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Old February 22nd 04, 02:51 PM
Benoit Morrissette
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On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 10:58:08 -0500 (EST), (G=EMC^2
Glazier) wrote:

What came first in creating a planet? Was it the solid core,or the gas?
The solid core would have more mass density,and that means stronger
force of gravity to capture,and keep a gas from radiating out into
space. Or did the gas that had dust in it settle down in the middle
of the cloud and create a core to revolve around? Its almost like what
came first the chicken or the egg.(chicken being the gas)
Jupiter has so dense an atmosphere it begs this question "What has the
greater amount of particles its atmosphere or its core.?" Bert PS
Does its core revolve at the exact same rate as its atmosphere? If they
don't I could create a theory as to Jupiters strong global magnetic
field

Hello Bert!

You have many questions here, let's take them one at a time.

New models of the atmosphere of Jupiter are developped almost every week so keep
in mind that what i write here may be wrong tomorrow....

The solid core of Jupiter, if any, is believed to be quite small compared to
the size of the planet. It may be composed of crystalized carbon ( a big
diamond! ). It is surrounded by a thick layer of liquid "metallic hydrogen",
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallic_hydrogen perhaps a third of the size of
the planet. The rest is various gases.

The rotation period of atmospheres ( Jupiter, Earth, Venus, Sun etc... ) varies
with latitude: that is what produces the wind "bands" on Jupiter. It does
varies also with depth because mainly of friction. Only a solid core does
rotate as a whole. Of course, the strong magnetic field of Jupiter is believed
to originate in the metallic hydrogen ocean down under. I believe that there
must be strong various currents in that ocean, just like in Earth's oceans.


A Short History Of The Solar System:

It all began more than five billions years ago with the explosion of a
supernovae. After all, all the gold, oxygen etc... here on Earth must come
from somewhere! That supernovae produced a huge cloud of gases, waiting for
eons in space for something to happen...

Then it happened: maybe another supernovae sent a shockwave through the cloud
strong enough to stir it in motion. That produced some clumps of gases more
dense than the surrounding. Because of their gravity, theses clumps attracted
dust and gas particles around them, growing bigger and so, accelerating the
process. Some of them were bigger and were more efficient at "cleaning" their
neighbourhood than others!

After a few zillion years, we have a huge gas and dust cloud containing zillions
of small rocky particle from the size of a smoke particle to the size of a
potatoe. They were revolving around the center of gravity of the cloud but not
in a plane like today, they were coming and going from every directions! The
chance for collisions was very high and yes, they were colliding happily
together, the bigger ones gaining more and more weight faster and faster. That
was about 5 billions years ago.

One of those big rocks won the jackpot: it's gravitationnal greed made it attact
more than 90 % of all matter of the cloud. Because of friction and pressure,
heat was produced in it's core, climbing to a point to ignite hydrogen fusion!
The Sun began to glow and the solar wind pushed away the remaining light dust
particles and gases to the outer edge of he solar system. Meanwhile, the other
bodies of the solar system continues to grow, the inner planets taking the
heavier elements and the outer ones getting the hydrogen and helium that was
pushed away by the solar wind pressure.

At the same time, a kind of order was established in the solar system: all
thoses bodies that do not revolve in the same way as the big ones must
disappear! Well, they did'nt go away, they just crashed onto the big bodies
making big holes on the Moon, Mercury etc... In the long run, only "well
behaved" bodies were left in the system ( with the exeption of the Oort cloud).
That devastating period ended about 4 billions years ago.

Now the solar system is somewhat stable, just give some time to Earth to cool
down, do a few chemical tricks and here we are, speculating on our origins...


Good night!

Benoît Morrissette