Pluto
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Pluto
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I believe our solar system provides us with enough information to help draw a reasonable picture of these early stages and it differs somewhat from most interpretations that I've seen or read.
This is the typical model of how our solar system formed. A giant cloud of dust and gas spun into a central ball and suddenly became a star which flattened the remaining gasses and dust into a disk which then formed rings from the waves created in space which then coalesced into planets. |
There are likely moons or planets contained within this lit dust cloud around HL Tauri, they just can't be seen because of size.
Gasses need heat to be gaseous otherwise they are solids due to space's cold temperatures. This fact is seen in the Classical Kuiper Belt Objects in our solar system. That means, when our solar system was a cloud of dust and gas those gasses were in the form of small solid particles which at some point began clumping together to form larger solids of gas particles like comets and asteroids not gaseous gasses of clouds. As these solid particles of gas and dust coalesced into larger bodies like (smallest mass to largest) Comet 67p, Charon, Pluto, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter and the Sun, they began to produce internal heat under the pressure of gravity, yet they were still cold solids like Comet 67p throughout most of their earliest growth stages. |
As these icy solid planets grew, the heavier solids migrated toward their gravitational center or core while the lighter solids and fluids were pressed upwards and outwards toward the outer surface of the body's sphere and once the body was large enough with enough internal heat energy.
The solid gasses became a fluid then a vapor and an atmosphere was formed much like we see with the gas planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. This atmospheric gas phenomenon is also seen on Pluto and may be the result of Pluto passing closer to the Sun than Neptune for brief periods in its orbit. |
Before the Sun ignited but still while in a growing phase, it was setting up gravity waves or ripples in space time. These low pressure wave zones clustered other groups of cold solid gasses into moons. Instead of looking like what we see today, it looked like a larger version of Saturn with its icy rings and moons.
As the Sun grew, its ripples in space must have changed. As the Sun grew from planet to star, it would have created longer wave patterns (greater distance from peak to trough) in space time setting up expanding zones for other gasses to accrete into. Small mass = small high frequency waves. Larger mass = longer low frequency waves. Changing mass = increased collisions. |
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The Sun's changing and expanding mass and subsequent gravity changing waves would have likely pushed some of the already larger formed objects into each other and perturbed them into elliptical orbits. The planets Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter are a stage or phase model of what our Sun looked like prior to nuclear fusion. At some point in its early pre-ignition growth period, the Sun was hot enough to be a gas giant and big enough to create gravitational cluster zones which created moons or planets as we call them today just like Saturn. |
These moons would have, initially, been largely composed of water ice and dust just as we see today around Jupiter, remember, at this point, the Sun is still small like Jupiter so it has not yet ignited so all formed objects are ice dominant, the primary source of energy is tidal flexing from elliptical orbits and heat from internal gravitational pressure and some radioactive decay and to a much lesser degree heat from accretion.
Some of the pre-ignition Sun's moons/planets would, via tidal flexing, start to burn off their water like Io as it orbits Jupiter and become a molten rocky planet. This is likely how our inner planets were initially cooked into rocky planets eventually these elliptical orbits would have settled into more circular orbits. Then at some point the Sun would have grown so large that nuclear fusion took place as the gravity pushed two hydrogen atoms together and it ignited.
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The Sun would have been mostly cold during first ignition but as more hydrogen atoms fused, heat and pressure would have grown escalating the process.
At this point there would have been for the first time an outward push of energy from the heat as well as an inward increase in pressure. This would have been the beginning of the solar wind. Up to this point most bodies were being sucked towards the Sun, this shock wave of outward pressure would have slowed many of these object's descent into the Sun. |
The heat energy from the Sun would have started aggressively forming and baking the material which would form the inner planets, stripping them of much of their surface gasses. If they had formed molten cores by this time a magnetosphere would have existed which would assist in protecting their atmosphere from the Suns solar wind once it ignited.
The Sun was 30% less energetic than it is today so its solar wind and radiation wouldn't have had as much stripping impact on the planets. The gas giants were far enough away from the Sun that its heat energy did not strip their gasses off rather the gravitational energy of those planets provided the heat and pull to keep an atmosphere of gas surrounding their core while the Sun's energy assisted slightly with the warming of the gaseous atmosphere but not the striping of those gasses. |
Between 30 AU and 5 AU (from Neptune to Jupiter) we can see how the weak solar wind and heat energy from the Sun submits to the larger influence of local energy created by the mass of each planet as they convert their core's heat into a trapped spherical gaseous atmosphere but that atmosphere is not blown away by the solar wind.
The asteroid or main belt resides between 3.2 and 2.2 AU from the Sun. This is where small objects around the outer edge of the main belt are icy bodies or comet like objects while objects on the inner edge of the belt are rocky bodies. The inner edges of the main belt is the transitional zone where the Sun's energy evaporates away surface gasses and leaves behind space dust in the form of silicate rock asteroids while the outer edge of the main belt shows how the suns energy weakens enough for small objects to be ice dominant comets. From 3 to .3 AU things exist within the Suns atmosphere and are cooked and baked by its heat and solar wind turning the surfaces to stone, liquid water and gas, this is where we find the rocky inner planets. Mars barely has an atmosphere as it is gravitationally weak and has no magnetic field to protect it, its surface water has been evaporated away or is trapped on the planet as ice. |