Questions tagged [solar-system-evolution]
Questions about the long term evolution of solar systems. For other questions about solar systems use the solar-system tag, for questions about star, galaxy or planet evolution use the stellar-evolution, galactic-evolution and planetary-formation tags.
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How much mass did the Late Heavy Bombardment add to Mars?
How much mass was deposited on a terrestrial planet during the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB)?
Is it possible to estimate a reasonable interval, specifically, for Mars?
Could the mass addition to Mars ...
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Size of the solar system relative to exosystems
How does the semi-major axis of Mercury's orbit compare to that of the innermost planet of other exosystems? What about the semi-major of Neptune compared to that of the outmost planet of a system? I'...
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Why did Theia create only one moon if it struck Earth?
If I dropped a heavy ball into some magma it would splash all over the place. So why would Theia create only one large drop of liquid (the moon) and if it impacted the Earths mantle (Bits of Theia ...
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When the sun formed did it have the same chemical elements as the rest of the solar system and does it now?
Did the solar system start out with a uniform distribution of elements or was the distribution uneven?
user52681
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Under which conditions could a planet's massive moon's orbit get closer to the planet?
The recent question How do we know the Moon was much closer than it is now? has piqued my interest. The answers are numerous and clear. But I started to wonder. The question includes the following ...
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What would happen if Venus and Earth collided?
The first thing we would need to consider is that Earth has already been hit by a protoplanet half its size 4.5 billion years ago, meaning the Earth may have a chance of staying intact after the ...
user51331
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Can the distribution of Al28 across the Earth tell us if the solar system formed from a gas cloud that collapsed itself or by a supernova explosion?
A single supernova could have collapsed a gas cloud and left Aluminium 28 on one side of the Earth . If there were many supernovae in all directions that gradually sent material to Earth then the ...
user50623
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Formation of a non-Sol Oort cloud with high mass planets
Based on recent developments in astronomy, pertaining to a greater degree of measurement, the mass of the Oort cloud around Sol is apparently only about 1.5 times the mass of earth,in contrast to over ...
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What is approximate numerical equation of the apsidal precession of the Earth-Moon barycenter?
What is approximate numerical equation of the apsidal precession of the Earth-Moon barycenter? Or is it only constant 11.45 arcsec/year with unchanged accuracy to 0.01 arcsec/year for a million years?...
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Effects of other planets on life on Earth
I've heard this often in the media, that the gas planet Jupiter has a significant effect upon life on Earth - by, the say, drawing asteroids & comets to itself, many planet-killer are destroyed as ...
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Orbital Stability of a Double Planet System
I recently found an article claiming a double planet system needs to be at least .5 AU from its parent star to be stable for billions of years. It was specifically talking about two same-mass bodies, ...
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Why did Jupiter spiral into the inner solar system? [duplicate]
We know over 4 billion years ago, Jupiter was created and started to head into the inner solar system until Saturn pulled Jupiter back out. In fact, we wouldn’t be here if Jupiter stayed inside the ...
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Is it possible that the inner Solar System formed in a different configuration to today?
I have recently been reading about the formation and early evolution of the Solar System, and how the outer Solar System very likely did not form in its current configuration and has almost certainly ...
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Why didn't Kessler Syndrome prevent planet formation?
In 1978, Donald Kessler proposed that space pollution in orbit around the Earth could enter a collisional cascading state. This means debris would collide with satellites, generating more debris, ...
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How could low-gravity dust in the early solar system have formed hard stones?
I wonder how very low-gravity dust could make bind together and make hard and dense stones that later on will merge together and make some of the planets? I read some meteorites as hard as a hard ...
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Is the solar system the only survivor of cosmic evolution? [closed]
A question has entered my mind, we know that all the phenomena in the universe are several thousand light years away from us, so the light we see from them is related to the past few years, now my ...
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Which planet came first in our Solar system?
I always wonder which planet came first in our solar system? Sources suggest that Jupiter might be the first planet in our solar system, but how did our solar system evolve into an 8 planet system?
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Is the closest planet to another planet always the innermost planet?
In our Solar system Mercury is not only the closest planet to Earth on average but also, for the same reason, the closest planet on average to all other planets (Jupiter, Neptune, etc...).
Does that ...
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What's the expected distribution of planet masses in a given system?
Given that the mass of a planet at a given orbital distance r is dependent on the protoplanetary material in the neighborhood of r at the time of formation (assuming no planetary migration), what ...
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How do scientists know that Earth used to spin much more rapidly?
News has just been released all over my news feeds about how paleontologists now believe that early photosynthetic organisms became much more efficient at producing oxygen after the Earth started to ...
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Where will the frost line be when the Sun becomes a red giant and what effect will it have on the solar system?
I understand the frost line is currently about 5.2 AU and earlier in the solar systems formation was 2.7 AU. But when the Sun becomes a red giant the frost line should move outward. I understand the ...
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Intuitive explanation of the source of energy that cause Jupiter and Saturn to migrate outward in the Grand Tack Hypothesis?
The Grand Tack Hypothesis states that Jupiter first migrate inward, but it was caught up by the faster inward migration of Saturn, and when the two planets reached 3:2 mean-motion resonance they ...
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Does Soter take into account Pluto's and Orcus' masses when determining Neptune's planetary discriminant µ?
Does Steven Soter's planetary discriminant µ1 for Neptune take into account the masses of Pluto, Orcus and other Kuiper belt objects crossing or coming very close to Neptune's orbit? If so, Neptune ...
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Why are solar systems stable and not chaotic?
I am not trained in applied mathematics and am asking as a layperson.
It seems that the motions of the planets can be reliably predicted for thousands of years. Yet, if we consider a relatively simple ...
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Where have all the Vulcanoids gone?
This answer to Does anything orbit the Sun faster than Mercury? explains that while Vulcanoid asteroids may have been plentiful in the past, large ones have currently been ruled out though smaller ...
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What influence does the Interplanetary Magnetic Field have on Planetary Orbits?
CONTEXT
The equation $F_D=\frac{GMm}{D^2}$ is a standard equation in Newtonian gravitation. It describes the centripetal force exerted, by a source mass$M$, on a target particle of mass $m$ located ...
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How much difference did the supply of "fresh" r-process elements make to the Solar System.?
In one of the answers to this question @MartinKochanski made the interesting point that the abundance of elements heavier than iron (r-process elements) in the solar system is probably due to a fairly ...
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Does the lower mass of Uranus suggest it swapped position with Neptune?
As Uranus is less massive than Neptune, would this be evidence that it was formed further away from the sun than Neptune, and later it swaps orbit with Neptune to move closer to sun?
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If sun steals comets from other stars, then what is the primary source of comets?
I heard some theory that sun may steal materials such as comets from neighbouring stars, is it true? But if is true, what is the primary source of those comets? Especially "who" creates them instead ...
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Theoretically, can a solar system evolve around lagrange points
My question is, during the evolution of a solar system is it possible to end up with a massive planet around a star with two small planets around their $L_4$ and $L_5$.
Since we know it is not ...
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Ejected planets during the early stages of the formation of the Solar System
This is similar to a previously asked question, but I am just asking about theory rather than observational evidence. Assuming there were a much larger number of protoplanets in the early Solar System,...
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How is it that all planets (and moons) in our solar system are in equilibrium orbits?
Previously, I was told that in order for any bodies to orbit each other for over a long period of time, the orbital period, distance and masses have to be precisely matched such that the bodies won't ...
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Stability of solar system
My question is simple:
Is the Solar system stable?
You can see this Wikipedia page.
Edit: Sorry, because i think my question is more about mathematics and classical mechanics of planets in ...
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Likelihood of a stable system with a dwarf planet's orbit inside that of a gas giant
I keep thinking of various planetary system configurations, and would like to know:
What are the fundamental references based on Monte Carlo long-term simulation of planetary systems' evolution that ...
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How does the evolution of a solar system not break the second law of thermodynamics?
Please forgive: I am a layman when it comes to physics and cosmology, and have tried finding an answer to this that I can understand, with no luck.
As I understand it, the solar system evolved from a ...
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What was the greatest spatial extent of the Asteroid Belt prior to the Late Heavy Bombardment?
Reading the article On the asteroid belt’s orbital and size distribution (Gladman et al. 2009), there is an interest point made:
asteroids a
few kilometers and smaller in size are recent ...
user8