Was solar system Recently rearranged?

Updated: Nov 7, 2020

A long-standing conundrum and one of the most mysterious unknowns of the solar system, alongside its formation mechanism, is the inclination of planetary orbits and their rotational axis tilts. Recent 2016 papers blame the newly alleged discovery of 'Planet 9' of the revolution orbits (1). This is said to be causing Mercury's orbit to be tilted 7 degrees respect to the ecliptic (Venus' orbit is 3 degrees, Mars 2º, Jupiter 1.3º, Saturn 2.5º and so), and Pluto has a large 17 degrees inclination. Even more odd is the axial tilting, as there are two clear families: Earth is 23.5 degrees to the ecliptic, Mars 25º, Saturn 26 and Neptune 29º. On the other side, the Sun is 7º, Mercury 0.01 and Jupiter 3 degrees only. In spite of that some scientists try to use Planet 9 to explain this too, there is no mainstream official authoritative answer to the problem, and it is blamed on pure chance (3). An attempt is made appealing to random accretion impacts where planetesimals get large enough that these collisions can disturb their spin axis. Big planetesimals grow faster than small ones, and are less likely to have their spin axis disturbed. So proto-Jupiter manages to capture most of the matter that doesn't end up in the proto-Sun, and suffers little disruption to its spin axis. The smaller planets aren't so lucky. Of course, it fails to explain why Mercury is not tilted and Saturn or Neptune have large ones. It is obvious that randomness do not explain why two tilt families are favoured.

A few thousands years ago, a sudden catastrophic climate change took place which resulted in a new geological period we call Holocene. The former period, known as Pleistocene, ended with three abrupt cooling and quicker warming periods called Dryas. Its cause it still hotly debated today. Mainstream view holds that the Gulf's Stream in the Atlantic was cut off stopping the Thermo-Haline Current (TCH), because fleets of icebergs accumulated at the poles and went out to sea melting and pouring a large amount of fresh water decreasing the water density of the Conveyor and disrupting the global circulation. However, they don't account why these happened or why this occurred so fast, nor why some regions (Northwest Greenland and Canadian Islands, Alaska, Beringia, and North Siberia had a mild climate.

Another group holds that a cometary body impact (or alternatively a meteoric airburst) triggered the melting of most of the icesheet (others say that it drove the cooling) (5). However, they have not found a meteorite or definite crater, apart of some other technical issues (shocked quartz and tektites). It arose a very emotional debate still raging.

Others have stated that nearby supernova or galactic core outburst was guilty of the Dryas event and the megafauna extinction (6). More plausible seems that solar activity, such big superflares or coronal mass ejections (CME) hit the planet, and "plasma hitting the surface of Earth could heat and fuse rock, incinerate flammable materials, melt ice caps, vaporise shallow bodies of water creating an extended deluge of rain" (7). However, it does not account for the cooling phases.

All of these hypothesis (even the mainstream should be considered as such) assume an eternally stable solar system, with planets roaming at same distances from the Sun at the same speeds, periods or angles.

UNTOUCHED SOLAR SYSTEM

From 1750 to 1795, the philosopher I. Kant and the mathematician P. S. Laplace devised the Nebular Hypothesis based on Newton's gravity. They thought a cloud of gas a dust accreted into a proto-star (which became our Sun), that left some debris orbiting at varying distances, which over time coalesced in proto-planets (which became our planets). These planets formed at the same distances we observe nowadays, and therefore has same orbital periods (according to Kepler laws).

Withal, hundreds of theories were developed (9) based on the same model during the 2 following centuries which could not give a satisfactory record of hundred more anomalies (asteroid belt, small size of Mars, far away Neptune and Uranus, zonal composition or the origin of comets...) (10) (11).

Nevertheless, this situation remained until the year 2000 and the first exoplanetary systems discoveries. Thus, hot-Jupiters, odd highly eccentric and tilted orbits or very close ones, retrograde orbits and abundance of binary systems, among other factors, forced the birth of new hypothesis, breaking the immutability assumption. The Grand Tack and the Nice Model evolved from Nebular theory, but embodied ideas of orbital resonances and planetary migration. Basically, they allow orbs to exchange orbits, travelling inwards and outwards the solar system. The exoplanet database (22) show that 70% of hot-Jupiters lay in orbits narrower than Mercury's one. However, in our weird, odd and strange solar system (12), Jupiter and Saturn formed far away from its star, beyond 5-9 UAs and then travelled inside, and then back again to were they are, meanwhile disrupting all yet-forming planets and asteroids. Thereby, the want to explain the asteroid belt, the small accreted size of Mars and the comets as leftovers from than process. Judge yourself.

Yes, these models are only theories wrapped by complex maths and several computer simulations. In 2015, a paper by D. Nesvorny (13) stated:

"The solar system has changed dramatically since its birth, and so did our understanding of it".

Despite the supercomputer simulations and modern models, dozens of oddities still challenge our theories, especially those related to retrograde orbits. Gravitational accretion cannot explain objects travelling in the opposite direction to the main actors, unless you appeal to random pinball collisions, luck and statistically unlikely gravitational captures.

Though, it seems there are far much exceptions than expected. In 2018, nine of twelve new Jovian moons were found with retrograde orbits (14). The amount of retrograde moon for Jupiter adds up to 33 of a total of 79 (15). In Saturn's system, the big moon Phoebe and the so-called Norse group made of 48 retrograde moons, for a total of 82 moons (16).

Gravitational captures are not only unlikely but also temporary (18).

"The principles of conservation of linear and angular momentum, always impose severe constraints, while conservation of energy and the vital distinction between dissipative and non-dissipative systems allows one to rule out capture in a wide variety of cases. In complex systems, especially those without dissipation, long dwell time is a more significant concept than permanent capture’.

However, not only Jupiter and Saturn have retrograde moons. Triton, Neptune's largest moon, not only is retrograde (19) but has a relative young surface (we'll discuss this later).

That said, the most famous hindrance of current solar models is the retrograde spin of Venus and Uranus. One of the hypotheses is that Venus and Uranus originally rotated counter-clockwise – like Earth and the other planets still do – but were struck at some point by massive objects (perhaps other planets) that sent them spinning in different directions. In 2011, simulations suggested that a number of smaller collisions, rather than one big impact, knocked Uranus' spin to an angle of 98 degrees. An alternative explanation put forward by astronomers in 2009 is that "Uranus once had a large moon, the gravitational pull of which caused the planet to fall on its side. Eventually, the moon could have been knocked out of orbit by another planet, a bit like a game of cosmic pinball". (20)

As for Venus, scientists have suggested that it started o rotating counter-clockwise, then slowed down to be almost static, before starting to spin clockwise like it does now. This might explain the planet's very slow rotation speed today (see more about this later) (35) (36). Someday someone will find a computer simulation where a dark non-existent planet knocked down Uranus, flied by Venus flipping it upside down and run away from the solar system not to leave traces.

COMET VENUS

Whilst difference between stars and planets is somewhat diffuse (relying on the mass -in case we assume a nuclear fusion model- or the release of its own energy) (21); the distinction between comets and planets is even more ambiguous, depending on whether we assess size, orbit, life support capabilities or composition. Taking size means that Hale-Bopp (96 km) may not be a comet because it's too big, or conversely, that Phobos and Deimos (6 and 11 km) are comets. Regarding orbit means that exoplanets 62 bigger than Jupiter as KOI-415 b with eccentricity of 0.69 and orbit inclination of 89 degrees or HD 4747 b (60 Jupiter masses) and e=0.74 and i=66 degrees should be labelled as comets (22). If we consider composition, none of the alleged named comets would be such as they are not made of CO2, CH4 or H2O as shown in the linked summary-paper (23).

If we agree that a big sized body may be called 'comet', we must address if Venus could have approached the Earth as the global myth attest. In 1978, following the aftermaths of Velikovsky's proposal of a cometary Venus, the British physicist Peter Warlow tried to prove the feasibility of his ideas and the enigma of the magnetic reversals. He suggested that instead of being the field what flipped, it was the whole planet which turned upside down, the magnetic field remaining the same (41). Three years later the Russian Slabinski countered that the torque needed to produce the 180º inversion would precise a 427 Earth masses body, which do no exist, at a 2 Earth radii distance (42). This was called the 'Tippe-Top Debate' and kept on going the next years. Finally, in 1989, D. Salkeld proved Slabinski objections wrong (43); claiming that a rigorous calculation of gravitational torque for an Earth-mass body could turn the planet axis in 14 days at 10 Earth radii (Slabinski had used minimal values and just one day).

He concluded "there was no need to appeal to electromagnetic forces to invert the Earth (while not excluding the possibility that they would play some - perhaps even a major - part in any close cosmic encounter). Gravitational torques about the 2nd and 3rd axis were enough to cause the inversion".

However, all this debate has considered Earth as a rigid body, and had used a huge inertia momentum with the whole Earth mass. If we just take the lithospheric mass, the momentum to overcome would be much less, and the inversion could be accomplished in a longer range of distances. A small shift of 20 or 30 degrees would also be much more easy than a full inversion. Salkeld even hinted that Earth would get a smooth rotation like current in 150 years after the event (43).

In 1999 Nufer et al said that a close approach of a planet "to distances smaller than 30.000 km could result in a rotation of the Earth of about 20º with respect to the direction of the invariant angular momentum. Flyby events having distances larger than about the Moon-Earth distance are harmless in this respect, but they still may influence Earth’s climate" (47).

W. Woelfli and W. Baltensperger argued in 2007 that a Mars-sized body they called Planet Z caused the Heinrich Events (icebergs breaking from glaciers and changing climate). They explained in a paper (46) that:

"At present, due to the equatorial bulge, one of the main axes of Earth's inertial tensor is longer than the other two, and its direction coincides with that of the rotation axis. This is a stable situation. For a polar shift, a further deformation of the Earth is required. During the shift, the direction of the angular momentum vector remains strictly fixed relative to the stars, as required by conservation laws. What turns is the globe relative to the rotation axis. The shift leads to new geographic positions of the North and South Poles".

This is a sort of Dzhanibekov Effect (49) (Tennis Racket Theorem (48)) which would help to explain the quick recovery of Earth's previous gyroscopic movement, helped by the new presence of the Moon (50). Their conclusion was that during the onset of the Holocene, a Mars' mass body approached the Earth, probably at half the Moon's distance; causing a crust deformation of 6.5 km and the subsequent geological upheaval (45). They speculated it could have been a loose Jupiter moon, which was destroyed giving origin the asteroid belt. [It must be noticed that they calculated this with the presence of the Moon in its actual orbit]. Substituting Z by Venus at Moon's distance, the exerted gravitational force would be 3 times that, leading to a lithospheric deformation of 19.6 km. Being at 1 million km, tidal force would be just 0,44 and the crust deformation, a more acceptable 2.8 km.

Venus and Mars, have induced magneto-tails, which disconnect and reconnect, releasing plasmas jets (53). Notwithstanding, both of them lack a magnetic field of their own. One can observe an ionosphere on Venus' night side. "Measurements performed by space probes have shown electrons and ions flowing from the day side to the night side". During events of weak solar wind Venus' ionosphere is not magnetised. When solar wind breaks off the ionosphere in the region between the day and night side can expand. Charged particles can therefore reach the night side more easily and in greater number. This tail is about 15.000 km but could reach millions of kilometres (54). It could be a cometary reminiscence.

An important final remark. Tidal locking arises when gravitational interaction between two bodies slows a one body's rotation until it becomes locked (57). The apparent Solar day on Venus is 116.75 days, and it takes almost exactly 5 apparent solar days between consecutive meetings of Earth and Venus (25 during the whole resonance cycle), so that Venus shows always almost the same face to the Earth during each meeting, and shows that same face to both Earth and Sun during heliocentric opposition of Earth and Venus (55) (56). Could be that Earth and Venus shared a gravitational interaction recently so that they are semi-tidally locked (13:8 resonance)?

WHEN

A 1999 Scientific American article talked about the randomness of Earth's geomagnetic field inversions due to stochastic motions of fluids in the outer core, and the slower diffusion of the inner core (25). The Moon plays a major role sustaining the magnetic field of Earth (26). Nutation is partly due to lunisolar changing forces, and is also linked to our magnetic field (27). We might speculate that inversions are related to a different position of our satellite or ¡even to its absence! At least, non-gravitational forces had been found in the Earth-Moon system (29). Sun has also big influence on our magnetosphere (32), so our distance to the Sun may have been important too.

According to accretion physics, the debris from the alleged collision that formed the Moon should stabilise on the Earth’s equatorial plane — and thus, the moon’s orbit after formation. As the satellite began to distance itself from the Earth, its orbit should have shifted to the planet’s ecliptic plane. "This large tilt of 5 degrees is very unusual" (30).

Our Moon is the only natural satellite whose axial tilt is not the same as its parent body; Saturn's main moons are tilted 26 degrees to the ecliptic as Saturn itself, and Jupiter's Galilean moons are tilted the same 3 degrees (0 degrees respect to Jupiter). Why is the Moon only tilted 1.5 degrees instead of 23.5? (31) Perhaps, it is after all a captured body.

Mercury's magnetic field diminished 27% since Mariner probe's visit (58). It is 150 times than the Earth's one (scientists thought it should be similar (59)), supposedly because of the charge particles of the solar wind. If this is the case, it should have extinguished completely in billions of years.

Venus' spin is so slow that its day last longer than its year (35). Additionally, this rate is accelerating: it is 6.5 minutes slower than 16 years ago (36). Has it settled recently in its orbit?

However it be, Venus' surface is surprisingly young (60).

Given enough time, all the planets will become tidally locked with the Sun. The timescale involved though are in the billions - trillions of years (for the outer planets). How fast a planet becomes tidally locked depends on the mass of the star and the distance from the planet to the star. Another unsolved conundrum of astronomy is why Mercury is not tidally locked to the Sun in billions of years, given that it has the most different mas ratio. A tentative answer is that it was allegedly impacted by a 'gargantuan' meteorite that triggered a crater 715 km long, disrupting the 1:1 locking, which became a 3:2 resonance (61). However, Rembrant crater is just 15% of Mercury's surface.

Saturn's satellite Mimas (crater 35% of the moon) but tidally locked.
Saturn's moon Tethys (has a crater 42% of the surface), however tidally locked.
Mars' moon Phobos, of 27 km has the Stickney crater (9 km) and is locked.
Pluto and its moon Charon are locked (1: resonance) with Mordor crater being 40% of the moon.

An so on... Mercury is an oddity. Could be explained if Mercury is a newcomer to that orbit!

Not only Venus, Titan (66) and Triton's (19) (67) surfaces are young. Io's surface looks like it has formed just a million years ago. Part of the surface of Enceladus has the same problem (68). Uranus's moons Miranda and Ariel has also resurfaced features (69). Of course, all these surface anomalies indicate only relative youth, meaning younger than expected though millions of years old. However, the putative age of the solar system is based on the age of Earth and a few Moon's rocks (71), by using Radiometric dating techniques, which is flawed and relies on a bunch of assumptions, most of which are experimentally proven wrong (70).

Saturn's rings and inner moons are possibly younger than the dinosaurs (62). Researchers showed that tidal effects - interaction of the inner moons with fluids deep in Saturn’s interior —, should cause the moons to move to larger orbits in a very short time. Maybe those moons do not have much time. Saturn's rings may have formed by electro-gravitation process (63). Some electro-magnetic theories of the solar system formation, like H. Alfven's (64), would explain the youthfulness of the solar system and much anomalies.

To finish, I'd like to talk about Titan's atmosphere composition, in which methane is large component (5%) following Nitrogen (94%) (likewise the young Earth). The presence of methane is one of the major enigmas that the Cassini-Huygens mission tried to resolve. Scientists have long known that Titan's atmosphere contains methane, ethane, acetylene and many other hydrocarbon compounds. But sunlight irreversibly destroys methane after tens of millions of years, so something has replenished methane in Titan's thick air during the moon's 4.5 billion-year history (they're assuming the age so there has to be a refilling mechanism. Totally ad-hoc). (72)

CORALS

Corals are marine invertebrates typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual polyps that dies usually a few years, whose skeleton is used as a foundation for a new polyp, eventually building the formations of a reef. It takes a long time for the tiny coral polyps to create an entire reef. Coral formations grow an average of 3 to 20 cm per year (75). While ancestors of today's coral date back to Cambrian and Ordovician (500 million years) (76), today's reefs began growing more than 50 million years ago, although most reefs are about 5,000 to 10,000 years old. While entire reefs may grow this old, each coral colony has a significantly smaller lifespan of hundreds of years. And individual coral polyps may only live for a couple of years. Biologists are baffled by the mystery of coral reefs bleaching (77) which is attributed by some of them to ocean warming. They are astonished that coral survived the hotter Holocene Optimum period. However, it is difficult to understand why not all coral is white if it is 500 Million years old. Other theories claim that coral bleaching is due to solar radiation (78). This lead us to suggest a possible link between Earth's orbit recent rearrangement and coral whitening.

Summary and Conclusion

Rearrangement (YES):

Obital tilts
Familiar axial tilts
Grand Tack and Nice Model (planetary migration)
Retrograde Moons. gravitational capture is unlikely and temporary
Uranus and Venus retrograde spin

Cometary behaviour (Possible):

Warlow, Salkeld, Nufer, and Woelfli and Baltensperger calculations
Dzhanibekov Effect (Tennis Racket Theorem)
Moon stabilization effect

Recent times (Quite possible):

Random Earth magnetic field reversals
Unusual orbital tilt and odd axial tilt of the Moon
Mercury's magnetic field fading
Mercury's lack of tidal locking
Young surfaces in planets and moons (active geology, resurfacing lavas, few craters...)
Young Saturn's rings and moons in tight orbits
Methane in Titan's atmosphere untouched by sunlight