Search found 4 matches
- Sun Mar 13, 2011 11:45 pm
- Forum: The Library: Information Desk and Educational Resources
- Topic: why are spins and orbits the same direction?
- Replies: 10
- Views: 1165
Re: why are spins and orbits the same direction?
To the OP - you also have several scales/regimes during planet formation, some where the rocky bits are tiny and coupled to the gas flow, some where they are influenced by it, and some where they influence it. When you start talking about regimes where the dynamics are controlled by collisions of la...
- Sun Mar 13, 2011 11:07 pm
- Forum: The Library: Information Desk and Educational Resources
- Topic: why are spins and orbits the same direction?
- Replies: 10
- Views: 1165
Re: why are spins and orbits the same direction?
Its true that most of the angular momentum in the solar system is in the planets (mostly Jupiter). Its also true that magnetic fields and plasma effects are a dominant driver of angular momentum transport and other dynamics in most accretion disks. Its implausible that the magnetic fields played the...
- Sun Mar 13, 2011 7:57 pm
- Forum: The Library: Information Desk and Educational Resources
- Topic: why are spins and orbits the same direction?
- Replies: 10
- Views: 1165
Re: why are spins and orbits the same direction?
Oh yes, I think the eddy formalism you are talking about is based in the fluid mechanical notion that a fluid element displaced from its location in a keplerian shear flow will exhibit retrograde epicyclic motion. This doesn't take into account local gravitational 'kicks' from material accreting ont...
- Sun Mar 13, 2011 4:36 pm
- Forum: The Library: Information Desk and Educational Resources
- Topic: why are spins and orbits the same direction?
- Replies: 10
- Views: 1165
Re: why are spins and orbits the same direction?
Bear in mind the following is not the only way this can happen, it is just a physically intuitive way to explain. OK, the easy answer is conservation of angular momentum or spin/orbit direction. A huge cloud of gas that rotates about some central axis collapses into a disk as it is gravitationally c...