Solving solar system quandaries is simple: Just flip-flop the position of Uranus and Neptune

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

The wandering (eh) of planets may have caused the late heavy bombardment (see this; the site has a nice animation of how the orbits of giant planets may have evolved).

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Planetary migration not only make the formation of Uranus and Neptune possible, but it also explains why the Kuiper belt is not nearly as massive as it should. Also the various resonances in Kuiper belt and the main asteroid belt can be explained by moving planets, as well as Trojan asteroids. Since closely-orbiting extrasolar planets must have migrated, this doesn't sound at all far-fetched. When Saturn's orbit became unstable, our Solar System must have looked very strange with many eccentric orbits.

__________________
Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Hi, Thanks for the link. Fascinating.
Best regards, Dan

I wish they'd switch back. Uranus resolves to a disk in my scope but Neptune is a much prettier shade of blue. Unfortunately it's just a dot or at least a very small disk.

__________________
You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

The 14 February issue of Science News had a very nice article on the latest modeling of the late heavy bombardment, including the work linked to in post # 2.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Thanks Swift, Kullat (and ToSeek)...very informative and thought provoking material.

Swift,,,unfortunately, can't load your link, right now...could be my end of it...i'll try again later....thanks anyway...

__________________
clear skies

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. CARL SAGAN

Mak: Pass the pepperoni please.
Fazor: "Hail, Bautainia! We pledge our hearts to thee! Science and woo, some babbling too, and astron-oh-meee!"
slang: And it made ash out of yew and tree.

I just did so again with no problem - I don't know why you had difficulties

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

ya the link is working for me as well. thanks for posting it swift.

The first paragraph seems to imply that water and other compounds essential to life were delivered to the inner planets after their formation from the outer solar system, presumably during the LHB, yet later in the article they say the Earth was already wet and suitable for life soon after its formation.

Four billion years ago is an awfully long time to speculate about. Whereas, Velikovsky thought Saturn was a captured Brown Dwarf with Venus as one of its planets. He also thought that Uranus was turned on its side by a close passage of Saturn on its way in... His opinion is rather less than scientifically proven, but intersting nevertheless. By the way, he also predicted most of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn would be composed of water ice. As I mentioned earlier, four billion years is an awfully long time to speculate about and since anything can happen and usually does happen, why not speculate? By the way, I am NOT a proponent of Velikovsky's ideas but bring up the point, just because.