My favorite theory of planetary formation is based on Donald Scott's observation that supernovas appear to be electrical events in which stars are being formed. A giant thunderbolt the size of an entire solar system pulls matter together to form a star. In such a process, it is easy to imagine planets and moons being formed as well. However, this may not be the case.
Instead of being formed all at once, together with the host star, planets may be a result of stellar fission, in which electrically stressed stars give birth to a companion. In his work, Donald Scott notes that binary stars are often observed where there has been a supernova.
Since we know that there are at least two types of supernovas, it's reasonable to suppose that they are due to different types of events. While one type of supernovas produce brand new stars from dust and debris, other types of supernovas may be due to stellar fission.
Staying with the idea of stellar fission, it is easy to further suppose that large planets can give birth to moons. In such a model, Jupiter was born from the Sun, and Jupiter's many moons have all been born from Jupiter. The same can be said for Saturn and other large planets.
Where this model gets tricky is when it comes to rocky planets and their moons. It requires rocky planets to be molten blobs of electrically stressed rock, and this would in turn undermine the possibility that planets and moons are created in a relatively cold process, as suggested by Peter Woodhead.
Unless the fission of our moon from our planet happened inside the original supernova, our planet must have been molten over an extended period of time. Alternatively, it must have been molten twice. In both cases the abundance of gas and liquids assumed to exist inside our planet becomes hard to explain.
It is possible that planets are born both during the initial supernova and in subsequent stellar fission events from stars and gas giants. If so, our planet might have been created in the initial supernova, before Jupiter. Earth and the Moon might have been created in the initial formation of the solar system, while Jupiter and other gas giants might have been created later through stellar fission.
The problem with this mixed model is the difficulty we face in explaining Jupiter's position beyond Mars. How did it migrate past our planet?
My guess for now is that our solar system was created in a single supernova event and that there has been no subsequent birthing of planets through stellar fission. This is not to say that stellar fission does not occur. I'm simply questioning whether this has been the case for our solar system.
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Hourglass nebula |
By NASA, R. Sahai, J. Trauger (JPL), and The WFPC2 Science Team - http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo9607a/, Public Domain, Link
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