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.