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There's an extra large jump from Mars to Jupiter, but that's because there's an asteroid belt between them, which might be an aborted planet. If you put the ave
by rcthompson 9y ago
There's an extra large jump from Mars to Jupiter, but that's because there's an asteroid belt between them, which might be an aborted planet. If you put the average distance of the asteroid belt as planet number 5, I bet it would look even more linear.
- olympus 9y ago??? Adding a point in between two other points literally can't make something more linear, it can only make it less linear.
- rcthompson 9y agoI mean that the asteroid belt would be counted as a 5th planet, and Jupiter would be 6, and so on.
- olympus 9y agoAh, I understand now. Increasing the index of the outer planets is what would make the fit better, and the asteroid belt is a good way to justify it (and happens to be consistent with some other theories about the solar system).
- afthonos 9y agoThe x-axis is the planet (+aborted planet) count. You’d be shifting all later planets over by one.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- blacksmith_tb 9y agoSome models[1] suggest that Neptune and Uranus formed closer to the sun, and then migrated to their current orbits later (explanations vary between Jupiter and Saturn pulling them out, or some extrasolar mass). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune#Formation_and_migration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune#Formation_and_migratio...
- dr_zoidberg 9y agoThe asteroid belt doesn't have nearly enough mass to be/have been a planet[0]. Largest thing there is Ceres, followed by Vesta, of which only the first qualifies as a dwarf planet. There was an hypothesis about it being the remnants of a destroyed planet[1], but that was mostly an idea to support the Titius-Bode law[2], which was disproved a few hundred years ago. [0] Currently about 3x Ceres mass, though it may have about Earth mass early in its history. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Formation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Formation and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt#Evolution [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaeton_(hypothetical_planet)#Phaeton_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaeton_(hypothetical_planet)#... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius%E2%80%93Bode_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titius%E2%80%93Bode_law
- mdpopescu 9y ago> ... the Titius-Bode law[2], which was disproved a few hundred years ago Er... the Wikipedia page you're citing at [2] has this to say: "Results from simulations of planetary formation support the idea that a randomly chosen stable planetary system will likely satisfy a Titius–Bode law." and "96% of these exoplanet systems adhere to a generalized Titius–Bode relation to a similar or greater extent than the Solar System does."
- adrianN 9y ago"Disproved" in science often means "superseded by more accurate theory".
- johndcook 9y agoTrue, but the article doesn't mention a more accurate theory. It implies that the rule works better than we have theoretical reasons to expect. (But as I commented above, the article contradicts itself to some degree.)
- johndcook 9y agoThe Wikipedia article is contradictory. As you quoted, it says that the law works well in simulation and in observation, and yet it's just a coincidence. Of course it's not exact, but it looks like a very good first approximation.
- grkvlt 9y agoThat's why the second graph on the page is 'Our Solar System with Ceres' showing exactly that.