Starship Asterisk*

I never knew until yesterday after viewing a Wikepedia article that James Clerk Maxwell and I have the same important issue with the nebular hypothesis, the process of forming protostar disks and stars.

Maxwell won a science award for calculations that revealed the orbiting material forming rings around Saturn was particles and not gas or fluid. Of course, he was doubly proven correct when space probes visited the planet. "Maxwell would also go on to mathematically disprove the nebular hypothesis (which stated that the solar system formed through the progressive condensation of a purely gaseous nebula), forcing the theory to account for additional portions of small solid particles."

So how many and what size and types of solid particles did the theory take into account ?

I take Maxwell's issue one step further. I believe one needs agglomerations of solid particles that further agglomerate in order to seed the making of a protostar and generate a disk. The current ideas form around a shock wave or passing gravity field (a star) that causes a gradient in the density of an essentially hard vacuum composed mostly of hydrogen atoms and hydrogen molecules contained inside a large interstellar molecular cloud (IMC).

My question is how this density gradient with no particular geometric shape creates a central point for the gas inside the cloud to move toward ? Why are not several points of gravity sources created at similar times to confound the making of one central point for a gravity source ?

Doug Ettinger is still not happy with the nebular hypothesis.
Pittsburgh, PA

http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 36#p138636
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... 23#p133423

Art, thanks for these very appropriate references. I am trying to pursue a contact with the author of the first reference regarding "Elegant New Theory Explains Origin of Asteroid Belt" and his related article, "A New view on Planet Formation".

Doug Ettinger
Pittsburgh,PA
12/22/10

Hi Doug,
Several points of "gravity sinks" ARE often created - in fact, that is the norm, giving rise not only to double and multiple stars, but also star clusters such as the Pleiades. If you know anything about maths (please ignore this bit if you don't!) think of these 'gravity sinks' as attractors for functions.

Help me visualize these "gravity sinks". What would there typical sizes, densities, and distances apart be for say Centauri Alpha and Centauri Beta? For two protostar disks to form and not disturb each other should be several hundred AU apart; how then do these distances apart decrease to such small distances especially for those binaries in the range of 1.5 to 50 solar radii ?

Doug Ettinger
Pittsburgh, PA