The Configurations of The Stars

  Stellar Metamorphosis, the hypothesis that stars cool down and evolve to become planets, explains a lot about the Solar System. Virtually all known celestial objects are accounted for by this simple principle alone. But two questions remain open:  What is the evolutionary history of 'ice dwarfs' lacking a metal core, such as Ceres, Iapetus, and Oberon; and secondly, How did the celestial bodies that make up the Solar System come in to their current orbital configurations?

  Jeffrey Wolynski has proposed one possible explanation of how the celestial bodies of the Solar System came to be in the particular orbital configurations we find them in today:

"All objects are an adopted family. The Sun adopted all objects in the Solar System as it was moving through the galaxy. The formation of all objects are mutually exclusive. The Earth didn't form with Jupiter, Jupiter didn't form with the Sun. They're not related. Their formations are completely somewhere else in the galaxy, or maybe even another galaxy entirely.  How evolved they are is apparent in their physical characteristics and has nothing whatsoever to do with their orbital configurations.  Neptune sized objects could be in front of Earth sized objects without any problem."

  This is in stark contrast to the currently accepted Nebular Hypothesis model, where all objects in the Solar System have are related, having a similar age of about 4.5 Billion years, all forming in the same region from the same nebula. Wolynski instead proposes that NONE of the objects are related, coming from completely different regions of the galaxy, or perhaps even other galaxies, at vastly different times.  But what if there is another option?


  It seems to be the case that some celestial bodies have a lot in common with other nearby bodies. The Earth and Venus have many similarities, Jupiter and Saturn seem to match, Uranus and Neptune are very similar.  Even the Sun seems to be similar to the nearby star Alpha Centauri. This phenomenon may even continue on to the size of galaxies, with The Milky Way and the nearby Andromeda galaxy seeming to match. Binary stars seem to be the most common type, which becomes less common as stars age.

 Another interesting pattern that seems to occur is that celestial bodies have a tendency to show up in groups, in particular, groups of four seem to show up a lot. Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars seem to form a group of four. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune seem to form another quartet.  Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto form a group of four. The Sun and the three stars in the Alpha Centauri systems may also fit into this pattern. Recent exoplanet surveys reveal a very high percentage of planetary systems with associated groups of four.  That is not to suggest that everything comes in groups of fours, but quartets seem to be one of the most common patterns observed.

  If planets are indeed ancient stars, perhaps groups of planets are in fact groups of stars which remained associated for vast periods of time. We may find clues to what the planets in our Solar System may have been like in the past by looking at clusters of stars such as the Pleides, Hyades and constellations like The Big Dipper and Cassiopeia. These star clusters seem to form similar patterns as well, and groups of small numbers of prominent stars are observed. In a similar way, the moons of Gas giants could shed light on what these groups may look like in the future.

 All of this seems to strongly suggest that stars seem to form groups, oftentimes groups of four, and that members of those groups may remain associated for very long periods of time. If this is the case, it could be more than a coincidence that all of the terrestrial planets are in a row in a group of four. It could be more than just a coincidence that two very similar stars, Neptune and Uranus, just happen to be right next to each other, grouped together with the next group of similar stars, Jupiter and Saturn, or that the Galilean moons are all together. There does seem to be evidence supporting the idea that some small groups of stars are in fact closely related and have shared a history throughout their lifetimes. It may even be the case that some kind of double-binary orbit pattern is the most likely to form for groups of stars in the intermediate stage between formation and taking up orbit around a host.

If this is the case, it would suggest that the ages of Jupiter and Saturn, and Uranus and Neptune may be much closer than their mass and chemical composition suggests.  It could be the case that accelerated metamorphosis may be at play more than previously thought, caused by a close-by host star. If it is the case that these stars have remained in groups for most of their lives, the host stars in question could very well been one or two of the four members of the group.

It seems plausible that the terrestrial planets could have all formed as pairs of stars from the same cloud around the same amount of time, separated only by maybe a few millions of years. And the same for the gas giants. Significant differences between Mercury, Mars, Venus and Earth could in part be from a chronological difference in age, but a significant amount may be from interaction with other stars, and perhaps largely from the interactions of stars within the same group.  For later stages, Mercury's proximity to the Sun could largely account for it's apparently ancient age compared to Mars, while Mars and Mercury could still be slightly older chronologically than Venus and Earth, while still being closely related as a group.

One clue we have from observing nearby stars is that stars in an earlier plasma stage appear to be farther apart than stars in their planetary stage.  This would suggest that when the Gas giants were in a plasma stage, they may have been much farther apart than they are now, comparable to the distances between The Sun and the Alpha Centauri stars.  In fact, it may very well be the case that we observe a pattern suggesting that groups of red dwarfs tend to be closer together than yellow stars, with large white stars having a tendency to be even farther apart.

So it may be the case that the Gas giants, at a time when they were still red and orange dwarfs, perhaps, were light years away from the Terrestial group. Estimations of when they may have finally entered what is now the Solar System may be possible based on orbit instabilities and clues found in moon characteristics.

For example, the four major moons of Jupiter show signs of being in orbit around a red dwarf flare star. We can predict that Jupiter and Saturn may have been closely associated this far back, but there is a clue that Saturn and Uranus, (not just Uranus and Neptune),  may have been closely associated for a long period of time, too. If we look at the major moons of Saturn as compared to the moons of Uranus, we notice some striking similarities. Saturn has a pattern which seems to be interrupted by Titan, while Uranus shows a very similar pattern. Unless this is found to be a common pattern of moons around many as giant exoplanets, this seems to suggest a similar scenario of acquiring moons between Saturn and Uranus, and shared history over a long period of time.



  Disrupting the pattern of Saturn's moons is Titan. It has been suggested that, based on orbital instabilities of the inner Saturnian moons up to Titan, that as recently as 500 million years ago the orbital configurations have been interrupted. It seems possible that Titan is a recent addition to the Saturnian system. Could it be that Titan was once an outer moon (or planet) of Jupiter? And that when the Gas giants entered what is now the Solar System, Titan's orbit shifted over to Saturn?

 This would fit in with the core patterns of the Galilean moons:  The innermost moons Io, Europa and Ganymede seem to have solid metal cores. But the next moon, Callisto, appears to have only a rocky core that is not fully differentiated. Titan also seems to lack a metal core. Why is that? Are these moons not ancient evolved stars like the other bodies in the Solar System? Or some of them are and some of them aren't?  Why would Ganymede look so similar to Callisto if one is a former star and one is just the impact remains of one? If the bodies with only rocky cores somehow formed from the impact remains of existing stars, why is there differentiation between ice and rock, and why don't the impact remains contain remnants of metal cores?

One possible solution to this problem is that these icy worlds that lack metal cores, or 'ice dwarfs', have a different evolutionary path. These bodies seem to resemble blue dwarfs such as Neptune and Uranus in many ways, having similar cores and chemical composition. What if Neptunes can develop into two possible types of stars: One path leading toward a liquid Ocean World phase, with the other leading to a frozen 'ice dwarf' stage with a rocky core, distinct from frozen Ocean worlds with metal cores. Maybe once a blue dwarf has cooled down enough and stops generating a significant amount of heat, without a hot host nearby, maybe it is natural for the star to freeze without continuing to develop.  If something along these lines is the case, it could explain why we observe so many 'ice dwarfs' instead of a vast abundance of rocky and metal remains, and why frozen Ocean worlds with metal cores, like Europa, seem to be distinct from less evolved 'ice dwarfs' with rocky cores. 

Now, I am aware that what I have proposed here does not fully correspond to Jeffrey Wolynski's proposed evolution of stars where a metal core starts forming as early as the red dwarf phase. So it remains to be seen if these 'ice dwarfs' are in fact as icy as standard models suggest, and to what extent the standard conception of gas giant cores ends up being accurate. It may be the case that there are not as many ice dwarfs out there as was thought, which turn out to be more rocky than expected, and that the expected core characteristics have not been accurately predicted.

So as it stands, we have a second possible mechanism of configurations of the orbits of the Solar System:  Stars form in small groups of binary pairs, at least four members of these groups generally remain in proximity to one another throughout most of their life. As the stars age, binary pairs get farther away from each other, while members of the group get progressively closer.  It would seem that instead of one host star wandering through the galaxy, these groups of stars, once their masses have been significantly depleted, would naturally be drawn toward a large massive host close by, keeping in mind that the massive host at this stage would be quite far away from members of its group.

Using Jupiter as an example, the moons of Jupiter could have formed in this similar way, an associated group of four to six stars, which by the time of the current age are now four, perhaps with one previous member having left to join the Saturnian system.  While Jupiter was in a red dwarf stage, flares may have blasted the atmospheres of the orbiting planets which have later come to be moons. The close proximity to Jupiter while it was still a hot plasma star could have had drastic effects on the innermost moon, Io. By the time Jupiter has cooled down to become a brown dwarf, the outermost moons have froze over before developing beyond a Blue dwarf phase, while the inner moons have survived the host's flare stage without completely freezing, continuing on into an Ocean world phase. Later, as Jupiter has cooled down more, all moons have frozen. As Jupiter and other members of the group get closer to what is now the Solar System, one of Jupiter's moons Titan shifts orbit around Saturn, interrupting the pattern of moons that was already there.

[As a side note, it is proposed that future observations may show that Gas giants as a rule have a ring system, with younger, larger gas giants generally having more extensive rings. Early stages of Saturn-like planets and brown dwarfs may have incredibly large ring systems.  As early as the red dwarf flare stage, we should see evidence of disks of dust forming from expelled material from flares. The suggestion here being that those disks will then become rings. Currently there is some limited evidence for this, but the sample size is far too small to make any kind of definitive conclusion. However, although Jupiter's rings are tenuous, the extent of those rings is more significant than Saturn's, which in turn is higher than the rings of Uranus and lastly Neptune.]

This overall proposed scenario of configuration is still at an early stage of development, and could be flat out wrong. So far, there may not be enough data to say strongly one way or the other whether this specific "quartet" model is plausible. But hopefully the suggestion of this kind of model could lead to further more accurate developments if it is found to be false. In the early 21st Century we are just beginning to find out limited information about other planetary systems, so only time will tell.

Striking similarities between major moons of Saturn and Uranus

 Why so many 'ice dwarfs'?

 The Venus-Earth pair, and Mercury-Mars pair form a group of four.

 Are red stars generally closer together than yellow stars,
with white stars even farther apart?

 Do gas giants have rings as a rule, or do they just happen to form sometimes?
Red and Brown dwarfs may hold clues to ring formation.

The quartet hypothesis

 

Exoplanet data showing lots of quartets. Notice that larger (younger) quartets appear to be closer to the host star.  Even without this data, we can deduce that the inner planets of our own Solar System would have also been larger and closer to the Sun in the past.

Oddly enough, the TimeLife book 'Voyage Through the Universe' admits that in the past, Jupiter emitted "radiation of starlike intensity" which may have dramatically affected how its moons formed.

A New Model of Planet Formation

"Among all the strange things that men have forgotten, the most universal and catastrophic lapse of memory is that by which they have forgotten that they are living on a star. " - G. K. Chesterton

" The Earth is a noble star. " - Nicholas De Cusa

" This Earth which we inhabit was formerly a star like the Sun. " - Rene Descartes




  A significant amount of evidence has mounted against the current standard model of planet formation. In particular, many recent exoplanet discoveries have contradicted popular accretion models. Scientists are puzzled by the challenges of explaining how the first planetesimals could have formed, why protoplanetary disks appear to be far too small to form planetary systems, where the Earth's water and oxygen came from, why current models predict the absence of Neptune sized planets that seem to be observed regularly, and many other challenges. Other issues, such as the angular momentum loss problem, have been well known for hundreds of years.

  As more observations are being made and as more data comes in every day, it is becoming more and more clear that a new model of planet formation is needed.  An independent researcher named Jeffrey Wolynski has proposed a bold solution to the problem:

"Stars and planets are not mutually exclusive. They are the same thing. A hot, young star cools and collapses to become a planet. Planets are the remains of evolved stars."

  Wolynksi's innovative hypothesis of planet formation has been dubbed "Stellar Metamorphosis". But Mr. Wolynski is not alone is proposing that planets are the cold remains of ancient stars. Though the idea has arisen independently, it can be traced all the way back to Rene Descartes in the 17th Century. More recently, philosopher Anthony Abruzzo's "Transformation Hypothesis" proposes a similar mechanism, and the famous Soviet biochemist Alexander Oparin, known for his theory of the "primordial soup", wrote about the same concept in his 1922 book 'The Origin of Life':


"There was a time when the Earth was passing through the same stage of development as the Sun, namely that of being a yellow star. Later, as it gradually radiated its heat outwards into the cold interplanetary space, it became cooler and cooler. It turned from a yellow star into a red one, its light became dimmer and dimmer, and finally went out altogether.  The Earth became a dark planet."
Alexander Oparin, The Origin of Life

"The claim has been made that planets should be viewed as the end products and not the byproducts
of stellar evolution. The overlapping gradations in mass between the heaviest and
lightest spherical objects - presented above for heuristic purposes and without any consideration
to individual variations - suggests just such an evolutionary continuum. It was pointed out that
the germ of the transformation hypothesis traces its lineage to Descartes’ vortex cosmology.
And, for reasons that were very briefly touched upon, it was superseded by Newtonian physics
and consigned to the dustbin of history. However, in reviving the idea, I have endeavored to
show that in some not insignificant aspects it is consistent with contemporary stellar evolution
theory if the time restriction imposed by the Big Bang hypothesis is abrogated.
In a universe of indeterminate age where stellar objects lose mass from nucleosynthesis, solar
wind, red giant phase envelope shedding and finally proton decay, the focus of stellar evolution
shifts from exotic objects like neutron stars, magnetars, preon stars, quark stars and black holes
to mundane objects like brown dwarf stars, gas giant planets, rocky planets and dwarf planets.
This is so because the supposed density levels predicted for the aforementioned exotic objects
turn out to be spurious since the depletion of an object’s mass and the contraction of its radius
occur simultaneously, if we take the known densities of the non stellar objects in our Solar
System as preliminary evidence. Thus, the need to wrestle with tortured descriptions of hyperdense
matter is no longer necessary."
Anthony Abruzzo, 'Are Planets the End Products Rather than the By-Products of Stellar' The basic assumption of stars transforming to become planets, evolving over time losing mass as different chemical compositions form seems to be supported by all known currently known evidence, and it comes with tremendous explanatory power, ranging all the way from the development of young, hot stars in a plasma phase such as the Sun, to cooler red dwarf stars, to gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn through Neptune to Earth, to Mercury and even impact remains such as meteors and the asteroid Vesta. They are all the same type of object, they are all various forms of stars, at different stages of development.

A simple explanation with such explanatory power, supported by so much evidence, should be taken as a serious possibility. Perhaps as the current standard models are shown to be unfeasible, and as discovery after discovery of exoplanet data pours in, falsifying the modifications made to try to preserve those models, at some point mainstream astronomers will have to take notice of Stellar Metamorphosis.

Rene Descartes' early model of Stellar Metamorphosis

   Stellar Metamorphosis is a model of planet formation in which stars develop over time to become planets. The basic concept was independently suggested and developed by Jeffrey Wolynski, Anthony Abruzzo, and Alexander Oparin, and can also be traced back to Rene Descartes and his vortex cosmology.


  (A related but somewhat different proposition was made by Nicholas De Cusa, but in his model a star does not develop to become a planet, but instead both the Earth and The Sun have Earthlike and Sunlike features, suggesting that within the fiery atmosphere of the Sun there is land and bodies of water, and that if we were farther away from the surface of the Earth, it could be seen that our planet also has a fiery atmosphere.)

   There seems to have been a lack of exact quotations available online from any works by Rene Descartes discussing his early version of Stellar Metamorphosis.  As it turns out, almost all English translations of the 1644 book 'Principles of Philosophy' are just heavily edited selections from the book, and do not contain information about the Earth being a former star like The Sun.

   As cited in Abruzzo's paper 'Are Planets the End Products Rather than the By-Products of Stellar Evolution?' one proper full translation of the book is by "Valentine Rodger Miller and Reese P.
Miller, Dordrecht, Synthese Historical Library, 24, 1991".


In Part III, Descartes writes:

"It can also happen that an entire vortex that contains some such star is absorbed by the other surrounding vortices and that its star, snatched into one of these vortices, becomes a Planet or a Comet. "

"How a fixed Star is transformed into a Planet or a Comet.
 
... if this globe is so solid that, before descending to the point at which the parts of the vortex move the most slowly, it acquires a degree of agitation equal to that of those parts among which it is located; it descends no further, and will process into other vortices and become a Comet.
On the other hand, if it is not sufficiently solid to acquire so much agitation, and therefore descends below that point {at which the parts of the vortex move the most slowly}, it will remain a certain distance from the star which occupies the center of this vortex, and will become a Planet revolving around it.


In Part IV, Descartes writes:

"And so let us imagine that this Earth which we inhabit was formerly {a star} like the Sun, composed solely of the matter of the first element, although it was much smaller than the Sun; and it was situated in a vast vortex."