Brian J Beesley wrote:
> dust
> particles tend to accumulate positive charges.
>
> This makes it hard for gravity to stick particles together, if they're
> sufficiently small.
>
> The Solar System is indeed chaotic, on a scale which is important
> for small bodies. But the major planets are in orbits which are quite
> stable, and are certainly safe (from major orbital change, though
> not from impact from comets, asteroids etc.) for timescales of the
> order of hundreds of millions of years.
>
> In fact, it can be proved that a "principle of natural selection"
> applies, where accretion of large bodies whose orbits are stable is
> preferred, at the expense of bodies whose orbits are less stable.
> This process is largely complete in the inner Solar System, though
> not in the portion of the outer Solar System where the postulated
> "Kuiper Belt" of planetisimals may exist.
>
> Regards
> Brian Beesley
Thanks. It's good to know that I'm not the only person who
appears distressingly immune to irony.
What about the "plane of the ecliptic" though? Is it not amazing
that the masses tend to form systems aligned in two dimensions?
It is my understanding that gravity simulations starting with a random
distribution of stationery points tend to form flat spirals after a
while,
the whole mess orbiting around the original center of gravity of the
whole system, which never moves. Combining this theory with hubble's
constant may allow estimates to be made of "our distance from the
center of the universe"
BTW, I must report that the guy in the next cubible is playing
Beethoven's Ninth, giving the act of spamming the mersenne list with
basic speculative cosmology an aura of grandeur.
______________________________________________________________________
David Nicol 816.235.1187 UMKC Network Operations [EMAIL PROTECTED]
demand IE5 for Linux!
