Starship Asterisk*

Hello Owlice,

What kind of name do you have? I know well about research and all the references that Wikipedia provides. But, I am lonely and love to socialize with professional scientists.

The Forum soothes the soul -

http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/v1la-580x448.jpg http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/images/interstellar_1.gif Voyager 1 May Have Left the Solar System by Nancy Atkinson, Universe Today, October 8, 2012 <<While there’s no official word from NASA on this, the buzz around the ...

I fully realize the Nice theory is trying to address the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) period that occurred about 600 hundred million years after the birth of the solar system. This is not what the Nice model is trying to address. The model deals with the position of bodies in the Solar System. The ...

New ideas about planetary collisions have surfaced since I last had discussions on the forum about this topic. I have recently noticed on a Science channel on TV (I do not watch TV networks too often) that certain kinds of planetary collisions are being animated. Some of the narrators are respected ...

The Nice theory is not so nice. Once a planet finds his or her orbit, then as the proto-star gains more mass the planet is allowed to gain some velocity. If the planet gains more mass, then it is allowed to slow down a little. Changing orbits more outwardly and/or crossing orbits is not so pretty. ...

The Nice theory is not so nice. Once a planet finds his or her orbit, then as the proto-star gains more mass the planet is allowed to gain some velocity. If the planet gains more mass, then it is allowed to slow down a little. Changing orbits more outwardly and/or crossing orbits is not so pretty. T...

Doug, Ann is still here, but is not nearly so much the expert on galaxies as the astronomers and astrophysicists who actually study them. The Wikipedia article here is a good introduction to the topic. You can find references there which will take you to academic articles on galaxy evolution, and f...

Hello Ann, One or more years ago I talked to Ann who was an expert on galaxies (their ages, colors, shapes, types of stars, etc.). Is that very Ann still in this forum? I am not sure whether she is Ann, the Commodore. Anyway, I am hoping this Ann will have some commentary for my above idea. I know t...

<<" Killer electrons "?! Should you be hiding under a table?>> Hello to Neufer and other scientists scared of receiving too many killer electrons, Electrons from the solar winds that eventually reach the magnetic field around the Earth must go somewhere. Where is that place? Supposely, th...

The Wiki explanation is then only referring to an "encounter" with the Oort cloud by a passing star or distant planet and not the exchange of any bodies. One fact is hard to believe is that all ejected bodies do not always remain in highly elliptical orbits and eventually collide with the ...

Hello Chris, I will quote Wikipedia (detach object) which led me to think that DO's could truly be detached. I realize that Wikepedia is not the best authority to cite, but the free encyclopedia does certainly help to keep topics current. "Such orbits cannot have been created by gravitational s...

Hello Neufer, thanks for stepping up to the plate. You beat me to the punch. I was just about to mention that the Sun's original cluster of stars should have played havoc with any forming Oort cloud at 1 ly away when some open star clusters are known to have stars that are only 1.5 lys apart. Your N...

Thanks for telling me what TNO's are: I should have known the term. You avoided my one comment about Wikipedia explaining that DO's are from outside the solar system. Did I mis-interpret Wikipedia's explanation?
Doug

A rather old paper (from 1997) by Pawel Artymowicz, BETA PICTORIS: An Early Solar System? describes and discusses the nature of the Beta Pictoris system. See http://web.gps.caltech.edu/classes/ge133/reading/betapic_araa.pdf Pawel Artymowicz wrote: A nebula with a particular surface density distribu...

So now I understand. The discovery of the scattered disk in Beta Pictoris is the first piece of evidence. But, I am not sure how a scattered disk leads to an Oort cloud. As I already mentioned there is a cut-off of 100 AUs beyond which not objects are found. If the Sun and outer planets were slingin...

Please excuse my ignorance. What are TNOs? I have my own reasons for believing that DO's originated elsewhere other than from our solar system and its formation process. However, I am paraphrasing Wikipedia about DO's source coming from interstellar space. Perhaps this scientific opinion has already...

I am not sure whether you are responding to my questioning the existence of the Oort cloud. I do notice that the disk fades away at about 200 AU radius and does not reveal a spherical component. These images do not corroborate the existence of an Oort cloud. But they demonstrate that something like...

Hello Ann, I really like these sharp, precise replies. Thank you. I presume since Beta Pictoris is on the main sequence with no T-Tauri winds, that this dust disk will be naturally cleared away by the UV and lower solar winds of the star in about another 100 million years( ? ) So what is the modeled...

Hello Ann, I am glad to hear from you. The resolution of these disks is impressive. In what stage of evolution is Beta Pictoris? I am curious to know what astrophysicists think about the secondary disk? I am not sure whether you are responding to my questioning the existence of the Oort cloud. I do ...

Hello Chris, I am not sure when this recent term of DO's came into being, but the DO's are differentiated from scattered disk objects (SDO's) by their anomalous orbits. Per the DO's definition their orbits are not derived from ejections by the Sun or the outer planets. Their orbits are definitely th...

Hello Chris,

Thank you for your prompt reply. I am not aware of "seen icy body clouds around other stars". Are these clouds seen by the Kepler telescope? What type of ices are in these clouds and at what distance from the star are they found?

Always questioning,

Bystander, thank you for the reference. I was unaware of this mission. This telescope is on the trail of Dark Energy and the first 100 million years of this universe.

Doug Ettinger

I have two questions about Globular Clusters: 1) How (under what conditions) did GCs from? Did they start out as very compact objects or did they begin as more extended groups of stars that then coalesced? 2) Are GCs still forming in our galaxy or in any other galaxies at present? If not, were they...

Does anybody in the Forum have any ideas about the origins of solar system detached objects (DOs) ?

Very, very curious,

I heard rumors that the USA government constructed and is now operation a large ground telescope facility near the South Pole of Antartica. Does anyone know if this rumor is true? Thanks.

Never sure about rumors and U-tube hype.