons careen around the solar system and smash into and obliterate one another, and then reform again. It really looks spectacular, even awe-inspiring, especially when depicted with the current visual media, but these momentous scenes of destruction are not what those libraries of space photographs show us. The picture which they provide (while much more sedate) clearly illustrates the basic outline of solar system formation, from beginning to end.
In the first article in this Winter/Spring edition, we discussed the Globe of Dust from which our solar system was formed, and in the articles that followed we explored and expanded on this concept, and introduced many new elements to the equation. With that information as our guide, we will now focus our attention on just one small cog in the overall process: the formation of the Earth/Moon system. (Keep in mind that the model being postulated here works no matter where the planets actually formed, either nearer the Sun as was earlier theorized, or else in the orbits they currently occupy.)
The Earth begins its life as a tiny flake of iron, the size of a mote of dust. It is only one of countless dust mote sized flakes of iron embedded in the globe of dust; in fact, there are so many of these flakes of iron present at this time that we simply don’t have numeric equivalents large enough to express their true number. And the mote that will be the seed of the Earth, upon which our entire planet will be built, is just one of them.
A wave of static electric discharge, created by heat and the brushing together of countless dust mote sized flakes, ripples through the region of the solar system occupied by the flake of iron, and that flake is magnetized. It begins to attract other flakes of iron, and these adhere to it. Hours, or days, or weeks later another wave passes over the conglomeration of iron flakes, and it is so powerful it turns them into a molten mass. Zero G conditions, combined with micro-gravity, rounds out the tiny molten mass, turning it into a small glass marble, or ball bearing shaped object. With each successive wave of static electric energy that wafts by, the marble shaped object is magnetized again, and the magnetic charge grows stronger, wave after wave. Soon it is strong enough to attract other balls of iron that have formed nearby, and these together form a roughly globe shaped object.
At this point, the object is now large enough to produce a weak gravity field, and this field causes dust motes of every description (not just the ferrous ones) to be drawn towards it. The dust coalesces around the crude ball of iron and it forms a globe shaped layer over this inner core. In time, maybe a few hours, days, weeks, or months, yet another wave of static electricity sweeps through the region and as it does this surface of dust is flash hardened. Once the wave has passed, the process starts all over again.
Over perhaps as much as a million years, this endlessly repeated sequence of the gathering of dust and subsequent flash hardening forms an object large enough to create its own crescent shaped gravity bow wave. And when it does, something very curious begins to happen-the object no longer accumulates mass equally on all sides. Instead, it starts to take on a more rod like shape.
The reason for this is really quite simple: the bow wave that precedes the object pushes all the dust, and any other material that has formed, away from the front of the object, while the following wave does the same for material approaching from the rear. Now unable to attach itself directly to the object, incoming material is forced to slide down the crescent shaped bow waves and enter from the sunward or spaceward sides, where it then accumulates. (This is why we have elongated, “Idaho Potato” shaped nickel/iron asteroids scattered around the Asteroid Belt and elsewhere throughout our solar system. All of these objects represent the first stage in attempts at moon or planetary formation.)
There is a prodigious amount of material being pulled into the globe of dust-all the nebula gas and dust within a distance of as much as two light years away, plus any additional material the globe of dust can drag in from the tenuous cord it maintains to its parent nebula, and all of that material is slowing being compressed into an area less than half a light year round. And the globe is still continuing to deflate, to draw in upon itself, tighter and tighter as it spins.
And all this material, all this dust, these gases, chemicals, even water, is spiraling in towards the inner solar system, and the gas giant proto sun that lies at its center.
But the proto Sun does not benefit from this inflow. Oh, some of the gases still reach it, but most of the heavier material ends up in the million (or millions) rings and ringlets that encircle it and stretch far out into the solar system. Of all the planets in the inner solar system, the Earth is the greatest beneficiary of this nebular bounty. This massive inflow has a very pronounced effect on the rod shaped nickel/iron asteroid that will be the heart of our planet, it causes that miles long bar of magnetized, semi molten nickel/iron, to begin to spin. The inflow becomes heavier at one pole, while remaining the same at the other pole. Gradually, the object becomes unbalanced, with more material accumulating at one end than at the other. To relieve this imbalance, and propelled by the heavier inflow, the object begins to spin. This does correct the imbalance, although it also appears to leave most of these potato shaped asteroids slightly “bent” at one end. This spin, which was originally caused by a heavier inflow of material at one pole than at the other, is the primary source of the Earth’s rotation.
Let’s do a quick recap. What we have, at this point, is an asteroid some miles long and as much as a mile or more in circumference, that is made of semi molten nickel/iron which has been magnetized and flash hardened repeatedly by thousands of massive static electric discharges. Basically, despite its size this is really just a large electric magnet. This asteroid sized bar magnet is travelling through a dense cloud formed of all the various materials we’ve already discussed. It has a gravity bow wave that precedes it, and a gravity bow wave that follows along behind it. And now, due to the ever growing amount of material sliding down the crescent shaped gravity bow wave, and then approaching the central object from the “sides,” this bar magnet has started spinning like a propeller.
The resulting effect is spectacular, if understated. Dust is drawn into “orbit” around the spinning asteroid. Most of the flakes drawn in this way are ferrous metals, although any other motes of nebular dust that are attached to them through static electricity (the same way your clothes stick together if you don’t use an anti-static sheet in the dryer) are drawn along with them as well. This causes huge sheets of dust to wrap themselves around the whirling asteroid, encasing the object in a mostly ferrous metallic shell. Because of the way that the material accumulates, coming in only from the sunward or spaceward sides, more material is deposited along the centerline of the metallic shell than at the top or the bottom, resulting in a slightly oblate shape. Since it is mostly formed of ferrous metals, the shell rotates along with the bar magnet at its center (though not as rapidly as the asteroid). And yet, no matter how much material the proto Earth accumulates, the speed of this rotation will remain coordinated, from the inner core all the way to the outer surface. (In other words, if not for the vestigial, but constant movement of the various land masses of the Earth, you could pick a spot somewhere on the planet and go and stand there each day, and the location that corresponded to the same spot on the inner core would always be directly beneath you. With the movement of the continents this position will change over the years, although, in truth, the variation over a lifetime would only be a few meters.) The outer surface of the Earth always rotates fast enough to keep pace with the inner core.
Now the familiar globe shape of the Earth is revealed. The object grows larger, is flash hardened, then grows and is flash hardened again. Over and over, this occurs. At a certain point the Earth grows large enough to start creating its own ring system, just as the Sun did before it. And, the same thing happens to the Earth as happened to the Sun-the rings around the Earth begin to catch the inflowing material, and the Earth receives less mass, although many of the gases still reach the planet. And just as in the rings of Saturn, or the rings around the Sun, moons and moonlets attempt to form. Eventually, one of them is successful. Now the Moon catches most of the incoming material, even a healthy share of the primitive gases the miniature gas giant Earth has been absorbing. So great is the inflow that the Moon grows large enough to create its own small ring system.
This same process is taking place around every planet and large moon in the solar system. They all have rings around them during this period (in the past few years traces of such rings have been found around all the outer gas/ice giants-the remnants of these rings exist in a region outside the orbits of the gas giants outermost moons). Remember, too, at this point every object of any appreciable size in the solar system also has an envelope of nebular gases around it. This even includes objects as small as asteroids.
The precise mechanism which sets the Sun into motion is still unclear-it could be that once it accumulated a sufficient amount of mass, the Sun simply imploded on itself. Alternately, it is possible that one of those massive waves of static electricity was responsible. Either way, our Sun blazed into life and a number of things then occurred. Most of the dust in the inner solar system was actually converted to slightly larger particles (millions of pea, pebble, and pin head sized objects which still bombard our planet each year, adding tons of additional weight) or that dust was blown towards the outer reaches of the solar system. The outer surface gases that had formed around the Sun, those that contained the most water, were also blown away from the surface of the Sun during its ignition. As they travelled outward, they began coalescing as balls of ice, while at the same time picking up an outer layer of nebular dust. We know these objects today as comets.
But something else truly puzzling also occurred during or shortly after the ignition of the Sun. The ring systems of all the planets and major and minor moons collapsed. Most of them ended up crashing into the planets or moons they were orbiting, while others went rogue, sailing off into the blackest reaches of the solar system, only to periodically return to threaten their mother worlds.
Why did this happen? What were the conditions that led to the crash of every ring system, save one, in our solar system? Did the Sun smolder for a few hundred million years before fully catching fire? Or, did it start and initially run in a very erratic fashion, perhaps even producing one or more truly cataclysmic outbursts? It’s difficult to say, especially without more precise information. What we do know is that this “great bombardment” did take place, even if the reasons behind it are still a mystery.
The Earth and Moon suffer through this great bombardment, though the Moon takes the brunt of it, shielding the Earth somewhat from what would have otherwise been the full effects. (Perhaps this is because the Moon formed in these rings.) The great bombardment consumes virtually every object in orbit around the planets of the inner solar system. When it ends, the only ring objects left in the inner solar system are the Moon, and the two potato shaped asteroids that orbit Mars.
Although the Moon, just like the Earth, is surrounded by an envelope of nebular gases, it quickly sheds these as it cools. This is because the Moon loses its spin. Its rotation slows, until it only rotates once every twenty-nine days (which is how it can always keep the same face towards Earth). The slowing of this rotation, combined with the fact that the Moon blows a large amount of its core material out onto the hemisphere that faces the Earth, causes its core to cool rapidly, which also leads to the collapse of its magnetic field. Without this shield, the Moon is incapable of fending off the predations of the Sun, and cosmic rays disperse the Moon’s atmosphere in short order. Though the Moon will retain heat in its core, even to this very day, it will never be enough to bring this grey and nearly airless world back to life again. Over time the Moon will vent quite a large portion of the water and gas it accumulated during formation through its North and South Polar Regions. Our probes have detected evidence of traces of water at the Moon’s poles, while probes in the outer solar system, in orbit around Saturn, have seen one of the moons on the outer edges of the ring system venting sprays of water hundreds of kilometers into the air on an almost daily basis. Doubtless the Moon once did the same, but that ended hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years ago.
While all this is happening, the Earth’s own cloak of nebular gases is coalescing too. And, as it does, it mixes with all the gases our planet is producing as the crust begins to cool and shrink. (Our atmosphere could not have formed without an envelope of nebular gas already in place. As real world experience has shown us in probe after probe, gases exposed to a surface with no atmosphere dissipate.) The Oceans also form at this time. One of the most plentiful gases during this period is carbon dioxide, and the first primitive forms of life take advantage of this by using carbon dioxide and/or sunlight for food and energy, and producing, as they do, a curious byproduct-oxygen.
And you know the rest of the story from here…
Well, that’s it. From a single flake of iron to an entire planet, in just a few short paragraphs. (The real process, of course, took place over half a billion years or more.) Sorry I couldn’t make it a bit more eye catching for the graphics guys, but that’s simply how it is. Like most things in the mundane world, the most plausible scenario is not quite as flashy or spectacular as a big budget movie, or a well written novel. The real world rarely is.

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